Wayne Shorter - Juju (2024 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series Vinyl LP)

Wayne Shorter - Juju | Vinyl LP - 2024 Blue Note Classic Vinyl Series 180g (5880786, Kevin Gray/Cohearent Audio, Optimal Media GmbH)

Wayne Shorter recorded Juju on August 3, 1964 — three months after Night Dreamer and one month before he joined the Miles Davis Quintet. Alfred Lion produced; Rudy Van Gelder engineered. The session assembled three musicians with deep ties to the John Coltrane quartet: McCoy Tyner on piano, Reginald Workman on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. The combination was deliberate. Shorter and Coltrane were operating in the same moment, and the rhythm section placed his music directly in that harmonic territory — not as imitation but as a parallel investigation.

All six tracks are Shorter originals. The title track opens on a B augmented chord and stays there, letting the whole-tone scale carry the harmonic weight. "Deluge" pushes harder. "House of Jade" moves to long held tones, Shorter sustaining a single pitch across the bar while the rhythm section plays underneath. "Mahjong," "Yes or No" and "Twelve More Bars to Go" each find a different angle. The album was released in July 1965. Shorter died on March 2, 2023. This Classic Vinyl Series edition was mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio from the original analog master tapes and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal Media GmbH in Germany.