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Wayne Shorter was one of the reasons that I became a musician. He was also a mentor, a dear friend, and creative giant that I was fortunate enough to have worked with on many projects. Some involved vocals and lyrics and some instrumental. His genius was multi-faceted. Much has been written by many about his idiosyncratic brilliance as a musician and composer in the context of instrumental music. He was one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century. His compositions and playing was at the center of one of Miles Davis' most important periods, and the music of Weather Report, the group that he and Joe Zawinul formed in 1970, exerted a profound influence on the direction of jazz. Less has been said about his anomalous and profound musical instincts in the context of songs with lyrics. Wayne Shorter played around words unlike any other horn player that I ever worked with or heard. He was a one-of-a-kind musical force in every area that he worked in, and this area was no exception.

Wayne's innate love of stories made him conscious of lyrics in a way that placed him on his own stratum as a musical storyteller, and as an instrumental foil for a vocalist delivering lyrics and poetry. When Wayne called me to play bass on his album "Atlantis" I remember asking him if I could get the music beforehand so that I could take a look at it. His response was "Oh, they're just little stories...you'll see. I'll see you at the studio..".

I think that his profound gift for working with words was linked to his obsessive interest in film and the stories that were at the center of films. Wayne could recite dialog word for word from any one of innumerable films that were touchstones for him. "To Have And Have Not", the Pressburger/Powell film "The Red Shoes", the original Technicolor version of "The Jungle Book". Innumerable others. He was a metaphorical thinker, and he frequently communicated ideas or concepts with lines from a scene in a film that were a metaphor for what he wanted to say. His references generally leaned towards classic film, but also was heavily weighted in the area of science fiction. He wasn't always drawn to great films. If a bad film had one scene in it that articulated a feeling or emotion well, that scene would be memorized in detail and used as a metaphorical reference. Film dialog was Wayne's way of communicating concepts and feelings in shorthand. He had no interest in small talk. When he encountered it he immediately searched for subtext that might lead the person who he was speaking to into deeper territory.

Cherokee Louise

Joni wrote Cherokee Louise about a childhood friend who was a Native American girl. Her friendship with this girl left a deep and sad imprint on her. She often spoke of the rampant bigotry towards Native Americans that permeated Canadian culture during her childhood in the fifties. The racism that she experienced in her home town of Saskatoon was a great source of sorrow and disgust for her. It was pervasive, and was an intrinsic part of the social milieu that Joan's parents Bill and Myrtle lived in. Many Canadian parents from their generation considered any association with Native Americans to be something that should be avoided, and that one should protect their children from. A stain that was passed down generationally. Native Americans were social outcasts in most Canadian cities during Joan's early years. They battled alcoholism, unemployment and poverty, and this fed social disintegration and the breaking up of families. Like everywhere in North America, their culture was decimated by broken agreements, bad deals, and subjugation. During the period where she was writing songs that ended up being part of Night Ride Home I recall many conversations where, in the context of talking about this dark part of Canadian history, she told me about the poignant story that is at the center of Cherokee Louise. With each iteration of the story different details were added to it.

Recording

In approaching the song I felt that a good way to approach the 6/8 groove of the guitar part would be to program a somewhat even brush pattern that would be a hypnotic pulse would hypnotically disappear as the track developed. The way that Joan had crafted to play this kind of 6/8 pulse was such an original and detailed part of her guitar signature, and had such a nice swing... it would work best to have any other rhythmic elements have a certain child-like simplicity. I added in a low surdo on 1 of every other bar of 4 as an anchor of sorts. It was clear to me that the bass part needed to be compositional as opposed to anything figurative that would draw attention to itself. It needed to be approached in an orchestral manner so as not to distract from the telling of the story. Anything more would take space away from the detailed guitar part or the vocal. I played a track of long legato low material, then did an overdub of high harmonics and double-stops with modulation coming from an Eventide 910 and a Roland Dimension D. The blend of these two outboard effects had a dark orchestral feeling for me. Celli and basses.

Once we had those elements and a good vocal on the track we felt that the main part of the musical fabric was complete. The minimal nature of the production suited the poem beautifully. We both felt that the last element to add would be Wayne Shorter as a soloist in the instrumental interlude and to serve as a musical and poetic foil for Joan's vocal through the song. The way that Wayne could function in this role was unlike anyone else. He could seamlessly undulate between weaving into the musical fabric, providing internal movement, height, or harmonic dissonance, and functioning as a musical narrator, commenting with subtext on the story as it unfolded. He approached his role in a way that was akin to that of a film composer, even when it came to what he played as a soloist. Nothing was ever played arbitrarily or in a "let me show you what I can do" manner. His mind was quick, and always functioning in a correlative manner.

In most of the instances that I worked with him where he played this role we would do a few passes, with the possibility of taking sections from each pass and weaving them together for the final part. He never wanted a chart. His grasp of structure and his musical intuition made a chart an unnecessary distraction. It was always amazing to hear how his mind worked. There were times where he would play something absolutely definitive on the first try, but we would keep going, doing one or two more passes, just to marvel at what he would think of against each line of the lyric and each musical section. To hear how his mind worked.

Wayne's solo follows the most sad and poignant section of the lyric:

She runs home to her foster dad
He opens up a zipper
And he yanks her to her knees
Oh please be here please
My friend
Poor Cherokee Louise

What he played still brings tears to my eyes. To play a solo after the text that preceded the instrumental section was a delicate matter. He manages to connote the tragic turn that the story takes without playing anything overtly dark or melancholic. Angular phrases and the conversational quality of the placement of what he played communicate sadness without anything that is literally onomatopoeic or sad. It comes at the emotion of the moment in an indirect and sideways manner. He never hit anything straight on.

Once we had Wayne's part on the track the only thing left to do was for Joan to build the vocal stacks that punctuate with answer phrases throughout the song. During the time that we were working on this song I was working on an album with a Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based group that was on A&M Records called The Innocence Mission. We felt that another female voice doing harmonies on specific lines would add contrast and thematic shading to certain lines of the poem, the story being centered around a friendship between two young girls. Karen Peris, who was the singer and songwriter at the center of The Innocence Mission was perfectly suited to be an additional female vocal element on the harmony parts. There was a small, understated and young quality to her voice. Synchronicity had once again taken a hand in things, and we were able to put her parts on Cherokee Louise in between sessions that I was doing with the group in our studio.

This kind of spontaneous synergy was present through the making of Night Ride Home. It was a creative thread that ran through the making of the album. The right people always seemed to show up at the right time. The poetry of one album fed the poetry of others...