I wasn’t going to post anything about the passing of Wayne Shorter, as I pretty much covered everything I have to say about jazz on this relatively recent post, but then I came across the amazing photograph above — taken by one Frances Wolff in 1965 — and figured that was my “way in."
As expressed in that aforementioned post in greater detail, what I credibly know about jazz couldn't fill up one side of a hastily-scribbled sheet of loose leaf, but I know what I've heard that I liked. Jazz titan Wayne Shorter died Thursday, and he was one of the primary instigators of "fusion" juggernaut Weather Report. A copy of that band's Heavy Weather arrived in a crate of promo LPs from my father in London in the summer of 1977 (via a friend he'd made at Columbia/CBS/Epic records), and it became an unlikely favorite in our house. This song in particular we would blast on the regular. Rest in peace, Mr. Shorter. I know you did far more than this (as I had to research and encapsulate it for your obituary), but for bit of music alone, I salute you...
Back to Frances Wolff’s photograph, this would have been taken on the pedestrian island in the middle of Broadway at West 66th Street, looking south. Below is more or less the view from where Mr. Shorter was depicted standing today. To his left is the former site of Tower Records, although that wouldn’t have been there in 1965. Today it’s a Raymour & Flanagan, quite lamentably.
Behind him in the Wolff photo, you can see the neon top of the Empire Hotel, obscured by trees in the screen-grab below. The jazz club Iridium used to have a space on the ground floor of that hotel before decamping further down Broadway to West 51st Street.
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