Footprints is a 1966 jazz composition by Wayne Shorter. It was first recorded for Shorter’s album Adam’s Apple (1966) with Herbie Hancock, Reggie Workman, and Joe Chambers, and has since become a jazz standard. A different recording of Footprints appears on Miles Davis’s Miles Smiles, released in 1967. The tune is known for its feel that moves between simple and compound meters, often described as 3 over 4 or 6 over 8, but it is not a waltz; the bass figure uses a tresillo-like rhythm. Harmonically it sits as a 12-bar C minor blues with an avant-garde turnaround that Shorter expands rhythmically. Notable later coverage includes Kenny Barron on Images (2004). The piece helped define Shorter’s distinctive approach within Miles Davis’s Second Great Quintet and remains a staple of the post-bop repertoire.
