Billboard : 04/30/1966
Four Stars

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Cashbox : 07/02/1966
Jazz Best Bet

A package inspired by legends, folklore, and the arts of mystery and darkness. Wayne Shorter is backed on this album by Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; and Elvin Jones, drums. Shorter’s tenor sax wails through the melodic intricacies and changes of such tunes as Witch Hunt, Dance Cadaverous, Wild Flower, and the title song. Jazzophiles will go for this one.

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Asbury Park Press (Asbury Park, NJ)
Don Lass : 04/30/1966

Shorter has come & long way in a few years and now ranks as one of the better tenor saxophonists in modern jazz. His current work with the Miles Davis Quintet has been outstanding, but it is on his own albums that he is heard to best advantage. This is his third LP, and it is a superbly played collection of variations on themes written by the leader. Shorter is still developing as a composer; his themes here are good but predictable. But the improvisation by Shorter, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, and pianist Herbie Hancock and the firm rhythmic support of bassist Ron Cater and drummer Elvin Jones are first class. Shorter is most effective on Infant Eyes, where his tone flows more evenly than on the tracks with faster tempos. His playing on the bright Wild Flower is intense, but his tone lacks distinction. Trumpeter Hubbard and pianist Hancock, on the other hand, are less erratic. Hubbard’s lines, especially on Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, are unique both harmonically and melodically. Hancock’s work is more subdued, but his lines are always inventive, never the same.

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HiFi / Stereo Review
Nat Hentoff : October, 1966

Performance: Thoughtful and cohesive
Recording: First-rate
Stereo Quality: Very good

Although Wayne Shorter has not yet evolved into an unmistakably original soloist, he has grown as an organizer of coherent, substantial recording sessions. All six tracks in this set are Shorter originals, and each one has a distinctive, intriguing theme. I was especially beguiled by the sensually unfolding lyricism of Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum. Shorter is also expert at selecting colleagues who interpret his music authoritatively while bringing to it strong elements of their own musical personalities. Freddie Hubbard plays here with controlled, multi-colored passion, and the collective inventiveness of the rhythm section alone merits repeated hearings. Shorter himself is always a solidly imaginative soloist, and on occasion—as in Speak No Evil—rises to a penetrating power that reveals his potential front-rank stature. Whether he will ever break through entirely to a commanding voice of his own is an open question. But recordings such as this one are impressive indications of his ability as a shaper of small combos.

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Jazz Magazine
Tom Scott : November, 1966
Reviewed with Blue Mitchell – Down With It

I know it is not standard practice to review albums in pairs, but because my first hearing of these albums occurred on the same day, several means of comparison became evident. To begin with, they were released at nearly the same time, on the same label, with the same instrumentation on each. The format of the tunes and solos is also essentially the same. Yet to me they represent how a jazz quintet album should and should not be presented.

The selection of tunes is the prime example of good and bad tastes. Shorter has drawn his inspiration from “legends, folklore, and black magic,” and although this certainly does not make the music inherently superior, the tunes are for the most part musically and esthetically satisfying. They display originality in both melody and structure. Furthermore, they do suggest “the arts of mystery and darkness.” If one claims that his music is built on a premise outside of music, I feel it is important to convey that feeling to the listener.

The Mitchell album, on the other hand, consists of unrelated, over-worked, and outdated material, including an awful rock & roll tune (Hi-Heel Sneakers), a blues shuffle (March on Selma which, as the album blurb admits, “bears no actual tie to the civil rights movement”), and a soul bossa nova (Samba De Stacy). The latter tune belongs with those released during the height of the bossa nova craze which attempted to Americanize the Latin rhythm, and in so doing destroyed it completely. Whoever selected these tunes did a very poor job from an artistic standpoint.

The other obvious means of comparison is that of performance. Shorter’s rhythm section is about the best in the world. They achieve, within a fairly traditional framework, a fantastic number of enjoyable sounds through constant harmonic and rhythmic exchanges. The time is maintained flawlessly with great subtlety and sophistication. On top of that, Hancock, Hubbard and Shorter, all excellent soloists, constantly provide a listening interest. On first hearing, I was overwhelmed by the onslaught of musical creativity that was taking place. The Mitchell group, although comprised of competent players, never attains that point. Incidentally, the piano player on this album is obviously McCoy Tyner. His comping and solo styles are unmistakable. Contract commitments must have prevented him from recording this album under his own name. In terms of artistic freedom vs. commercial success, each album represents an extreme. Observing a recent Blue Note ad, I noticed that the latest releases were divided into two categories: “The Jazz Scene” and “The Avant-Garde”. Although neither of these albums were listed, I assume that the Blue Mitchell album would be classified under the former heading and that Wayne Shorter’s album would be termed “avant-garde”. Why do record companies feel they must stifle the creative impulses of the performer to increase popular appeal? Perhaps this particular Shorter record is a bit too complex for the “pop” record buyer, but isn’t it possible to produce a good-selling album that will please both the artist and the buyer? I wondered whether it was fair to judge two albums which were obviously aimed at different audiences by the same set of standards. But I still firmly believe that an artist, if he wants to gain popular appeal, can and must maintain his artistic dignity.

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Down Beat : 06/16/1966
Marian McPartland : 3 stars

There is a pervasive air of melancholy in this collection of pieces written by Shorter. I have noticed this melancholy quality in the work of many of the smaller groups, and I feel that it tends to create a lack of variety, a sameness of color and tone. This is doubtless partly due to the fact that the instrumentation is usually the same (rhythm section, tenor, and trumpet, sometimes just tenor), the use of compositions that seem somewhat alike in structure and harmonic content (minor tonalities predominate), and more often than not the same musicians appear, sometimes as sidemen, sometimes as leaders.

This has succeeded in producing a whole galaxy of almost identical-sounding units; at times it is quite puzzling to determine whose group is playing, even though individual soloists are soon recognized. Il is like a sort of musical in-breeding … a closed shop. Nevertheless, because of the high caliber of performance, there is always much to hold the listener’s attention, and on this particular album both the playing and the writing are interesting.

As usual, the ubiquitous Hancock, surely one of the most gifted and sought-after pianists today, plays inspirationally throughout. He has a never-ending flow of lyrical ideas, and the empathy among him, Carter, and Jones is a joy.

Hubbard, whose musical thinking seems lo reflect the mournful, yearning quality of the compositions, plays beautifully controlled, singing solos, notably on Witch Hunt (where there is some interplay between trumpet and piano), on Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, and again on Speak and Wild Flower. He manages 1o convey the feeling that one is being transported to a land of nostalgic reverie, where one can easily lose himself in pleasant sadness.

In particular, Infant Eyes and Dance project this quality; they are haunting, poignant melodies, and here particularly Shorter proves himself an imaginative and tasteful writer. His solo on Eyes is a poem of tender love for his little daughter, for whom the piece was written.

The time feeling sparkles on every selection, as well it might, since Carter and Jones, reinforced constantly with percussive chord clusters and light, airy figures from Hancock, play together superbly. Jones gets big, shining splashes of sound and at times creates an effect like the crack of a whip, flicking back and forth, combined with a sort of sound-on-sound effect as the rhythms overlap one into the other, without ever losing the strong pulsation that holds them together. It seems to me that he is playing with greater restraint, more taste, and subtlety than he has in the past.

Speak, to me the least inspiring piece melodically, nevertheless has flashes of interest as Hancock weaves little pearl-like phrases in and out of the various solo lines. His own solo and the cross-rhythms that evolve among him, Jones, and Carter are like wavelets breaking; they ebb and flow endlessly. Carter’s tone is rich, low, velvety; he swings hard as Jones plays the cymbals in a burst of cascading sparks that scatter and fall like fiery particles of sound.

To me, this album is wrongly titled. It’s all melodic, with a sort of lingering sadness; it is too low-key, too dreamlike for the suggestion of the macabre that some of the titles convey. Dance Cadaverous, in particular, seems a lugubrious name for such a gentle theme. Shorter’s own explanation of some of his ideas (“I was thinking of misty landscapes with wild flowers…”) seems more in keeping with the mood of the music.

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Liner Notes by Don Heckman

Legends, folklore and black magic — the arts of mystery and darkness — have long been a special source of inspiration for artists, perhaps because their symbols are drawn from the roots of the imagination. One of the best examples is the work of Edgar Allan Poe, who mercilessly exposed the forbidden fantasies that drift near the ends of dreams. Composers, too, have probed into similar areas. Sibelius’ Valse Triste, Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Mussorgsky’s Night On The Bare Mountain are but a few of the better-known works attributable to magic, legends and folklore.

The collection of Wayne Shorter compositions included in Speak No Evil follows similar lines. “I was thinking,” he explained to me, “of misty landscapes with wild flowers and strange, dimly-seen shapes — the kind of places where folklore and legends are born. And then I was thinking of things like witch burnings, too.” Much of this feeling comes through in the compositions, especially in the floating harmonies, the chords
filled with tonality-disturbing ambiguities, about to move in one direction but sometimes stopping to float like the elements in Shorter’s “misty landscapes.” The effect is heightened by the remarkable interaction between Ron Carter and Elvin Jones. Little of what might specifically be called time-keeping occurs in what they play; rather is there a flowing, sometimes overlapping, sometimes independent pulsation that shifts back and forth between superimposed metric subdivisions.

Shorter has played his way through a variety of music and circumstances in his career, some of which — as with most jazzmen — must have ranged pretty far from his own musical objectives. He feels, however, that the changes wrought by his years of active playing have primarily been in the widening of his own artistic vision. “I’m getting,” he said, “more stimuli from things outside of myself. Before, I was concerned with myself, with my ethnic roots, and so forth. But now, and especially from here on, I’m trying to fan out, to concern myself with the universe instead of just my own small corner of it.” It is, particularly at a time when the expression of interior emotions is a focal point for many young players, a particularly refreshing statement.

“Whatever change I have made so far,” Shorter explained, “is there inside me, churning around in a little circle, but still not revealing itself wholly. When I was doing this date it was a struggle to get it out, to forget about the saxophone and its technical problems per se and abandon everything that I had done before.” Like most of the short, painful steps that characterize artistic growth, Shorter’s struggles do not always produce successful results. But when everything works, when the saxophone ceases to be a mechanism and becomes instead an extension of his voice (as frequently happens in this recording), the value of Shorter’s goals becomes clear.

Witch Hunt makes extensive use of fourths in its line, which is fundamental and blues-like in style, but ethereal and haunting enough in execution to fully justify Shorter’s title. Interestingly, all the soloists, first Shorter, then Hubbard and Hancock, use a fourth as a constructional motive in their improvisations. The second title, Fee-Fi-Fo Fum of course, is a contraction of the famous couplet spoken by the giant in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. I doubt, however, if that monstrous creature ever swung through his castle with quite the elemental feeling the Shorter group achieves. Hubbard, who takes the first chorus, plays with plangent lyricism, but, characteristically, he varies his phrases with exploding bursts of quick, flashing runs. Shorter plays a gutsy solo, coloring it with a fascinating range of timbres, bending and smearing his tones through the use of a flexible embouchure. The relationship between Dance Cadaverous and Sibelius’ Valse Triste was noted by Shorter, but he had another inspiration as well. “I was thinking,” he said, “of some of these doctor pictures in which you see a classroom and they’re getting ready to work on a cadaver.” The most noticeable musical feature of Shorter’s line is the recurring chromatic chord change. Hancock’s first chorus, gentle as a sonnet, floats above the complex planes of interlocking rhythms played by Carter and Jones. Notice too how the returning melody blossoms out of Shorter’s solo.

Both Hubbard and Shorter venture into unusual improvisational areas in their choruses on Speak No Evil. Shorter in particular seems interested in finding rhythmic and melodic ideas that are unrestricted by traditional boundaries. Infant Eyes is the only line that departs from the ways of magic and folklore. “I was thinking of my daughter,” said Shorter. The piece is constructed, in unorthodox fashion, of three consecutive nine bar phrases. Shorter plays throughout most of the track except for Hancock’s introduction and brief nine-bar solo toward the end. Listen for the clear unaffected quality of Shorter’s tenor sound, not unlike the velvety middle register sound of the cello. Wild Flower can be heard, according to Shorter, simply as what the title suggests — an Ode to a Wild Flower. It is a 6/4 tune, with a dancing, light-hearted line that probably will stay with you long after your phonograph is turned off. The soloists — Shorter, Hubbard and Hancock — play with distinction, and notice in particular the marvelous rhythmic cross-currents in Elvin Jones’ accompaniment. No small part of his talent lies in the ability to adapt to a given playing situation by finding an appropriate complimentary area of his own interpretive powers.

Legends, folklore, black magic — all sources of artistic inspiration. But nothing about the work of Wayne Shorter and his group can be traced to necromantic secrets. In Speak No Evil they rely upon the stuff of all artistic achievement — talent, craftsmanship and imagination.