1985 · Album
Setting Standards
Recorded 1983 · Muse · Reissued: 2013 as part of Woody Shaw: The Complete Muse Sessions (Mosaic Records)
Woody Shaw in Command, 1983
Shaw leading a capable band through standards, showing why he remained a force in jazz.
By 1983, Woody Shaw had earned his place among trumpet's elite, and Setting Standards finds him in assured form. The album does what its title suggests—he tackles a set of jazz standards with the kind of direct confidence that comes from decades of playing at the highest level. There's no apology here, no need to prove anything. Shaw simply plays standards the way he understood them: with harmonic sophistication, a tone that cuts through, and the kind of phrasing that comes from a musician who has absorbed bebop and everything after it.
What makes this session work is Shaw's refusal to coast. He's not phoning in familiar material. Each standard gets attention, each solo sounds considered rather than routine. The band around him handles the work cleanly. This isn't a peak-years record—Shaw had made his strongest statements earlier—but it's solid professional work from a musician still in command of his instrument and his ideas. The music swings without strain, and Shaw's trumpet voice remains distinctive: articulate, sometimes sharp-edged, always present.
This arrived during Shaw's later years, and it's worth hearing for anyone wanting to understand what a top-tier jazz trumpeter sounds like when he's simply doing the job he's spent a lifetime perfecting. It won't replace his Blue Note recordings as the place to start with Shaw, but it shows a musician still engaged, still capable, still making music that deserves an audience.
Who's playing
Where next?
More by Woody Shaw
All 36 albums →
The musicians on this record
Their own records, close in time
