A giant in the world of modern jazz, trumpeter Woody Shaw used his gifts for harmonic complexity and ability to blend distinct styles to advance the music into new domains. Born in 1944 to a musical family, Shaw grew up in Newark, New Jersey, and was encouraged to follow his passions, thanks in no small part to his photographic memory and sense of perfect pitch. Shaw eventually left school to pursue his jazz dreams, and found himself hired to play with bebop innovator Eric Dolphy, but Dolphy died early into their collaboration. Subsequent work followed with Horace Silver, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, and Max Roach, and it was soon time for Shaw to record under his own name.
His first album as a bandleader (though future archival releases would predate it), Blackstone Legacy, arrived in 1970. The double album found Shaw steering his band through 80 minutes of energetic free bop, with nods to the burgeoning fusion movement. The ‘70s proved to be the standout decade for Shaw on wax, culminating with Rosewood in 1978, his first album for a major label (Columbia), which earned him a pair of Grammy nominations. It would remain his most enduring release.
While the mainstream attention didn’t propel Shaw into new heights in the ‘80s and he eventually left Columbia Records, he continued to perform at a high level, despite his heroin habit and a degenerative eye condition that began to rob him of his sight. In February 1989, Shaw was hit by a subway train in Brooklyn, severing his left arm and leading to a downward spiral of health issues that would end his life just over two months later at the young age of 44. Generations of jazz musicians in his wake embraced his complexity and propulsive sense of momentum, and with jazz being the forward-thinking music that it is, it’s no surprise that it took a while for audiences to catch up, with posthumous releases and expanded editions of his works arriving at a steady clip for an appreciative fanbase.
