Wayne Shorter - 'Night Dreamer'

In January 2024, Blue Note Records is celebrated their 85th anniversary with a new reissue series named "Blue Note 85"

Blue Note Japan started issuing a series of UHQCDs using the masterings that Kevin Gray did for the Tone Poet and BN Classic LP releases.  By using the digital source material he created for the analog reissues, he reproduced the sound of the original master tapes as faithfully as possible to achieve the ultimate analog sound.  Also, each title features the UHQCD format.

So what's all this UHQCD razzmatazz, you ask?
Here's the propaganda:

"UHQ-CDs (Ultimate High Quality Compact Discs) are a type of CD developed by Memory-Tech that uses a new photopolymer casting method to create more accurate pits on the disc, aiming to reproduce the sound of original master tapes as faithfully as possible."

Yeah, whatever….they're still 16-bit, 44.1 Red Book CDs.  However, they sound excellent, which probably has more to do with Kevin Gray's remastering than photopolymer casting.

In fairness UHQ-CD are aimed at people with CD transports (as opposed to CD players) and other high-end equipment, you know "audiophools", not unlike myself.  That said: these are the digital versions you should have.

Over the next few weeks, my Jazz posts will be of this series. 
 
 So let's get started with: Wayne Shorter's 'Night Dreamer'.

In April 1964, Wayne entered Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, with trumpeter Lee Morgan and bassist Reggie Workman, who had been a mainstay of John Coltrane’s group until 1961.  Add to that, pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones, both then bringing startling new energies to light as half of Coltrane’s Classic Quartet.  This was a productive time for the Wayne, who was searching for new creative ground while still swinging hard.

The result was 'Night Dreamer', his first album as leader for Blue Note, which was also the first in an extraordinary 11-album run, that saw him moving through more open-ended version Post-Bop, and up into the "foothills" of Fusion in the early 70s.

'Night Dreamer' was a transitional moment for Wayne.  And as if that wasn't enough, just five months after the recording of 'Night Dreamer', he joined Miles Davis’s band, unifying the line-up of Miles' phenomenal Second Great Quartet, which is my all-time favorite band of any genre.  But that’s another post for another day.

For the freeload, who's your all-time favorite band?