Twelve More Bars to Go is a jazz composition by Wayne Shorter, first recorded for his 1965 Blue Note album JuJu with a quartet of McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums. Sometimes listed as 12 More Bars to Go, the tune is a playful reimagining of the twelve-bar blues form, as its title cheekily acknowledges. The composition features a swinging, medium-tempo groove built on dominant seventh chords and typical blues turnaround progressions, with a riff-based melody that serves as a direct and satisfying vehicle for improvisation. Its compact blues framework makes it accessible to saxophonists and other instrumentalists without sacrificing harmonic interest. Within Shorter's body of work, the piece represents his mid-1960s hard bop phase, sitting alongside tunes like the album's title track and Deluge in its emphasis on blues-inflected originals written during his tenure with Miles Davis and in the wake of his years with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. The tune is a deep cut in the jazz repertoire rather than a widely performed standard, lacking the ubiquity of Shorter compositions like Footprints, but it exemplifies his gift for concise, playable heads that distill the blues tradition through a modern lens. Beyond the original JuJu recording, the Nuttree Quartet is among the few groups to have covered the tune.
