Consumer Guide Album

Wayne Shorter: Juju [Blue Note, 1965]
When tenor saxophonist Shorter died at 89 early in March, the sense of cultural loss was too pervasive for me not to explore him a little even though I'd never fully connected to his music, not even when I double-checked the two most striking of his multitudinous credits--his decisive contribution to Weather Report, who still sound like Joe Zawinul's band to me, and his defining role in three late-'60s Miles albums that are just not my cup of horchata. Right, among other things the Miles albums helped crystallize Steely Dan, but for me they're still epitomized by Nefertiti, which I returned to several times to no avail after Shorter passed. Why did I stick at my research? Above all one of the greatest musician interviews I've ever read, Shorter sitting around talking with Greg Tate and Craig Street in 1985, a selection that comes in second only to Amiri Baraka's opener in Tate's invaluable Flyboy 2 collection and can be found online simply by Googling "people mess with Christianity, Christianity doesn't mess with people." As Tate says, Shorter is like "a hybrid of precocious teen and wizened sage," and for seven pages said sage doesn't quit working verbal miracles. So I examined the CD shelves where I'd held on to a few of his albums as a leader and learned that the personnel on this 1965 release was McCoy Tyner-Reggie Workman-Elvin Jones where the less shapely Footprints Live! featured his road quartet. So Juju is what I'll continue to bear down on until I land me a few more. Shorter sweeps through the title opener, with Tyner and Jones locked in enough not to pretend he's 'Trane even when Jones rumbles volcanically. "House of Jade" leaves a faint, welcome, apt trace of "Greensleeves" trailing behind, Tyner does the rumbling as "Mahjong" keeps things simple, "Yes or No" says yes to bebop, "Twelve More Bars to Go" is the closer it's designed as, and neither bonus cut is a waste cut. Right, Shorter isn't as distinctive as Bird or even Cannonball Adderley. But this is who he is and wants to be. There's a catholicity about his playing that meshes revealingly with the man who did that interview. A-