WAYNE SHORTER — The Soothsayer

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3.82 | 12 ratings | 2 reviews

Album · 1979

Filed under Hard Bop
By WAYNE SHORTER

Tracklist

A1 Lost 7:14
A2 Angola 4:48
A3 The Big Push 8:19
B1 The Soothsayer 9:36
B2 Lady Day 5:31
B3 Valse Triste 7:35

CD reissue track list:
1 Lost 7:14
2 Angola 4:48
3 Angola (alternate take) 6:38
4 The Big Push 8:19
5 The Soothsayer 9:36
6 Lady Day 5:31
7 Valse Triste 7:35

Total Time: 50:24

Line-up/Musicians

Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone);
James Spaulding (alto saxophone);
Freddie Hubbard (trumpet);
McCoy Tyner (piano);
Ron Carter (bass);
Tony Williams (drums)

About this release

Blue Note ‎– LT-988 (US)

Recorded at Van Gelder STudios, New Jersey on March 4, 1965
The material on this album is released here for the first time

Thanks to snobb for the updates

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Mssr_Renard

I must say that this Shorter-album is one of my favourites, and I consider this one to be a tad overlooked by people. This album was released in the late seventies but contains songs recorded on march 4th 1965 and the line-up is a special one.

McCoy Tyner plays with Shorter on JuJu, while on most Shorter-albums Hancock handles the piano. The Spaulding-Hubbard-Shorter pairing is just perfect, wich is also used on The All Seeing Eye (augmented by Alan Shorter and Moncour).

Also very special about this album is Tony Williams on drums, because Shorter worked mostly with Elvin Jones and Joe Chambers. Tony and Wayne were both members of Miles' group so it is not that odd.

All musicians involved in this wonderful album have their moments, but I think it's mostly the Shorter-Spaulding pairing that makes this album interesting. The two saxes sound excellent on the unisono-parts but the solo-trading is great to. I think that Hubbard is the least prominent.

I already have most of the VSOP-albums (Shorter-Hubbard-Williams-Carter-Hancock) of the late seventies and somehow this album can be seen as a pre-cursor of those great albums.

The music and compositions of this album are much more mature than the Art Blakey-albums Shorter played on. My guess is that Shorter kept the best compositions for himself. This is wonderful album wich should have been released in the sixties and fits perfectly in the string of albums JuJu, Adam's Apple, Speak No Evil, All Seeing Eye, etc.

1 year ago
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Sean Trane

Definitely Wayne’s more intriguing string pre-WR albums, outside Nova and Iska IMHO, and no doubt due to the amazing line-up featured, which includes the unusual presence McCoy Tyner (generally not associated with the Miles-Shorter crowd), and the slightly less-surprising Hubbard. Completing the line-up are the ultra-young Tony Williams, the ever-unavoidable Carter and the less-famous Spaulding (a usual Horace & Hubbard suspect) doubling Wayne sax on different ranges. Well despite my original intrigue, the album ultimately proves to be a bit disappointing, because McCoy is not being given enough space on Shorter’s compositions to allow him to make a distinct difference on countless other albums, even if one can hear is awesome southpaw pounding the keys. If the overall soundscapes of Soothsayer are fairly standard, one can’t really classify as an outright bop thing. In some ways, Soothsayer is very much in the line of Juju and Night Dreamer, with the notable exception of the title track, which bears a definite Trayner influence.

All of the other tracks are generally post-bop enough to sound like an early 60’s jazz release, but by no means is the present album any superior than the huge majority of jazz releases of those years.

Wayne (with McCoy) would be one of the few musicians that would cross the Miles-Trane gap (well Shorter did play also with Elvin, before he would with McCoy) and he would return the favour by playing on a few Tyner albums around the turn of the decade. Good stuff but nothing transcendental, except for the modal title track.