JazzVid: Woody Shaw

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com

Between Woody Shaw's Muse albums in the '70s and '80s, he recorded for Columbia. One of his albums for the label was Stepping Stones, recorded live at the Village Vanguard in August 1978. On the album was Victor Lewis' Seventh Avenue that captured the sounds of frantic traffic, harried pedestrians and a decaying city that was running out of money.

Here's the sizzling Woody Shaw Quintet—Woody Shaw (tp), Carter Jefferson (ss), Onaje Allan Gumbs (p), Stafford James (b) and Victor Lewis—performing Seventh Avenue in Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera in July 1979. A special thanks to JazzWax reader Bob Gordon...

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How did Seventh Avenue come to be? Let composer and drummer Victor Lewis explain. Woody Shaw III sent along these two links (here and here)...

JazzWax tracks: For Woody Shaw: The Complete Muse Sessions (Mosaic), go here. For The Complete Woody Shaw Columbia Albums Collection (Sony), go here. - See more at: http://www.jazzwax.com/2013/07/jazzvid-woody-shaw.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Jazzwax+%28JazzWax%29#sthash.05139Wbb.dpuf

Used with permission by Marc Myers

Woody Shaw: Muse Box

Reprinted from http://jazzwax.com

Woody Shaw was the last of the statement trumpeters. Deeply influenced by Freddie Hubbard's blistering attack on the instrument, Shaw began his recording career in 1963 during a highly charged and transitional period in this country. His compositions, arrangements and playing style were highly personal and mirrored the frustration that many jazz artists felt given the slow pace of civil rights, a government determined to wage an unpopular war and an art form that no longer held the same status it did just five years earlier.

Hard bop had been around for about 10 years by 1963 but was somewhat adrift—eclipsed by freer forms of jazz expressed by John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis and Chicago's  avant-garde artists. And given the soaring popularity of British rock bands, folk artists, Motown and other forms aimed at teens with portable phonographs, jazz as an art form was being bested by musicians with a fraction of their skills but championed by an industry hot on the scent of profits.

As the '60s turned into the '70s, jazz began to panic. The imaginations and libidos of millions of college age teens were being stirred by soul, rock, disco and punk—leaving jazz musicians scrambling. Older jazz audiences didn't want to hear anything new and while most younger listeners found new forms of jazz exciting, they also found it tedious and relentlessly gloomy.

Some jazz musicians tried to appeal to the youth culture by embracing jazz-rock fusion while others moved toward the orchestral soul-jazz movement spearheaded by CTI Records. As the two camps divided, Woody Shaw was in the middle—retaining the spirit of hard bop but moving the jazz trumpet toward a hotter, more expressive, conversational place.

If you listen carefully to Shaw's playing in the '70s, you can hear a political statement about decaying times and the unwinding social fabric and despair over jazz's diminished worthiness and dissolving future. On Shaw'sThe Moontrane, Joe Bonner's Love Dance and Larry Young's Obsequious, you hear Shaw's energy and anxiety, ambition and struggle.

Shaw's creative journey through the '70s and '80s can be heard on the new Woody Shaw: The Complete Muse Sessions (Mosaic). Shaw began to record for Muse in 1974, just as rock, soul and disco began to command a powerful place in the music business. Jazz was too heady for most kids who had just started dating, owned stereo systems, had cassette decks in car glove compartments and were in search of a good time. To Shaw's credit, he remained a jazz purist throughout his Muse years (up until 1987)—using his horn as if delivering a fiery sermon. 

What's also fascinating about Shaw's playing on his nine Muse albums is that it can be brutish and conversational without ever being harsh or didactic. His blowing during this period was as novelistic as it was insistent. The albums here also show Shaw attempting to take jazz and the jazz trumpet to new places.

As Woody Shaw III's liner notes to the set point out, his father's music can be grouped into three different periods: The Moontrane (1974), Love Dance (1975) and The Woody Shaw Concert Ensemble Live at the Berliner Jazztage (1976), featuring an orchestral frame for Shaw's trumpet; Cassandranite (1965), Little Red's Fantasy (1976) and The Iron Men (1977) feature a quintet; and Setting Standards (1985), Solid(1986) and Imagination (1987) showcase Shaw playing standards following years with Columbia Records.

Of the groupings, I favor the quintet dates. While The Moontrane certainly establishes Shaw as a brilliant composer and player, Little Red's Fantasy remains my favorite. There's a mood and energy on the album that is pure poetry.

By the '80s, jazz was returning to its acoustic roots after an extended dalliance with psychedelic rock, and Muse looked to cash in on Shaw's standards albums. This detour isn't detrimental. Quite the contrary, since Shaw's shift gives us an opportunity to hear his phrasing and intonation on familiar material.

If there's a story arc in this Shaw box, it's Shaw trying to break artistic ground while fighting off trends undoing the music. It's the story of how a young artist developed a style despite internal and external pressures to jump ship and how he advanced jazz in the process.

What we hear on the Muse box is Shaw as the last artist standing, fighting to hatch a new jazz style against all odds. Though jazz would soon go smooth and repertory with the advent of the CD and concert orchestra, Shaw remained the last jazz patriot—wholly convinced that there was still more to say. Shaw died in 1989 at age 44 of kidney failure. He's sorely missed, and one can only imagine the exciting contribution he would be making today had he lived. 

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Woody Shaw: The Complete Muse Sessions (Mosaic), a seven-disc box set, here.

JazzWax note: For more on Shaw, visit the Woody Shaw Facebook Page here hosted by Woody Shaw III, the trumpeter's son.

JazzWax clip: Here's one of my favorite tracks—Little Red's Fantasy, from the Mosaic box set. Listen carefully and you'll hear shades of Stevie Wonder...

Little Red's Fantasy

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Used with permission by Marc Myers

Jazz Musician of the Day: Woody Shaw

All About Jazz is celebrating Woody Shaw's birthday today!

Woody Shaw, Jr. was born in Laurinburg, N.C. on December 24th, 1944 to Rosalie Pegues Shaw and Woody Shaw, Sr. He grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and began playing trumpet at the age of 11. Shaw attended Arts High School in Newark where he studied trumpet and music theory with Jerome Ziering.

Newark has a rich Jazz history and many notable Jazz artists are originally from there, including Sarah Vaughan, Wayne Shorter, Eddie Gladden...Woody Shaw, Jr. was born in Laurinburg, N.C. on December 24th, 1944 to Rosalie Pegues Shaw and Woody Shaw, Sr.

He grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and began playing trumpet at the age of 11. Shaw attended Arts High School in Newark where he studied trumpet and music theory with Jerome Ziering. Newark has a rich Jazz history and many notable Jazz artists are originally from there, including Sarah Vaughan, Wayne Shorter, Eddie Gladden... more

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http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/news.php?id=91383

Concert Celebrating Woody Shaw Being Re-Broadcast on NPR

By Lee Mergner
Last year, the Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT), curated by Dave Douglas, celebrated the legacy of Woody Shaw with a special concert of his music performed by Sean Jones, along with Ezana Edwards, Nick Roseboro also on trumpets, Mulgrew Miller (piano), Dwayne Burno (bass) and Musical Director Victor Lewis (drums). The event was organized by Shaw’s son, Woody Louis Armstrong Shaw III, and took place at the Jazz Standard in New York City on September 27, 2008. JazzSet/WBGO recorded the performance for broadcast on NPR. In recognition of Shaw’s recent birthday, the show will be aired again on WBGO on Sunday, Dec 27th at 6pm and Wednesday, December 30th at 6:30pm (EST). The performance will also be available by streaming at JazzSet’s page on the NPR site.
December 24, 2009 would have been Shaw’s 65th Birthday. He died on May 10, 1989 of injuries sustained in a tragic accident in the New York subway system. At the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed and influential trumpeters of his generation. FONT organizer Douglas said that Shaw "is now one of the most revered figures for trumpeters today." Shaw’s recordings in the late ‘70s for Columbia, including Rosewood and Stepping Stones, established his reputation as an important trumpeter, composer and bandleader. Both Miller and Lewis performed frequently with Shaw and the latter helped organize the music for this tribute performance.
 
Among Shaw’s compositions performed in the show are: “Joshua C,” “The Moontrane,” “Katrina Ballerina,” “Sweet Love of Mine” (with Woody Shaw III on drums), and “Stepping Stone.”
http://jazztimes.com/sections/news/articles/25553-concert-celebrating-woody-shaw-being-re-broadcast-on-npr

Old Cats, New Lions Celebrate Woody Shaw

by Becca Pulliam, JazzSet
December 24, 2009 from WBGO - Concert Pick: Woody Shaw (1944-1989) was legally blind. When he worked onstage with reedman Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Kirk, also blind, once said, "Let's keep playing and walk out in the audience." Shaw declined, but Kirk walked. Later, Shaw composed "Rahsaan's Run," which the group Woody Shaw Legacy Ensemble: Brass Knights takes on at a swift tempo.

Taking On An Innovator
In September 2008, the Festival of New Trumpet Music staged a major retrospective of Woody Shaw's compositions at the Jazz Standard in New York. There, a pair of Shaw's one-time bandmates, Mulgrew Miller on piano and Victor Lewis on drums, backed three young-lion horn players with chops. The result is an intense musical experience. The young lions are trumpeters Sean Jones, Ezana Edwards and Nick Roseboro. Jones is featured on all the pieces, while Edwards and Roseboro divide the rest of the solos, beginning with Jones and Roseboro on "Joshua C." — named for Joshua C. Whiting, Shaw's tai-chi instructor. In the 1970s, Shaw practiced Chinese martial arts to help increase his focus and discipline in music.

More About Woody Shaw
Woody Shaw Jr. was born on Dec. 24, 1944, in North Carolina. His father, Woody Shaw Sr., was a member of the Diamond Jubilee Singers. In Newark, N.J., Shaw's high-school trumpet teacher believed that Shaw could play in the New York Philharmonic someday. Listening to Shaw's recordings, it's not hard to hear why. But hearing trumpeter Clifford Brown changed Shaw's direction. The very month Brown died, Shaw had started playing the trumpet in 1955.

Saxophonist Eric Dolphy encouraged Shaw to develop his own style. And he did, setting himself apart by playing new post-Coltrane harmony on the trumpet, with wide leaps and brilliant riptides in his solos. Shaw's innovations are highly appreciated throughout jazz — and, most tellingly, by trumpeters. When newcomer Wynton Marsalis first came to New York, Marsalis received a grant to study formally with an artist of his choice, and his choice was Woody Shaw.

Shaw's compositions advanced the curve. They are pushing, urgent and musical, difficult but logical, rewarding and enjoyable. They stick around in your head. To follow up, there's more about the creator at the official Woody Shaw Web site.

Credits
Woody Louis Armstrong Shaw III produced the live show. The director of the Festival of New Trumpet Music is Dave Douglas. Thanks to the Jazz Standard's artistic director, Seth Abramson. Music mix by Duke Markos with Yujin Cha and Josh Webb at WBGO Jazz 88.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98532760