Joe Zawinul 1932-2007
It was sometime in late ‘97 or early ‘98, and I still remember it as if it had happened yesterday: working in the UK for a few months, I was driving to work one morning when I heard an awesome song on the radio. At first, I couldn’t quit place it, but I knew I had heard this before. Then it hit me: it was Weather Report’s “Birdland”. I knew the song from a Quincy Jones album, but this original was so much better: raw, infectuous, aggressive, energetic.
A few days later, I checked out the local record store for Weather Report albums, and I was lucky: they had a number of re-releases of the original albums from the 70s and 80s, including “Heavy Weather” featuring “Birdland.” I bought a few and have been a huge fan of the band and its ingenious musical mastermind, Joe Zawinul, ever since.
With every single tune I listened to, Joe and his congenial partners expanded my musical horizon in amazing ways. It was through his recording collaborations that I discovered Jazz greats like Dinah Washington, Cannonball Adderley, Wayne Shorter, Jaco Pastorius, Maria João, Victor Bailey, and many others. His mantra of “play electronic, sound acoustic” fundamentally changed my view of playing electronic keyboards.
Someone once said that Joe Zawinul is “probably Europe’s most influential Jazz export,” and I couldn’t agree more.
While writing these lines, I’m listening to a fabulous recording of “Brown Street,” played live by Zawinul and the WDR Big Band, and I can’t hold back the tears. This morning, Joe passed away in Vienna at age 75.
Photo by Akin Falope
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