Wayne Shorter

CD version. Adam's Apple is the quartet album Wayne Shorter recorded for Blue Note in February 1966 and released in 1967. It followed Night Dreamer, JuJu and Speak No Evil. It also holds the first recording of Footprints, which Shorter would cut again later that year with the Miles Davis Quintet for Miles Smiles.

The music was taped in two visits to Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, on 3 February 1966 (the title track) and 24 February 1966. Alfred Lion produced and Rudy Van Gelder recorded. Shorter plays tenor with Herbie Hancock on piano, Reggie Workman on bass and Joe Chambers on drums. A Blue Note retrospective from 2013 describes the mood as reflective, with time feels moving from swing to bossa nova.

Shorter wrote five of the six pieces. The grooving title track opens the set, and El Gaucho has a bossa inflection. Footprints appears here as a 6/8 minor blues, played in the pocket some eight months before the Davis version. Teru is a ballad with an Ellington and Strayhorn quality, and Shorter plays it without vibrato, almost like an art song. The closing Chief Crazy Horse is a homage to Coltrane, with a soaring solo from the leader and a churning spot for Chambers. The one outside tune is Jimmy Rowles's 502 Blues (Drinkin' and Drivin').

In Jazz Journal, Mark Gardner heard the record as a vehicle for Shorter the soloist rather than Shorter the composer. AllMusic later ranked it with the best of his output from that fertile period. Footprints and Chief Crazy Horse were still in the book of Shorter's quartet decades later.

This is the Japanese Ultimate High Quality CD (UHQCD) from Universal Music Japan, catalogue UCCQ-9645, issued in 2024 with a remaster credited to Kevin Gray. It comes in a jewel case with obi, with the original sleeve notes by Don Heckman and Japanese notes by Masamichi Okazaki.