Speak No Evil in Bloomington, MN

On his third date for
Blue Note
within a year,
Wayne Shorter
changed the bands that played on both
Night Dreamer
and
Juju
and came up with not only another winner, but also managed to give critics and
jazz
fans a different look at him as a saxophonist. Because of his previous associations with
McCoy Tyner
,
Elvin Jones
, and
Reggie Workman
on those recordings,
Shorter
had been unfairly branded with the "just-another-
Coltrane
-disciple" tag, despite his highly original and unusual compositions. Here, with only
Jones
remaining and his bandmates from the
Miles Davis Quintet
Herbie Hancock
Ron Carter
on board (with
Freddie Hubbard
filling out the horn section),
at last came into his own and caused a major reappraisal of his earlier work. The odd harmonic frameworks used to erect
"Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum,"
with its balladic structure augmented with a bluesy regimen of
hard bop
and open-toned modalism, create the illusion of a much larger band managing all that timbral space. Likewise on the title track, with its
post-bop
-oriented melodic line strewn across a wide chromatic palette of minors and
Hancock
's piano pushing through a contrapuntal set of semi-quavers, the
avant-garde
meets the
of the '50s head on and everybody wins. The loping lyric of the horns and
's vamping in the middle section during
's solo reveals a broad sense of humor in the saxophonist's linguistics and a deep, more regimented sense of time and thematic coloration. The set ends with the beautiful
"Wild Flower,"
a lilting
ballad
with angular accents by
who takes the lyric and inverts it, finding a chromatic counterpoint that segues into the front line instead of playing in opposition. The swing is gentle but pronounced and full of
's singular lyricism as a saxophonist as well as a composer. ~ Thom Jurek