Musically, Speak No Evil sits in the centre of Blue Note’s mid-’60s post-bop maelstrom: Dolphy is Out to Lunch, McLean’s Destination is… Out, and Further Out, Hill is at a Point of Departure , Lee Morgan is in Search of New Land, Hancock alights on Empyrean Isles. Mystical/mythical titles, heraldic horn openings, controlled dissonances, brooding dense compositions, all exploring various shifting melodic terrains.
Graduating after five years at Blakey’s Jazz Messengers Academy, alumnus Wayne Shorter continued to develop his own personal voice. His tone is very individual: if Mclean’s alto is acid, Shorter’s tenor is sour, pungent, his lines sparse and skeletal, a Coltrane vocabulary but three quarters of the notes missing, harmonic progression held in place by anchor points, separated by intervals and pauses, but melodic ideas inherent in the tune.
In the three months up to  recording Speak No Evil, Shorter had become a permanent member of Miles Davis second  great quintet, one week recording  with Davis for Columbia, another week leading his own ensemble at Englewood Cliffs for Blue Note.
His regular pick-up band bass and piano –  Reggie Workman and  McCoy Tyner – had to make way new friends Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter on loan from Davis, though Elvin Jones remained Shorter’s choice on drums (not Anthony Williams) : Jones characteristically scattering bombs, washes, crisp rolls and accents over the terrain. Jazz writer S. Victor Aaron aptly notes “The Carter/Jones undertow of swing pulls against the overall mysterious feeling of Shorter’s compositions” (I add)… which glide eerily on the surface above.