Plenty of jazz legends are still working in their 80s, but only one leads what is often acclaimed as the best small group in the world – saxophonist Wayne Shorter, whose 1959-62 recordings have been the source for this Proper Box retrospective. Shorter's friend John Coltrane was an obvious model, but the newcomer had his own sound by his mid-20s, as his first notes here reveal, in their spooky tenor tone, slow-burn construction and enigmatic melodic shapes. On his 1959 bandleader debut, Shorter's sound is somewhere between Sonny Rollins, Coltrane and John Gilmore, but his compositional genius is also blossoming in fresh twists on the blues and in snappy modern swingers such as Black Diamond. Later themes for his boss Art Blakey, such as the obliquely resolving Sincerely Diana, the richly polyphonic Children of the Night and the rampant Powder Keg trace his growing maturity, though his own 1962 album Wayning Moments is over-represented. This is as uneven as most copyright-constrained retrospectives tend to be, but it's a revealing primer to the work of an inspired original.
Wayne Shorter: Beginnings – review
This extensive box set of Wayne Shorter's 1959-62 work is uneven, as these things tend to be, but a revealing primer all the same, writes John Fordham