The Sunday 26 March edition of BBC Radio 3’s Jazz Record Requests (4pm) will be marking the death of Wayne Shorter with a special programme including interview extracts. Listeners are invited to pick the music by which they wish to remember him.
It seems that Wayne Shorter could touch musical hearts and minds right the way through his career, from his 1959 debut on Vee Jay records, through his time with Art Blakey’s Messengers and Miles Davis’s Quintet, to Weather Report, by way of his own projects.
I met Wayne numerous times and interviewed him twice for Radio 3, so we’ll hear his own views on the music of VSOP and of his final quartet, which he led from 2000. And I also have recollections of his days with the Messengers from Cedar Walton, and of Weather Report from Peter Erskine.
My last interview with Wayne was in his New Orleans hotel suite in 2002. My lasting memory was that he had television sets on in different rooms, all running cartoons, and he would jump up between questions to see what Daffy Duck or Road Runner were up to. In all his years in hotels on the road there wasn’t one he hadn’t seen, but he treasured his favourite moments, just as listeners treasure their favourite memories of his marvellous music.
