Woody Shaw is often credited with revolutionizing the technical and harmonic language of modern jazz trumpet playing, and to this day is regarded by many as one of the major innovators of the instrument.
33 Facts About Woody Shaw
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Woody Shaw was an acclaimed virtuoso, mentor, and spokesperson for jazz and worked and recorded alongside many of the leading musicians of his time.
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Woody Shaw was born in Laurinburg, North Carolina, United States.
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Woody Shaw was taken to Newark, New Jersey, by his parents, Rosalie Pegues and Woody Shaw Sr.
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Woody Shaw's father was a member of the African American gospel group known as the "Diamond Jubilee Singers" and both his parents attended the same secondary private school as Dizzy Gillespie: Laurinburg Institute.
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Woody Shaw's mother was from the same town as Gillespie: Cheraw, South Carolina.
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Woody Shaw began playing the bugle at age nine and performed in the Junior Elks, Junior Mason, and Washington Carver Drum and Bugle Corps in Newark.
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Woody Shaw said he had a good feeling about me and the trumpet, and he assured me I'd grow to love it.
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Woody Shaw eventually left school but continued his study of the trumpet under the influence of Gillespie, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Booker Little, Lee Morgan, and Freddie Hubbard.
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Woody Shaw later discovered that he had picked up the trumpet during the same month and year that Brown died: June 1956.
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In 1963, after many local professional jobs, Woody Shaw worked for Willie Bobo, and performed and recorded as a sideman with Eric Dolphy, with whom he made his recorded debut, Iron Man.
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Woody Shaw was nonetheless invited to Paris to join Dolphy's colleague, Nathan Davis, and the two men found steady work all over Europe.
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Woody Shaw returned to the US from Paris in 1965, and began his career as one of the Blue Note labels regular trumpet players, working steadily with their roster of artists.
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Woody Shaw replaced Carmell Jones in the Horace Silver quintet, and made his Blue Note debut on Silver's The Cape Verdean Blues, followed by Larry Young's Unity ; the album with Young featured three of his compositions.
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Woody Shaw collaborated frequently and recorded with Corea, Jackie McLean, Booker Ervin, Tyner, Andrew Hill, Herbie Hancock, and Bobby Hutcherson.
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Woody Shaw worked as a studio musician, and worked in pit orchestras and on Broadway musicals.
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In 1970, Woody Shaw recorded his first album as a leader, Blackstone Legacy, for Contemporary Records.
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The night before the accident, Max Roach sent a limousine to Newark where Woody Shaw was staying, to take Woody Shaw to the Village Vanguard to listen to Roach play.
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Woody Shaw did not go to Newark; it is unclear what led to the accident later that morning.
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Woody Shaw died from kidney failure on May 10,1989, at the age of 44.
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Shaw III, the primary inspiration for Shaw's third Columbia album, Woody III, is the sole heir to the Shaw family legacy.
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Woody Shaw's legacy is kept active and relevant through the use of social media and the official website.
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Woody Shaw was noted for his mastery and innovative use of "wide" intervals, often fourths and fifths, which are considered relatively unnatural to the trumpet and difficult to employ skillfully due to the technical facility required to do so, the architecture of the instrument, the trumpet's inherent harmonic tendencies based on the overtone series, and its traditional association with intervals based more commonly on thirds and diatonic relationships.
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Woody Shaw was a master of modality and used a wide range of harmonic color, generating unusual contrasts, using tension and resolution, dissonance, odd rhythmic groupings, and "over the barline" phrases, yet always resolving his ideas according to the form and harmonic structure of a given composition while adhering to the conventions of jazz improvisation and simultaneously creating new ones.
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Woody Shaw's "attack" was remarkably clean and precise, regardless of tempo.
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Woody Shaw had a rich, dark tone that was distinctive with a near-vocal quality to it; his intonation and articulation were highly developed, and he greatly utilized the effects of the lower register, usually employing a deep, extended vibrato at the end of his phrases.
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Woody Shaw often incorporated the chromatic scale, which gave his melodic lines a subtle fluidity that seemed to allow him to weave "in and out" of chords seamlessly from all "angles".
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Woody Shaw was born with an extraordinary memory and perfect pitch.
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Woody Shaw listened closely to traditional Japanese music, Indonesian Gamelan, Indian classical music, Brazilian music, and various other musics of the world.
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NEA Grant-recipients who studied with Woody Shaw include Wynton Marsalis, and Ingrid Monson.
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Woody Shaw is one of the most revered figures for trumpeters today.
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Woody Shaw toured such places as Japan, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, and Czechoslovakia.
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Recently, it has been discovered that Woody Shaw spent significant time performing and giving clinics in India, working in cities such as New Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore, and Calcutta.