Wayne Shorter's First Recordings—Never Released! Part 3 of 3,+ Bonus

(Paying Subscribers, as usual your bonus is at the very bottom—the second article ever published about Shorter.)

In Part 1 and Part 2, I gave you the background story about these first recordings by the late beloved saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter. (In fact, Shorter died during the night after I posted Part 1.) We also listened to three of the five tracks. As I explained, it was not a whole album’s worth of material because this session was intended to create a few tracks for an LP, not the entire LP. But as it turned out, these tracks were not used (see Part 1 for a probable explanation).

Here are the last two recordings. They are very interesting indeed! They also present some questions about personnel which I am still researching. In any case, as on the previous tracks, it’s a sextet: saxophone (Wayne), mellophone (see below), vibraphone (probably Dick Lincoln, then at Princeton, although he doesn’t recall the session), piano (John Eaton, Princeton, the leader, composer and arranger), bass (Ed White, Princeton—Wayne’s friend), and drums (Alan Bergman).

First, here is an original “Fugue” by Eaton. One hears fugal entrances, one after another, by the vibraphone, sax, and then mellophone. It’s a short piece, mostly written, but it has room for a super-fast solo by Wayne, showing why he was known as “The Newark Flash” around his hometown in New Jersey. There are two takes here, both with solos by Shorter and by the mellophone player. (The mellophone has a sound similar to that of a French horn.) The first take finishes abruptly at 1:47, but apparently that is intentional. You will hear producer George Avakian, sitting in the control room with other people, say that the ending “Kind of caught us all by surprise—let’s listen to it.”

I mentioned in Part 1 that the brass player is unidentified. But there is a clue here. At 1:55, Avakian announces “‘Fugue,’ take two,” and then says “Come on through, Don,” after which one can hear the player moving the mellophone’s keys. Apparently Don was waiting to squeeze through to get to his microphone. My guess is that this is Don Elliott. He was just about the only person in jazz to specialize on the mellophone at this time. (He also played vibraphone, but on every track the vibes and mellophone are playing at the same time, and nothing was overdubbed. So those must have been two separate people.)

At the end Avakian says “cut.” Please take a listen:

Next, let’s hear Eaton’s arrangement of a standard slow song (“ballad”), “My One and Only Love.” Avakian says “Take 2,” which reminds us that we are hearing selected takes, not the entire recording session. The late Alan Bergman, who shared these with me, chose the most polished and complete takes.

On this one the orchestration (choice of instruments) is very creative, but it also creates some puzzles. The arrangement starts with clarinet and marimba (played with quickly repeated notes, called tremolo), and bowed bass, to which are added the high notes of a glockenspiel (also known as bells, but similar to a xylophone). Who’s playing what?!

Well, Wayne did play clarinet, as mentioned in Mercer’s biography. And Dick Lincoln told me recently that “Wayne certainly did play clarinet very beautifully.” But there are two mallet instruments. Lincoln himself would have played one of them, although he doesn’t recall playing either one. Bergman told me that he could play all the mallet percussion instruments, but the drummer with brushes is heard at 1:15, just after the mallet instruments stop. There doesn’t seem to be enough time to switch. However, the piano doesn’t come in until 1:20. My guess is that Lincoln is playing the marimba, and Eaton is playing the glock. After all, it’s Eaton’s arrangement, and it’s an easy melody to play—remember that the bars are laid out like piano keys.

Still, I’m continuing to research the personnel, and if I find more information I’ll revise these posts accordingly. For example, at 4:20 somebody—Eaton, I think—says something that sounds like “Bruce.” And there’s no Bruce here that we know—if that’s what he says.

Anyway, here goes. On this one Wayne doesn’t solo, but it’s your only chance to hear him play a melody on clarinet:

(Saxophonist-arranger-jazz historian Bill Kirchner reminds me that Wayne did play trills on clarinet behind the bowed bass on McCoy Tyner’s recording of Cal Massey’s song, “I Thought I’d Let You Know.” That’s his only other clarinet recording, to my knowledge.)

That completes the five tracks from the never released first recording session of Wayne Shorter. See you again soon!

All the best,
Lewis

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