Chief Crazy Horse

Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Herbie Hancock (piano), Reggie Workman (bass) and Joe Chambers (drums). From the album Adam’s Apple (1967).

The albums that laid the foundations of the post-bop style are: Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage (1965), Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil (1966), Lee Morgan’s Search for the New Land (1966) and McCoy Tyner’s The Real McCoy (1967). If free jazz was a reaction to traditional tonal jazz, post-bop was the response of traditional jazz to free jazz. Most of the post-bop albums were recorded by the Blue Note label.

The musicologist Jeremy Yudkin described the post-bop as follows: “Forms, tempos, and meters are freer, all the compositions are new, and the band members themselves are featured composers.... [A]n approach that is abstract and intense in the extreme, with space created for rhythmic and coloristic independence of the drummer. Drummers gained the opportunity to move in and out of the basic swing rhythm and approach that incorporated much more complex style, modal and chordal harmonies, flexible form, structured choruses, melodic variation, and free improvitation.”

First the rhythm section makes an introduction by repeating a phrase four times and then Shorter comes in to expose the theme at medium tempo. It consists of that same sentence as the main melody in two tonalities and the bridge with other different phrases in AABA structure. Right away Shorter begins his solo by carefully choosing the notes he plays and establishing a direct and well-conceived discourse. Next Hancock arrives with a powerful and impetuous melodic line playing in an exciting way. He is followed by Chambers playing the drums frantically and adorning his solo with the cymbals. To conclude, the group re-exposes the theme and Shorter continues playing on the main melody fading out.