Like everyone else, Wayne Shorter put together his mature concept through imitating what he liked. His tenor playing was informed by Lester Young, John Coltrane, Warne Marsh, the honk of R&B, and the more pure bebop tradition of Charlie Parker and Bud Powell. In terms of composing, Shorter spent four years emulating Benny Golson and Bobby Timmons as the music director/lead writer for Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (before taking on more Coltrane and impressionists like Ralph Vaughan Williams when writing for Miles Davis and his own Blue Note albums).
“The Chess Players” is a fabulous piece recorded for Blakey’s The Big Beat in 1960. The lineage is obviously Golson’s “Blues March” and Timmons’s “Moanin,’” but Shorter puts another kind of slightly skewed harmonic and structural thing on the classic Messengers shuffle.
The somewhat intellectual title alone tells a certain story, partly because The Big Beat also features Timmons’s magnificent and familiar “Dat Dere.” From the outside, “The Chess Players” and “Dat Dere” are more similar than different, as they are bluesy shouts for hot blowing over Blakey’s “big beat.” However, the images conjured up by the words “The Chess Players” versus “Dat Dere” are not alike.
Musicians dig “The Chess Players,” I’ve heard the piece live a few times and it has been recorded by several important cats. There’s a scrolling score of Wayne’s part and great solo, which is another indication of the tune’s reach:
My casual perception is that “The Chess Players” is not nearly as popular as “Dat Dere.” If that’s true, the reason might be simply structural. While the form of “Dat Dare” is reasonably compact, Shorter takes a fairly big risk near the end of “The Chess Players,” with a phrase that circles a few more times than expected. Perhaps this moment is when one player at the board is thinking of the next chess move: Pawn or rook?
One of the odder jazz tracks is Stan Getz, Jimmy Rowles, Buster Williams, and Elvin Jones essaying “The Chess Players” on The Peacocks in 1975. It’s great, of course…but there is also a giant vocal overdub led by Jon Hendricks with family members Beverly Getz, Judy Hendricks, and Michele Hendricks in the choir. Hendricks even sings vocalese alongside Getz’s solo.
For whatever it’s worth, Getz himself does not reference this huge effort of production in his original liner notes. (Most of the space is devoted to praising Rowles, who Getz compares to James Thurber.)
It’s interesting to hear Elvin Jones’s interpretation of an Art Blakey classic, especially the magnificent drum intro.
I’ve written a reasonably modest big band chart of “The Chess Players,” which will get its premiere this coming Thursday at Jordan Hall in Boston.
NEC Jazz Orchestra + Carl Atkins: "High Life: The Music of Wayne Shorter"
From the relevant page:
Guest artists will include NEC alum Rachel Z, who performed and recorded with Wayne Shorter; Carl Atkins, the first Chair of NEC’s Jazz Studies Department; as well as current faculty members Jerry Bergonzi and Ethan Iverson. Members of the NEC Philharmonia will join the NEC Jazz Orchestra and Rachel Z for performances of three pieces from Wayne Shorter’s “High Life” recording, including the title track, Children of the Night and Midnight in Carlotta’s Hair. The program will also include Carl Atkins’s arrangements of three Shorter classics, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, Speak No Evil and Yes or No, in addition to Shorter’s own arrangements of Shere Khan, The Tiger and This is for Albert. Ethan Iverson will be featured on the premiere performance of his new arrangement of Shorter’s The Chess Players. Jerry Bergonzi will play on a new arrangement of Shorter’s Infant Eyes arranged by Ken Schaphorst, NEC Co-Chair and Conductor of the NEC Jazz Orchestra.
I originally planned on arranging “This is For Albert,” but then Ken informed me that they were playing Wayne’s own big band arrangement from the early years; as far as I know this has never been recorded. Indeed, the whole program is full of intriguing surprises.
Admission is free.
I have loved that Getz version of "The Chess Players" since it came out and was dearly hoping, when it was the age of "reissues" and "bonus tracks", that Columbia would put it out without the vocal addition, at least as an extra. Alas, I am a fool, and the age of "reissues" has now passed with nothing from Columbia...