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Heavy Weather

Heavy Weather

  • Artist: Weather Report
  • Total time: 37:39
  • Label: Atlantic
  • Availability: In stock
  • Item #: 5183279
  • Your Price: $16.99

Review

Weather Report's biggest-selling album is that ideal thing, a popular and artistic success -- and for the same reasons. For one thing, Joe Zawinul revealed an unexpectedly potent commercial streak for the first time since his Cannonball Adderley days, contributing what has become a perennial hit, "Birdland." Indeed, "Birdland" is a remarkable bit of record-making, a unified, ever-developing piece of music that evokes, without in any way imitating, a joyous evening on 52nd St. with a big band. The other factor is the full emergence of Jaco Pastorius as a co-leader; his dancing, staccato bass lifting itself out of the bass range as a third melodic voice, completely dominating his own ingenious "Teen Town" (where he also plays drums!). By now, Zawinul has become WR's de facto commander in the studio; his colorful synthesizers dictate the textures, his conceptions are carefully planned, with little of the freewheeling improvisation of only five years before. Wayne Shorter's saxophones are now reticent, if always eloquent, beams of light in Zawinul's general scheme while Alex Acuña shifts ably over to the drums and Manolo Badrena handles the percussion. Released just as the jazz-rock movement began to run out of steam, this landmark album proved that there was plenty of creative life left in the idiom. ~ Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide

Track Listing

1. Birdland 5:57
2. Remark You Made 6:51
3. Teen Town 2:51
4. Harlequin 3:59
5. Rumba Mamá 2:11
6. Palladíum 4:46
7. Juggler 5:03
8. Havona 6:01

Details of This Recording

  • Label: Atlantic
  • Credits:
  • Additional Info:
  • Styles:
    • Fusion

Contents

Birdland; A Remark You Made; Teen Town; Harlequin; Rumba Mama; Palladium; The Juggler; Havona.

Jaco Pastorius, Bass; Joe Zawinul, Piano; Wayne Shorter, Sax; Manolo Badrena, Alejandro Alex Acuna, Percussion.

Digitally remastered.

Extended Article

Heavy Weather remains the touchstone - and easily the best selling - album by the pioneering jazz-rock fusion band Weather Report. Formed in 1971 and continuing until 1986, the group's creative axis was keyboardist/composer Joe Zawinul (b. 1932) and saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter (b. 1933).

Borrowing tinges of earth tones from Cannonball Adderley's sanctified small groups of the 1960s (in which Zawinul's piano and several original tunes were important components) and watercolors from the 1969 Miles Davis album In A Silent Way (written by Zawinul and featuring he and Shorter, who was for five years Davis' front-line partner in the trumpeter's second great quintet), Weather Report's musical palette could be as unpredictable and changeable as a New England spring, and as electrifying as a sudden thunderstorm.

Recorded in 1977, Heavy Weather added dramatic new tonal colors, from Zawinul's electronics to the innovative fretless electric bass pulsations of Jaco Pastorius (1951-1987). The music ranged from Zawinul's catchy crossover hit single Birdland to his haunting tone poem A Remark You Made, and from Shorter's stately Harlequin to the rocking undertow of Pastorius' Teen Town (with the composer doubling on turbo-charged drums).

Produced for reissue by the noted arranger/composer/saxophonist Bob Belden, this edition of Heavy Weather also features new liner notes by John Ephland, plus previously unpublished photographs. Heavy Weather is the ideal introduction to a band whose work forecast striking extended changes in direction for improvisational music.

Read About This Recording

In the late 1960s when Miles Davis recorded In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew, jazz and rock were coming together in a big way. The music, which would soon be called fusion, combined together the sophistication of jazz improvisations and musicianship with the sound, rhythms and grooves of rock. Joe Zawinul, who composed In a Silent Way, had already gained some fame as Cannonball Adderley's longtime pianist for whom he wrote the soul hit Mercy, Mercy, Mercy. By the late 1960s, Zawinul was in the process of switching permanently to electric keyboards, becoming one of the most significant innovators on synthesizers.

In late-1970, Zawinul starting teaming with Wayne Shorter as co-leaders of Weather Report. Shorter, a very distinctive tenor and soprano-saxophonist and a major composer, had formerly spent important stints with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and the Miles Davis Quintet. With Zawinul on his keyboards and Shorter mostly on soprano, a unique form of fusion was created. They had success from the start and their music, which was originally explorative and a bit esoteric, became funkier as time passed.

With the addition of the remarkable Jaco Pastorius on electric bass starting in 1976, Weather Report had its greatest commercial success with Heavy Weather. Among the selections on this essential release are the original version of their biggest hit Birdland, Teen Town and A Remark You Made. With drummer Alex Acuna and percussionist Manolo Badrena, Heavy Weather features Weather Report at the height of its power.

This CD gives today's listeners a strong sampling of one of the most significant and enjoyable fusion bands.

-Scott Yanow