Joe zawinul

[Chippster]

I just "heard" that he had just passed away. Hospitalized last week at the end of a tour. Evidently a very private man and he was in Italy, so the news is not traveling so fast ... I saw him play 3 times and he was remarkable. I love to play "Birdland" on my mandobird!

[John Rosett]

Sad but true.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ineq1dTvO7kyN6rHToVENuwBgwKw

[KennyR]

Ahh...I was just listening to '8:30' on the way to work this morning.

Good Show Joe!

[Glassweb]

Here's a guy that did it all... musician, composer, producer, jazz and world music visionary... mercy, mercy me!

[Deaf David]

Weather Report awakened me from my dogmatic slumbers (to paraphrase Kant) back in the 70's. Until a college roommate slipped an early Weather Report record on my turn table I really didn't know what music could be.

[mandopete]

Man, that is awful news. #I was just thinking about Joe and Weather Report the other day when I saw his picture in the Berklee Alumni magazine. #A great loss to the Jazz world to be sure.

I also just found out that Herb Pomeroy had passed away in August, more bad news too.

[Wesley]

I was able to see him live once with Weather Report. The opening act was John McLaughin's Shakti. What an evening!

[Chippster]

You know i really can't see this as "awful news". Joe was a superstar of the world of modern jazz from the time he was in his early 30's ... that's really young for a jazz musician to have critical acclaim as well as financial success. I imagine that "Mercy Mercy Mercy" bought him enough freedom that he could pick projects that he really wanted to do. He sold a ton of records to young people like me in the 70's and we danced to "Birdland"! He finished his summer tour, played his heart out at 75 leading an incredible band and was hospitalized only a month ago, so he didn't ruin his body and brain with drugs or alchohol. I'm going to have to go get "Brown Street". As Wayne would have played for him "Thanks for the Memories" Joe !

[Chip Booth]

I keep a Weather Report album in my lesson room and turn my students on to them regularly, or use them as examples of this or that. Sorry to hear of his passing.

Chip

[brunello97]

I loved the early WR work and thought Zawinul and Wayne Shorter had an amazing minimalist's conception and interplay. But it was his work with Cannonball that will always remain the most profound to me: 'Mercy Mercy Mercy', 'Country Preacher', 'Walk Tall' etc. showed me how a white man could get DEEP inside an southern A-A musical language and speak from the heart.

I'm risking trouble here by suggesting Joe in the company of maybe only Hank Williams and Stevie Ray Vaughn-(maybe Steve Cropper as well) who have so movingly accessed and restated this tradition in such a way to effectively dissolve any barriers between music and race. But he did it.

Mick

[Chippsta]

Great point!! In an interview i heard on PBS, i think it was Nat Adderly who said "Back then, black folks couldn't believe that a white man could write something so funky and soulfull as "Mercy Mercy Mercy" ... but he GOT it!" He did transcend race. Imagine if a young Bill Monroe had hated the 'colored' musicians in his world instead of listening and learning from them!