I’ve been dipping in, a little bit, to the Wayne Shorter hagiography by Michelle Mercer which is great, even though it is just that, a hagiography. (My penchant for stuff that’s mere analysis is probably a deficiency on my part. And also betrays a weakness, in that that sort of reading is perhaps motivated by the desire to cop stuff without doing my own analysis. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Anyhow, sheer home counties pride gave me pleasure when I learned the historical shenanigans that led to Shorter’s stint with the Messengers. Story has it that Maynard Ferguson’s band (whom Shorter had just joined) was doing a gig at the historic 1959 Toronto Jazz Festival on the CNE grounds. The Messengers were at the festival too but Hank Mobley was seriously strung out and MIA. When Lee Morgan heard Shorter on the stand with Maynard it went *bam* and that was that.

When Wayne stepped down from the bandstand after Maynard’s set, the offer to join Blakey’s group came out of nowhere. “Lee Morgan ran across a field,” he said. “It was a racetrack; they had the bandstand set up in the center of the racetrack. Night was falling, so Lee could go across without anybody seeing — he was like coming up in the shadows. He popped right up in front of me and said, ‘You want to join the Messengers?’” (p. 65)

This was at a time when the Messengers was in one of its greatest incarnations: Blakey + the four Philly musicians Golson, Morgan, Timmons and Merritt had cut Moanin’ on October 30, 1958; Golson left the band in February 1959. (Also, Walter Bishop Jr. would soon be briefly be replacing Timmons temporarily.) And that’s that.

I love me some Shorter. I love me some Jazz Messengers. I love me some Toronto. And I’m quite enjoying this book as well.

Well, I just finished reading this book: “Do You Know… The Jazz Repertoire in Action, a sociological analysis of the way in which musicians “collectively negotiate and improvise their way to a successful performance” (as the blurb puts it). I thought it was great. Not as a piece of sociology. Whether it succeeds at that level or not I suppose the reviews will say. What do I know about that? I’m not a sociologist. I found it fascinating as a way of reflecting on my own experiences and historical location within the phenomenon they are narrating and presenting. I’d recommend it on that basis, as a muso, particularly to other musos who, like me, are younger and were “schooled” into jazz as it were.