| Joe Zawinul's attitude, like Miles Davis', is strictly forward-looking
with regard to his music. "I don't listen to the old music," he
maintains. "When it's done, it's done." Still, Zawinul found a few
minutes to weigh in via phone on some old, done music in honor of
the recent Weather Report remastered reissues of Mysterious Traveller,
Tale Spinnin' and Black Market by Legacy. To read
Wayne Shorter's comments on Weather Report and the reissues, see
the June 2002 issue of JazzTimes.
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| Mysterious Traveller
(1973) |
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|
 This
was definitely more of a power band than the previous lineup of
Weather Report [which included Miroslav Vitous on bass and Eric
Gravatt on drums]. I think on this album more than any album we
had some kind of community effort, you know? On the next album after
this [Tale Spinnin'] it's just one or the other who wrote
the tune. This album was more collaborative.
"Nubian Sundance"
I really like this song. I had a problem with the song—not
making it, because it's all improvised—but with the drumbeat
I have, one drummer alone could not do it. That meant we had to
take two drummers out on the road and that worked out for a while
pretty good. [On the recording the drum tandem is Wayne Shorter's
cousin Ishmael Wilburn and Skip Hadden, though on the road they
used Wilburn and Daryl Brown.] The track opens with a crowd
cheering but it's not really a live recording or anything; I just
made it to sound that way. My original improvisation was on there
and it was a little on the noisy side. It started with acoustic
piano and singing. That's all from the original improv. And then
I said there is no way we can really reproduce that nice sound
so that it feels like it is something, being out there, people
enjoying that, you know. And that's the way it came out. Because
every time we played that song [he sings the intro]—fucking
people were going crazy, you know what I mean.
"American Tango"
This is really my tune but the introduction is by Miroslav Vitous.
I had him on there as a co-composer. It was his gift having been
in the band and all that. He wrote a beautiful introduction and
I wrote the rest of the tune.
"Cucumber Slumber"
This is an idea Slim [Alphonso Johnson] brought in. It's based
on that distinctive funky bass line. Funk was unfortunately not
the forte of Miroslav. He was good when it came down to playing
more traditional stuff, like walking. But he didn't have that
funk thing. And when I heard Alphonso play at the Academy in Philadelphia
I thought, "Here's the guy for us. A guy who can lay that stuff
down but at the same time is able to do some good soloing and
walking. From the Philadelphia school of bass playing. So it was
Alphonso's funky bass line that got this tune started. That's
what he brought in and I did the rest of it, adding in some funky
clavinet and further orchestrating the piece.
"Mysterious Traveller"
That's a Wayne Shorter tune, a beautiful, complete tune he brought
in.
"Blackthorn Rose"
Another Wayne tune. A nice interlude: a duet between Wayne and
myself on acoustic piano.
"Scarlet Woman"
Another nice tune. It's an interesting line that Slim brought
in, too, and I did the rest in terms of orchestration by basically
eliminating some sections to pare it down a bit and keep it more
atmospheric. [Dom Um Ramao plays the drums on this spacious
track.] And Wayne did such a great, incredible solo on that
that we put him in there as a co-composer, because, you know,
it was a democratic band. When people did something, they should
be in there. I orchestrated the tune but everyone contributed.
"Jungle Book"
That's also one of my tunes. I did it on acoustic piano. It's
the first tune I recorded when we moved to California. You can
hear Ivan, my youngest son, crying on it. He's our soundman on
all of our gigs now. This is actually an old tune that I had for
a long time and this just seemed like the time to do it, you know.
It has a kind of world music feel to it. Of course, that was long
before they even coined that term, 'world music.' It captures
the feeling of a place, like a lot of my tunes. In fact, my new
album is called Faces & Places. So I'm keeping in that
tradition of songwriting that conveys a sense of ambiance.
 This
was the second studio record we did out here in California, and
we had Ndugu Chancler on drums for that. There is a lot of serious
composing on this record as opposed to just writing a little melody
and then fooling around with it.
"Man in the Green Shirt"
This tune is basically a little improvisation I did a while back
when I was in the Virgin Islands. I saw this old guy dancing at
a carnival. They were all sitting with the steel drums up there
on a truck and this old dude started dancing to the music, and
it was the most unbelievable dancing I had ever seen—really
together. So it inspired this idea. It had nothing to do with
that music he was dancing to—that steel drum stuff. I was
just trying to create an atmosphere and capture the vibe of this
guy dancing. It's a kind of happy sounding tune. I play melodica
on one part against Wayne's soprano. It's a nice song.
"Lusitanos"
This is a pure Wayne Shorter tune. Very nice tune. I remember
I enjoyed that a lot.
"Between the Thighs"
This is my tune. It's a fully developed piece, which is what I
like about this record. This is really the way I want to write
music—not just have a little melody and then fool around
with it a lot. I prefer to have an extended kind of work and this
tune, "Between the Thighs," sort of pointed me in that direction,
so to speak. It's a composed piece but it's also open enough to
include some great improvisations
"Badia"
A nice little 'other' kind of tune about an old girlfriend of
mine.
"Freezing Fire"
Another Wayne Shorter tune.
"Five Short Stories"
Also a Wayne tune. There is no co-writing on this record.
 This,
of course, represents Jaco's first recording and his first composition
with Weather Report ["Barbary Coast"]. What I like about this album
is that Wayne played this [electric wind instrument], the Lyricon.
I loved the way he played the Lyricon because it allowed him to
get away from his usual sound. I wish more saxophone players would
do things like that more. Because Wayne had a personality on any
instrument. If you have personality it doesn't matter what you play
anyhow. If you don't, there ain't no synthesizer in the world gonna
help you or not any acoustic instrument either. It won't help you
if you don't have it. But Wayne had it then with this Lyricon, and
he could play some really deep bass lines with me on that thing.
Also, my wife did the album cover for this one.
"Black Market"
I really wanted to try and capture another bit of ambiance with
this tune. [The voices you hear at the outset belong to Alex Acuña
and his family.]
"Cannonball"
This is a dedication to Cannonball Adderley. Cannon died in July
of '75 and that was really very, very hard on everybody who was
around Cannon. I was not in his band for a long time but Cannonball
was one of the great people I have ever known and one of my real
best friends. So I wrote this piece and Jaco told me a while back
that he and his father really liked Cannon a lot. And so I thought
maybe it would be a good idea to try him out on this tune, because
Alphonso was by that time already talking about having a band
with George Duke and Billy Cobham [and John Scofield]. And so
I ran into Tony Williams and he said, "Man, check this guy from
Florida out. He's bad!" And I said to him, "Yeah, this guy has
been writing to me all the time and sending me cassettes." So
I called him and he came up for this song and we had such a wonderful
time. And it was funny because at first he wanted to play a lot
of stuff on the song—a little too busy. And I had to say,
"No, no. Play that beautiful tone you have—just play that
little line." And that's what you hear on the record, that beautiful
bass melody. And it's a first take. Jaco was something special,
man. And he fits really well on this particular piece.
"Gibraltar"
This is my improvisation from beginning to end. It was one of
those things I put together and then I wrote it out for the band
and we played it—as simple as that. This tune reminds me
of different places.
"Elegant People"
Wayne Shorter song.
"Three Clowns"
Wayne Shorter song.
"Hernandu"
A great fucking tune by Alphonso Johnson in 11/4 time that I did
some further orchestrating on. This tune I really like.
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