Woody Shaw

Biography

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Biography

Discography

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Born on Christmas Eve, 1944, in Laurinburg, N.C., Woody Herman Shaw began began playing bugle at age 9 in the Washington Carver Drum and Bugle Corps, switching to trumpet at age 11. Surrounded by a musical family (his father was a member of the Diamond Jubilee Singers), and attracted to trumpet players such as Louis Armstrong, Harry James, and Dizzy Gillespie, Shaw developed quickly into a strong player by the end of grade school.

After junior high, Shaw attended the Arts High School in Newark, whose alumni included such prominent jazz artists as Wayne Shorter, Sarah Vaughan, and Scott La Faro. Around this time he began to meet prominent jazz heavyweights like Kenny Dorham and Hank Mobley, took up piano, and began to immerse himself fully in the New York jazz scene. At age 18, he went on the road with Rufus Jones, soon after joining Willie Bobo at a time when Bobo's band included Chick Corea.

While appearing in New York with a band that included Chick Corea and Joe Farrell, Shaw met Eric Dolphy. In 1963 Shaw appeared on Dolphy's Eric Dolphy Memorial. A year later, Shaw was asked by Dolphy to meet him in Paris to join his group, but before Shaw could get there, Dolphy had passed away. Shaw used the plane ticket to go to Paris anyway, where he stayed for more than seven months, playing with such jazz luminaries as Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, Johnny Griffin, and Art Taylor.

Upon returning to the United States, Shaw spent time in the groups of Horace Silver (1965-1966), Max Roach (1968-1969), and Art Blakey (1973), in addition to making many recordings (some as a sideman for Blue Note) with such players as Jackie McLean, Andrew Hill, Larry Young, and McCoy Tyner.

In 1973 his first album as a leader, The Moontrane, was released on the Muse label, and was followed by several other excellent albums. Shaw resisted the trend in the 1970s away from acoustic jazz music, eschewing jazz-rock "fusion" in favor of further refining the acoustic traditions begun in the bop era.

In 1976 Shaw's group (with Louis Hayes) backed Dexter Gordon in his return to New York that resulted in the Grammy-winning recording Homecoming. Shaw soon signed a recording contract with CBS/Columbia. By 1978, Shaw was rated the top jazz trumpet player in the prestigious Downbeat Magazine poll and his record, "Rosewood," was the No. 1 jazz album in the same poll.

When Wynton Marsalis arrived on the scene in New York, Columbia made the decision to release Shaw and use Marsalis as their torch-bearer. Shaw continue to release albums under a variety of labels, including Red, Enja, Elektra, Muse, and Timeless, but never regained the stature for which he seemed destined in the mid 1970s.

In the late 1980s, Shaw had moved to Bern, Switzerland, and to Amsterdam, teaching at several jazz schools and touring with various jazz bands in Europe, including the Paris Reunion Band.

On February 27, 1989, Shaw tumbled down a stairway onto the tracks at Brooklyn's Dekalb Avenue subway station where a train struck him, severing his arm. He remained in the hospital until May 10, 1989, when he succumbed to kidney failure.

Several albums of live material have been released posthumously on the High Note label. Most of the sessions which originally appeared on Muse are now released by the 32 Jazz label.