Still Inventing at the End
Shaw's trumpet solos overflow with constant invention, showing no decline despite his worsening health.
Bemsha Swing captures Woody Shaw in 1986, near the end of his life, playing at a level that surprises anyone who knows the trajectory of his final years. Shaw was dealing with serious health problems and deteriorating eyesight by this point, the kind of obstacles that would sideline most musicians entirely. Instead, he showed up and played with such clarity and purpose that when these recordings finally surfaced over a decade later, critics had to reckon with an uncomfortable truth: Shaw wasn't coasting or declining. He was still thinking, still pushing.
The album documents a reunion of sorts with drummer Roy Brooks, someone Shaw had worked with back in Horace Silver's band during the mid-1960s. They'd recorded together before, on Brooks' 1972 live album The Free Slave. But this session feels different—looser, more exploratory. Shaw's solos don't sound like a man running through familiar material. They sound hungry. AllMusic reviewer Scott Yanow noted that "his solos are full of constant invention and enthusiastic ideas," and that assessment holds up. There's no resignation here, no sense that Shaw was just grateful to still be playing.
JazzTimes reviewer Bill Shoemaker framed this more cautiously, acknowledging that Shaw's broader career trajectory was troubled by 1986, even as his creative impulses remained sharp. That tension—between the difficult reality of Shaw's circumstances and the undeniable vitality of his playing—is what makes this album worth hearing. It's not a comeback record, because there was nothing staged about it. It's simply evidence that musicianship and ideas don't always abandon you when everything else falls away.
Who's playing
Robert Hurstdouble bass
Geri Allenpiano
Roy Brooksdrums
