This Group is Considered to Be One of the Finest Jazz Ensembles Ever….
Give this rendition a listen and then compare it to Wes Montgomery’s version….
“Herbie Hancock received considerable attention when, in May 1963 he joined Miles Davis’ “second great quintet.” This new band was essentially Miles Davis surrounded by fresh, new talent. Davis personally sought out Hancock, whom he saw as one of the most promising talents in jazz. The rhythm section Davis organized was young but effective, comprising bassist Ron Carter, seventeen year old drummer Tony Williams, and Hancock on piano. After George Coleman and Sam Rivers each taking turns at the saxophone spot, the quintet would gel with Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone. This quintet is often regarded as one of the finest jazz ensembles, and the rhythm section has been especially praised for its innovation and flexibility.
The second great quintet was where Hancock found his own unique voice as a master of jazz piano. Not only did he find new ways to use common chords, he also popularized chords then rarely used in jazz. Hancock also developed a unique taste for “orchestral” accompaniment - using fourths and Debussy-like harmonies, with stark contrasts then unheard of in jazz.
With Williams and Carter he would weave a labyrinth of rhythmic intricacy on, around and over existing melodic and chordal schemes. In the later half of the sixties their approach would be so sophisticated and unorthodox that conventional chord changes would hardly be discernible, hence their improvisational concept would become known as “Time, No Changes.” (Dobbins, Bill and Kernfeld, Barry. “Herbie Hancock”)”
“In 1964, Miles Davis persuaded Wayne Shorter to leave Blakey and join the Miles Davis Quintet alongside Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. Davis had been searching for a saxophonist to replace John Coltrane for some time, and the new quintet is considered by many to have been Davis’s strongest working group. Shorter composed extensively for Davis (”Prince of Darkness”, “ESP”, “Footprints”, “Sanctuary”, and many others; on some albums he provided half of the compositions), typically hard-bop workouts with spaced-out long melody lines above the beat.
Herbie Hancock had this to say of Shorter’s tenure in the group: “The master writer to me, in that group, was Wayne Shorter. He still is a master. Wayne was one of the few people who brought music to Miles that didn’t get changed.” Davis said: “Wayne is a real composer. He writes scores, write the parts for everybody just as he wants them to sound. He also brought in a kind of curiosity about working with musical rules. If they didn’t work, then he broke them, but with musical sense; he understood that freedom in music was the ability to know the rules in order to bend them to your own satisfaction and taste.”
Shorter remained in Davis’s band after the breakup of the quintet in 1968, playing on early jazz fusion recordings including In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew (both 1969). His last live dates and studio recordings with Davis were in 1970.
Until 1968 he played tenor saxophone exclusively. The final album on which he played tenor in the regular sequence of Davis albums was Filles de Kilimanjaro. In 1969 he played the soprano saxophone on the Davis album In a Silent Way and on his own Super Nova (recorded with then-current Davis sidemen Chick Corea and John McLaughlin). In live Davis recordings from summer 1969 to early spring 1970 he played both saxophones. By the early 1970s, however, he chiefly played soprano saxophone.” (Michelle Mercer, Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter -Tarcher/Penguin, 2005)
Posted in Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, jazz, music
