Woody Shaw

Trumpeter Woody Shaw ranked among the era’s most talented and forward-thinking jazz figures, steering through the volatile jazz environment of the seventies and eighties while assembling a body of recordings whose reach continued long after his untimely death at forty-four. He entered the world in Laurinburg, NC, on December 24, 1944, and spent his childhood in Newark, NJ. His father, Woody Shaw, Sr., performed with the gospel ensemble the Diamond Jubilee Singers during the thirties and shared a high-school classroom in Laurinburg with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie—an association that registered early with the musically curious young Shaw. He began on bugle, switched to trumpet at age eleven, and pursued music-theory instruction at an arts high school in Newark. Already immersed in jazz by his teenage years, he absorbed the approaches of Louis Armstrong and Harry James before embracing the modern styles of Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Kenny Dorham, Booker Little, Lee Morgan, and others; later he also absorbed the harmonic and stylistic developments of saxophonist John Coltrane, whose influence became audible in his own improvisations.

By 1963 Shaw’s regular appearances on Newark’s thriving jazz circuit—alongside future notables such as keyboardist Larry Young and trombonist Grachan Moncur III—had drawn wider attention, leading to engagements with Latin percussionist Willie Bobo and progressive saxophonist Eric Dolphy. Dolphy extended an invitation for a French tour, yet died from a diabetic coma before Shaw could reach Paris. Undaunted, Shaw traveled to Europe anyway and worked across several countries with pianist Bud Powell, drummer Kenny Clarke, saxophonist Johnny Griffin, and additional leading players, eventually bringing organist Young and drummer Billy Brooks from Newark to join saxophonist Nathan Davis in those overseas performances.

Returning to the United States in 1964, Shaw embarked on a sequence of formative associations that began with pianist Horace Silver and soon encompassed pianist Chick Corea, saxophonists Jackie McLean and Booker Ervin, pianists McCoy Tyner and Andrew Hill, and drummer Max Roach. During these years he contributed to enduring recordings such as Silver’s Cape Verdean Blues (1965) and The Jody Grind (1966), Young’s landmark Blue Note album Unity (1965), and Hill’s Grass Roots (1968). The late sixties also placed him alongside forward-looking saxophonists Gary Bartz, Pharoah Sanders, Hank Mobley, and Archie Shepp.

The seventies proved both artistically and commercially rewarding. Shaw established productive partnerships with saxophonist Joe Henderson, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, and drummer Louis Hayes. He began recording as a leader, issuing a series of influential albums that displayed his fully developed voice—an intricate blend of post-bop, modal jazz, fusion inflections, and free-jazz elements—including Blackstone Legacy (1970), Song of Songs (1972), Moontrane (1974), Little Red’s Fantasy (1976), and The Iron Men (1977).

Columbia Records signed Shaw toward the decade’s end, resulting in the well-received Rosewood (1977), Woody III (1978)—titled for his son Woody Louis Armstrong Shaw III, born that year—For Sure! (1980), and United (1981). Rosewood earned a Grammy nomination and was selected Best Jazz Album of 1978 in the Down Beat Reader’s Poll, the same poll that named Shaw Best Jazz Trumpeter of the Year. After leaving Columbia he remained active through the eighties, issuing further albums highlighted by three collaborations with fellow trumpeter Freddie Hubbard: Time Speaks (1982), Double Take (1985), and Eternal Triangle (1988), the bulk of which later appeared on The Complete Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw Sessions.

Around this period Shaw received a diagnosis of an irreversible degenerative eye condition that gradually diminished his vision. Although the ailment left his playing unaffected, it complicated daily life and career demands alike. On February 27, 1989, he was struck by a subway car in Brooklyn, NY, an accident that severed his left arm; complications arose during hospitalization, and he died of kidney failure on May 10, 1989.

Despite the challenges of the late eighties, when the Young Lions movement—most prominently trumpeter Wynton Marsalis—and a revival of acoustic post-bop jazz dominated attention, Shaw’s music began to receive renewed regard. Like Marsalis, Shaw had received classical training and served in Blakey’s Jazz Messengers; numerous younger musicians of the decade drew inspiration from his harmonically adventurous improvisational language. Shaw recorded with several of these artists, among them saxophonist Kenny Garrett on the latter’s 1984 Criss Cross debut Introducing Kenny Garrett, and he welcomed into his own ensembles trombonist Steve Turre, pianist Mulgrew Miller, and drummers Tony Reedus and Terri Lyne Carrington. Through these associations Shaw came to be recognized, alongside Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Art Blakey, and Horace Silver, as one of jazz’s foremost innovators, bandleaders, and mentors.