THE SMOOTH JAZZ RIDE
Feb. 21, 2010 Following his true calling to be a jazz musician, he left Dinah after nineteen months and toured briefly with Sweets Edison and Joe Williams. Then, in the fall of 1961, he received the call to join the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, one of the highest profile jazz bands in the world. Joe would stay for nearly ten years. Joe’s relationship with Julian “Cannonball” Adderley was significant both on a musical and a personal level. The band members spent considerable time together, crisscrossing the country by automobile, and became very close. “He was family,” Joe once recalled. “He was my best man, my witness, when I got married… My wife and I, we talk about him somehow everyday.”
Joe Zawinul -- The Always-Sunny Forecast
A few years ago, I had the pleasure of reviewing the fantastic October 2005 live p
roject from Joe Zawinul with the WDR Big Band in tribute to Joe’s former supergroup, Weather Report . The live performance was captured in a CD released in 2007 entitled Brown Street. Simply put, it was both riveting and breathtaking. It spelled a description of what Joe and Weather Report had hoped to leave as a legacy. It certainly served as a description for part of that legacy. The loss of this profoundly talented musician who’d been named as Best Keyboardist by Downbeat magazine more times than I care to count will be felt for countless years to come. Let’s now recount Joe’s illustrious and prolific journey and again enjoy that which he defined and can be seen as some of the finest in fusion jazz.
Needless to say, Joe Zawinul was one of the most influential jazz musicians of the twentieth century. He was a pioneer in the use of electronic musical instruments, bringing the electric piano into the mainstream, and possessed an unparalleled ability to make the synthesizer an expressive musical instrument. He composed some of the best-known standards in jazz, including “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” and “Birdland.” With Wayne Shorter, Joe founded and led Weather Report, arguably the most successful band of post-sixties jazz. His unique ability to combine jazz with ethnic music from around the world blazed the trail for what would later be called “world music.” Ultimately, Joe carved out a unique musical voice that is immediately identifiable and defies categorization.
The Austrian-born artist’s musical talent was apparent at an early age, and after his grandfather gave him an accordion, young Joe was often called upon to perform at family gatherings. At the age of seven, Joe was selected for enrollment in the prestigious Vienna Conservatory, where he studied classical piano, clarinet and violin.
In 1958, noticing an advertisement in one of the few copies of Down Beat magazine to reach Vienna, Joe applied for a scholarship to the Berklee School of Music. Berklee accepted him, and on January 2, 1959, he boarded a boat for the five-day journey across the Atlantic. He carried with him his Berklee scholarship and $800 in his pocket. “I knew that it wouldn’t be easy,” he once recalled, “because I had no relatives, didn’t know a single person in America. But when I came over on the boat, I did it with the purpose to kick asses.”
Arriving in New York, one of Joe’s first stops was the famous jazz club, Birdland, where he experienced the American jazz scene for the first time. The club would hold special significance to Joe throughout his life. In fact, it was at Birdland that Joe also met his wife, Maxine, with whom he would share over 40 years of marriage and raise three sons, Anthony, Erich and Ivan.
Joe’s stay at Berklee was brief. Within a few weeks, one of his instructors sent him to fill in as a substitute pianist at a local gig with bassist Gene Cherico and drummer Jake Hannah. Impressed, Hannah recommended Joe to the flamboyant trumpeter Maynard Ferguson that very night. The next day, Joe auditioned for Ferguson and landed his first job with a major U.S. jazz band. Shortly thereafter, the Ferguson band needed a saxophonist. Among those auditioning was Wayne Shorter, who was hired in part on Joe’s recommendation. It was the first time the two would play together, but certainly not the last.
Joe stayed with Ferguson for eight months, playing on his highly regarded live album, A Night At Birdland, before getting hired by the popular jazz and blues singer, Dinah Washington. Joe immersed himself in the blues tradition that was Dinah’s bread and butter, and accompanied her on her biggest hit recording, “What A Diff’rence A Day Makes!”
With Cannonball, Joe got the opportunity to write, and in the fall of 1966, the quintet recorded one of Joe’s most enduring compositions, “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” which ultimately reached number 11 on the Billboard pop chart.
Over time, Joe caught the attention of the legendary trumpeter Miles Davis. Miles was intrigued by Joe’s use of the electric piano, seeking out Adderley Quintet performances so that he could hear Joe play it live. It wasn’t long before Miles was demanding that his own pianist, now-renowned fusion king Herbie Hancock, use the instrument. Miles was also attracted to Joe’s compositions, and in winter of 1968-69, he invited Joe to the recording sessions that produced the album In A Silent Way, the centerpiece of which was Joe’s song of the same name.
Over the next year, Joe recorded with Miles several more times, playing on and providing compositions for the albums Bitches Brew, Big Fun, and Live-Evil. At the time, Miles’ regular saxophonist and principal composer was Wayne Shorter, and Shorter and Joe began talking about putting a band together.
In 1970, Joe recorded his third album, Zawinul, which Down Beat magazine described as “the work of a complete musician who has transcended categories and is certain to have a profound influence on the direction music will take in the ‘70s.” Those words soon proved prophetic when Joe and Wayne formed the jazz super group Weather Report at the end of the year. The band’s first album was highly anticipated and released to critical acclaim the next spring. In his lengthy review for Down Beat, Dan Morgenstern wrote, “The music of Weather Report is beyond category... music unlike any other I’ve heard, music that is very contemporary but also very warm, very human, and very beautiful... The forecast, if there is justice, must be clear skies and sunny days for these four creative men and their associates.”
Weather Report became the most popular jazz band of its time, winning the Down Beat readers poll as best jazz band or electric jazz combo every year of its existence. Its rise coincided with the development of the synthesizer.
Joe got his first serious synthesizer in 1971, an Arp 2600, and first used it on Weather Report’s second album, I Sing The Body Electric. One of the songs is “Unknown Soldier,” an ambitious work that was inspired by Joe’s experiences as a youngster in war-torn Austria. The Arp played a limited role, producing sound effects.
Weather Report’s third album, 1973’s Sweetnighter, marked a turning point. Joe brought in two compositions based on long grooves, and hired a drummer and electric bass player who were well versed in funk. The band was moving in a new direction, which was fully realized in Weather Report’s fourth album, Mysterious Traveller. The addition of bass player Alphonso Johnson cemented the band’s transition to one that combined elements of jazz and rock in a way that was unique and timeless. Joe’s orchestrating talents and mastery of electric keyboards truly came to the fore, and the band broke new ground with each succeeding album.
For 1976’s Black Market, Joe recruited the electric bass phenom Jaco Pastorius, who introduced himself to Joe as “the world’s greatest bass player.” Pastorius lived up to his own billing, and is now regarded as the greatest innovator of his instrument. With Jaco in the fold, Weather Report recorded its most successful album, Heavy Weather, which included Joe’s breakout hit, “Birdland.” The album reached number 30 on the Billboard pop album chart, selling over half a million copies.
By the time Joe and Shorter brought Weather Report to a close in 1985, the band had produced 15 albums, including the Grammy award winning 1979 live double-album, 8:30. Weather Report was a perennial winner of awards in music publications around the world. The band left behind a legacy that inspired musicians, fans, and jazz critics alike.
After Weather Report, Joe recorded the first album under his own name in fifteen years. Dialects was a tour de force in the use of synthesizers and drum machines, augmented by the human voice, most notably Bobby McFerrin.
It was Joe’s new band that became his primary musical vehicle for the rest of his life. He called it the Zawinul Syndicate because “when you are in the Syndicate, you are not just in a band, you are in a family.” The Syndicate would evolve to include musicians from around the world, creating a musical synthesis unlike anything else. Formed in 1988, the earliest version of the band featured Gerald Veasley on bass and Scott Henderson on guitar, and recorded three albums for Columbia, The Immigrants (1988), Black Water (1989) and Lost Tribes (1992).
In 1996, Joe released his Grammy-nominated album, My People. Several years in the making, My People demonstrated Joe’s remarkable ability to fuse his own unique musical sensibilities with those from other cultures. It was a high point in the Joe Zawinul discography, and marked the recording debut of a new edition of the Syndicate powered by the incomparable drummer Paco Sery from the Ivory Coast, who seemed born to play Joe’s music. When Richard Bona took over on bass in 1997, the Syndicate raised the level of intensity yet another notch, the results of which were preserved on the Grammy-nominated two-disc set World Tour, a triumphant album that captured the visceral energy of the band’s live performances.
Joe’s final album, 75, which recently received a Grammy for Best Contemporary Album, was recorded live with the Syndicate on his 75th birthday at Lugano, Switzerland. By then, he was suffering from the effects of terminal cancer. His wife, Maxine, was also critically ill and passed away later that month. Yet, the album's performance is filled with the raw energy and creativity that were the hallmarks of Joe’s music.
Joe Zawinul died in Vienna on September 11, 2007. In addition to being named Best Keyboardist numerous times by the readers of Down Beat magazine, Joe and his albums received a multitude of awards, and he was the official Austrian goodwill ambassador to seventeen African nations.
“My dad raised the bar in the music world as a true artist to his profession,” says Anthony Zawinul, Joe’s eldest son. “He never compromised his art. You either liked it or you didn’t. One thing is for sure though, you always knew it was Joe Zawinul. As a bandleader, he was able to pull out performances from his bandmates and take them to heights they never knew existed.” Nuff said about one for whom the word “legend” seems almost an understatement.
