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Weather Report

Inception and formation

Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter first met and became friends in 1959 while they were playing in Maynard Ferguson’s Big Band. Zawinul went on to play with Cannonball Adderley’s group in the 1960s, while Shorter joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and then, in 1964, Miles Davis’ second great quintet. During this decade, both men made names for themselves as being among the best composers in jazz.

Zawinul would later join Shorter in contributing to the initial fusion music recordings of Miles Davis, and both men were part of the studio groups, which recorded the key Davis albums In a Silent Way (1969) and Bitches Brew (1970). In consequence, Weather Report has often been seen as a spin-off from the Miles Davis bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s, although Zawinul was never part of Davis’s touring line-up. Weather Report was initially formed in order to explore a more impressionistic and individualistic music (or, as Zawinul put it, “away from all that eight bars shit and then you go to the bridge…”)

Zawinul and Shorter recruited another Miles Davis associate, the classically trained Czech-born bass player Miroslav Vitouš, who’d previously played with Zawinul as well as with Herbie Mann, Bob Brookmeyer, Stan Getz and Chick Corea (Vitous has subsequently claimed that it was in fact Shorter and himself that founded Weather Report, with Shorter bringing in Zawinul afterwards.) All three men composed, and would form the core of the project. To complete the band, the trio brought in former McCoy Tyner drummer Alphonse Mouzon and set about looking for a full-time auxiliary percussionist as they began to record their debut album. The initial recruits were session player Don Alias and symphony orchestra percussionist Barbara Burton. During recording, Alias quarreled with Zawinul – allegedly due to the latter being too dictatorial over the percussion approach – and the innovative Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira (yet another Miles Davis alumnus) was brought in to complete the record. John McLaughlin was also invited to join the group, but decided to pursue his solo career instead.

Debut and first concerts

Weather Report’s self-titled debut album Weather Report (1971) caused a sensation in the jazz world on its arrival, due to the various talents of the group’s members and their unorthodox approach to their music. The album featured a softer sound than would be the case in later years, predominantly using acoustic bass, with Shorter exclusively playing soprano saxophone. The band later employed the use of synthesizers, instruments, and other effects, but the first album is still considered a classic of early fusion. It built on the avant-garde experiments, which Zawinul and Shorter had pioneered with Miles Davis on Bitches Brew (1970), including an avoidance of head-and-chorus composition in favor of continuous rhythm and movement, but taking the music further. To emphasize the group’s rejection of standard methodology, the album opened with the inscrutable avant-garde atmospheric piece “Milky Way” (created by Shorter’s extremely muted saxophone inducing vibrations in Zawinul’s piano strings while the latter pedaled the instrument). Down Beat magazine described the album as “music beyond category” (Dan Morgenstern, Down Beat, May 13, 1971) and awarded it the title of “Album of the Year” in the magazine’s polls that year.

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Book Review

Elegant People: A History Of The Band Weather Report

Read "Elegant People: A History Of The Band Weather Report" reviewed by Ian Patterson


Elegant People: A History Of The Band Weather Report Curt Bianchi 496 Pages ISBN: 978-1-4930-5999-7 Backbeat Books 2021 Few bands hold a place in jazz history quite like Weather Report, the band formed in 1971 by Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter and Miroslav Vitous. The term “jazz-fusion" could have been coined for Weather Report, yet it was never an entirely adequate descriptor for a band that absorbed so many influences and evolved accordingly over ...

1
In Pictures

The 1979 Playboy Jazz Festival

Read "The 1979 Playboy Jazz Festival" reviewed by Jon Deshler


I began producing my Jazz Passages Archive when I was 14 in the '70s, as a young trumpet student and photography enthusiast growing up in the San Fernando Valley. In June of 1979 serendipity aligned with a high school buddy/usher, which led to me attending the first Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl. At 16 years old I had one day of roaming around the crowd at the Bowl, listening, and attempting to get some decent pics on film ...

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Album Review

Weather Report: Heavy Weather

Read "Heavy Weather" reviewed by Sacha O'Grady


Weather Report were one of the earliest jazz fusion groups to emerge at the beginning of the '70s. They were rare in that, like Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, they didn't have a guitarist to light the fire and excite the audience as was the case with Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever; instead, they relied, in addition to pure instrumental virtuosity, upon intelligent compositions. The band's founding members were none other than Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, two exceptional musicians who ...

22
Profile

Claude Nobs: We All Came Out To Montreux...

Read "Claude Nobs: We All Came Out To Montreux..." reviewed by Ian Patterson


Montreux Jazz Festival is fifty. It's a significant milestone and cause for celebration. No doubt there will be an added festive element to this year's edition of the festival, founded by Claude Nobs--along with pianist Géo Voumard and writer René Langel--in 1967. Yet for many, the celebrations will be tinged with sadness due to the absence of Nobs, who died in a skiing accident in 2013. Nobs may have passed, but his legend, his spirit, lives on, in the festival ...

9
Reassessing

Black Market

Read "Black Market" reviewed by Jeff Winbush


As Weather Report returned to the studio to cut their next album the band was yet again in flux. Gone from 1975's Tale Spinnin' line up were percussionist Alyrio Lima and drummer Ndugu Leon Chancler. Zawinul explained the latest comings-and-goings in a 1976 interview, “We're always happy with the group, because if we're not happy, we change it. There are a lot of musicians out there in the world. All the people who have played with us are ...

Album Review

Weather Report: The Legendary Live Tapes: 1978-1981

Read "The Legendary Live Tapes: 1978-1981" reviewed by Vic Albani


Dopo la morte di Joe Zawinul non si era praticamente più mosso nulla tranne forse nella mente di Ivan Zawinul (uno dei figli del geniale tastierista austriaco) che era partito (bene) con l'idea di pubblicare di tanto in tanto un disco con le migliori tra le tante avventure live di uno dei gruppi musicali più amati e importanti dell'ultimo mezzo secolo. Per motivi che nemmeno interessano a questa recensione, quell'idea abortì quasi subito. Dei Weather Report sembrò ...

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Extended Analysis

Weather Report: The Legendary Live Tapes 1978-1981

Read "Weather Report: The Legendary Live Tapes 1978-1981" reviewed by Doug Collette


The Legendary Live Tapes 1978-1981 is a stellar package of Weather Report concert recordings focusing on that phase of this groundbreaking group's career where they were truly rock stars visiting from a jazz world. It stands as further affirmation of the constant change implied in their name as much as their continual transcendence of the jazz-rock fusion genre. The unusual size and shape of the 5.5 x 6 inch package thus stands as a very metaphor of Weather ...

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1

Recording

Weather Report's Classic Album "Heavy Weather" To Be Released On Limited Edition Hybrid SACD

Weather Report's Classic Album "Heavy Weather" To Be Released On Limited Edition Hybrid SACD

Source: Glass Onyon PR - William James

Jazz aficionados rejoice! Mrshall Blonstein's Audio Fidelity is releasing pioneering jazz-rock fusion legends Weather Report's classic album Heavy Weather on Limited Edition Hybrid SACD! Heavy Weather remains the touchstone—and easily the best-selling album by Weather Report. Formed in 1971 and continuing until 1986, the group's creative axis was keyboardist/composer Joe Zawinul and saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter. Borrowing tinges of earthtones from Cannonball Adderley's sanctified small groups of the 1960s and watercolors from the 1969 Miles Davis album In A Silent Way, ...

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Recording

Audio Fidelity To Release Two Jazz-Fusion Classics On Hybrid SACD By Weather Report And Return To Forever

Audio Fidelity To Release Two Jazz-Fusion Classics On Hybrid SACD By Weather Report And Return To Forever

Source: Glass Onyon PR - William James

Marshall Blonstein's Audio Fidelity will be releasing Weather Report, Tale Spinnin' and Return to Forever, Musicmagic on Hybrid SACD. Both recordings are considered essentials from the jazz fusion era of the mid-'70s. Recorded in early 1975, Tale Spinnin', Weather Report's fifth studio album is filled with sunny textures of Latin and African flavors. The album stands with anything recorded during the period for the range of fresh, intriguing originals by the band's co-founders and principle composers, the keyboardist Joe Zawinul ...

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Crowdfunding Campaign

Legendary Jazz Group Weather Report Rises With Legacy Project

Legendary Jazz Group Weather Report Rises With Legacy Project

Source: Braithwaite & Katz Communications

Documentary “Calm Before The Storm" to be directed by Tony Zawinul Seminal jazz group Weather Report rises again with the Weather Report Legacy Project and crowdfunding initiative. The new project, launching December 9, 2013, will support the creation of a documentary, “Calm Before the Storm." The film documents the group from its beginnings in 1970, through their 16 year and 17 album career, anchored by legendary founders and jazz legends Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter. The Weather Report Legacy Project ...

Recording

Mingus, Monk & Weather Report: From Legacy in July

Mingus, Monk & Weather Report: From Legacy in July

Source: Sony Music Entertainment/Legacy

The ultimate year-round jazz festival of Legacy Recordings continues to set a new industry standard with three new Complete Album Collections from the Columbia and RCA archives by the greatest names in modern jazz: Charles Mingus: The Complete Columbia & RCA Albums Collection: 7 titles, 10 CDs The Thelonious Monk Quartet: The Complete Studio Albums Collection: 6 titles, 6 CDs Weather Report: The Columbia Albums 1971-1975: 6 titles, 7 CDs These three new entries follow up the first 16 box ...

168

Interview

One Track Mind: Alphonse Mouzon on Weather Report, McCoy Tyner, Solo Songs

One Track Mind: Alphonse Mouzon on Weather Report, McCoy Tyner, Solo Songs

Source: Something Else!

By Nick Deriso On this special edition of the Something Else! Reviews' One Track Mind, we hand the reins over to legendary fusion drummer Alphonse Mouzon. A life around jazz, and fellow jazz greats, has left Mouzon with his share of stories. So did the lengthy sessions for his impressive new recording Angel Face, which was 10 years in the making. Find out how he used to stash towels and refreshments behind his drum kit during marathon songs (several of ...

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Video / DVD

Other Matters: Weather Report, Part 2

Other Matters: Weather Report, Part 2

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey


164

Technology

'Weather Channel' Changes Music Format: 'Weather Report' in the Forecast?

'Weather Channel' Changes Music Format: 'Weather Report' in the Forecast?

Source: All About Jazz

"Callin' out around the world / Are you ready for a brand new beat?"--Martha and the Vandellas hit from the summer of '64 (video) written by William 'Mickey' Stevenson and Marvin Gaye. Around the world, indeed--from North to South America; from France, Germany, and England to India and Australia. With the flip of a switch, the Weather Channel's cultural tsunami--unexpected and relentless--quietly surges through the web of communication satellites and fiber-optic cables that envelope the world like strands of extruded ...

235

Recording

Miroslav Vitous - Remembering Weather Report

Miroslav Vitous - Remembering Weather Report

Source: ECM Records

Remembering Weather Report - a new album from bassist Miroslav Vitous was released on July 7th. According to Nate Chinen of the New York Times, Vitous “brings a rigorous sense of proportion to this album, exploring free-form terrain with the stateliest kind of boldness" and he calls it a “severely elegant album." Vitous was one of the founders of Weather Report and helped to shape its early (and revolutionary) mix of enigmatic, free-flowing compositions and high-level improvisational dialogues, in which ...

195

Video / DVD

Weekend Extra: Weather Report, Birdland

Weekend Extra: Weather Report, Birdland

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

Put aside all of the old arguments about whether this is jazz, jazz-rock, fusion, world music, ethnic music, R&B, funk or something else. The arguments don't matter anymore, if they ever did. This is truly, to borrow Ellington's overused phrase, beyond category. There is no more stunning instance of what rhythm, harmony and harmonics can do for a repeated riff. Joe Zawinul wrote the song. This version of Weather Report is Zawinul at his electronic keyboard arsenal, Wayne Shorter playing ...

382

Obituary

Jazzman Joe Zawinul Died, Founder of Weather Report

Jazzman Joe Zawinul Died, Founder of Weather Report

Source: All About Jazz

Vienna, Sept 11 - Joe Zawinul, one of the greatest modern jazzmen, pioneer of 'fusion', the merger of his music and rock, has died of cancer at the age of 75. His son Erich announced his death. He died in a hospital in Vienna, where he was born. Composer, pianist and organist considered to be “ revolutionary", one of the first to understand the importance of the keyboard for the evolution of his genre, Zawinul has meant much for modern ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Heavy Weather

Columbia Records
2017

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The Legendary Live...

Columbia Records
2016

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Weather Report: The...

Legacy Recordings
2016

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Weather Report: The...

Legacy Recordings
2015

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