Heavy Weather (Remastered) Weather Report

• 1 Birdland 05:59
• 2 A Remark You Made 06:51
• 3 Teen Town 02:52
• 4 Harlequin 03:59
• 5 Rumba Mama 02:11
• 6 Palladium 04:46
• 7 The Juggler 05:03
• 8 Havona 06:01
• Total Runtime 37:42

Info for Heavy Weather (Remastered)

Probably the best fusion album ever made, and the coming together of five precociously talented musicians. Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter assembled the unit with little knowledge that the complex music would become so accessible. Two compostions stand out; the graceful 'A Remark You Made', an evocative love song without words, and the hit single 'Birdland' (so successful it was even used by Akai for a major advertising campaign). On these two Zawinul compostions their genius bass player Jaco Pastorius gives a taste of what he was capable of. He bent the notes to make them talk, and that high octave solo on 'Birdland' is still a treasured moment.

Heavy Weather was the album that turned the corner for Weather Report. That was when audiences started to jump up — especially in Europe [we started getting] 14–15,000 people in our audiences. In Rome, 18,000 or more.

Jaco Pastorius had just joined the band, I think. We had been in Florida and we were kind of inquiring about him. Then one day when we were coming out of a restaurant, we heard this guy running up behind us. 'I heard you guys were looking for me,' he said. 'I'm Jaco. The baddest bass player in the world.'

And he was right for us. His bass had a sort of vocal, melodic quality. He could punctuate and sing at the same time on the bass. From the first time we heard him we knew that he was it. He was the guy. He was a very integral part in getting the kind of tonal focus we wanted. He supplied what we couldn't get at that time. We were up against rock and roll. And Jaco playing the bass contributed to the pulse of the sound that we couldn't get from just one person on the drums.

During the recording of Heavy Weather there was a lot of activity between all of us, and a lot of enthusiasm, camaraderie and laughing in the studio. We were working on the bass lines, like never before. We could do things with Jaco's bass and Joe Zawinul's bass lines on the synthesizers, working together, with ease. Things we could never do before we got into the Heavy Weather recording.

We tried to stay away from an album where all the pieces sounded so much alike, a trap that many other players still fall into — doing something familiar in the effort to be sure of getting a hit. We were saying that anywhere they put the needle on the record should be an attention-getter. The music should sound the way it did when we recorded it, with gusto and passion, flowing through the recording studio, as though we were playing it for a live audience. That was the approach that moved the music right into the album.

We didn't actually think 'Birdland' was going to become a hit. [Editor's Note: The lead track Heavy Weather, 'Birdland' was inducted into the GRAMMY Hall Of Fame in 2010.] Joe named the piece 'Birdland' because he wanted it to reflect the experiences he had when he played at Birdland, the club. I remember him playing with Dinah Washington there — with exactly the kind of beat she had, with her high heels stomping the floor while she was singing. And that's what Joe used in 'Birdland.' And in places you can hear the Latin flavor of Birdland, the club, too. So we all agreed, 'Let's call the song 'Birdland.''

When we were asked what kind of music we were playing, we all came to kind of the same description. We said, 'We're playing folk music of the future.' (Don Heckman)

Joe Zawinul, vocals, piano, synthesizers, melodica
Jaco Pastorius, vocals, fretless bass, mando-cello, drums, steel drums
Manolo Bandrena, vocals, percussion
Wayne Shorter, soprano & tenor saxophones
Alex Acuna, drums, percussion

Recorded in late 1976 and early 1977 at the Devonshire Sound Studios in North Hollywood, California
Engineered by Jerry Hudgins, Brian Risner, Ron Malo
Produced by Joe Zawinul, Jaco Pastorius and Wayne Shorter

Digitally remastered

Weather Report
started out as a jazz equivalent of what the rock world in 1970 was calling a "supergroup." But unlike most of the rock supergroups, this one not only kept going for a good 15 years, it more than lived up to its billing, practically defining the state of the jazz-rock art throughout almost all of its run. Weather Report also anticipated and contributed to the North American interest in world music rhythms and structures, prodded by keyboardist/co-founder Joe Zawinul. And WR, like many of jazz's great long-lived groups, proved to be an incubator for several future leaders who passed in and out of the band in a never-ending series of revolving-door personnel changes.

The original members of the band were Zawinul, Wayne Shorter (saxophones), Miroslav Vitous (electric bass), Airto Moreira (percussion) and Alphonse Mouzon (drums), with only Zawinul and (until 1985) Shorter remaining in place throughout the band's lifespan. Zawinul, Shorter and Moreira all had experience playing in and influencing the studio and live electric bands of Miles Davis -- and at first, WR was a direct extension of Miles' In a Silent Way/b****es Brew period, with free-floating collective improvisation and interplay, combining elements of jazz, rock, funk, Latin and other ethnic musics.

With the release of Sweetnighter in 1972, Zawinul's influence upon the band's direction began to deepen; the groove became more important, structures were imposed upon the material (though the group continued its freewheeling interplay in live gigs).

When the innovative bassist Jaco Pastorius replaced Alphonso Johnson in 1976, WR entered its most popular phase, with Pastorius becoming a flamboyant third lead voice, Shorter's sax receding into more epigrammatic form, and Zawinul rediscovering his commercial touch and sharpening his electronic sophistication. The best-selling Heavy Weather album (1977) actually served up a hit song that became a jazz standard ("Birdland"), and with the entry of Peter Erskine on drums (1978), the group finally had a stable lineup for awhile. Contrary to accepted wisdom, the departures of Pastorius and Erskine in 1982 led to a recharging of WR's batteries; their replacements Victor Bailey (bass), Omar Hakim (drums), Jose Rossy and later, Mino Cinelu (percussion) were more amenable to Zawinul's deepening inclinations for Third World rhythms, sounds and textures.

This edition of WR rattled off three more albums, including the outstanding Procession. But Shorter, who had gradually ceded nearly total artistic control to Zawinul, was getting restless; he took a leave of absence in 1985 and later that year, left WR for good.

This Is This (1985), in which Erskine returns and Shorter plays only a limited role, was WR's swan song. Zawinul would tour in 1986 with a revamped version called Weather Update (a prelude to the keyboardist's own Zawinul Syndicate), and there was talk in 1996 about Zawinul and Shorter reuniting in the studio for a new edition of WR, but Zawinul later deflated the speculation. (Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide)

Booklet for Heavy Weather (Remastered)