Weather Report has long been an influential
band, and even detractors of the group’s later work
find it difficult to be critical of some of the group’s
early recordings. At the group’s core were keyboardist
Joe Zawinul, a veteran of Cannonball Adderley’s group
as well as influential work with Miles Davis, and saxophonist
Wayne Shorter, who worked extensively with Davis as part of
his second great quintet and, before that, Art Blakey. The
third member that was often of great importance was the group’s
bassist, and they went through several during the group’s
tenure. The most famous is, of course, Jaco Pastorious, who
not only redefined the electric bass and what its role in
a group could be, but who also helped the group craft a more
groove-oriented sound and contributed some excellent compositions.
During the years that Pastorious was on board, the group’s
core became a triumvirate—his contributions were that
essential.
Many would divide the group’s work into three basic
periods. The earliest was characterized by a sound and concept
that few other groups have attempted and no one has been able
to carry off as Zawinul and company did. Zawinul once described
the concept as ‘no one solos, everyone solos.’
In short, the musicians play with and around each other, sometimes
carrying the melodic line, and then handing it off to someone
else. The foreground and background of the music shift fairly
continuously. This period is characterized by the first three
albums, Weather Report, I Sing The Body Electric,
and Live In Tokyo. The second section is characterized
by a funkier, more groove-oriented feeling. The albums Sweetnighter,
Mysterious Traveller, and Tale Spinnin’
are representative of this era. The funk-oriented music found
on these albums is very open-ended, with less overtly melodic
content and looser structure to the songs. That began to tighten
up on Tale Spinnin’ and a more song-form type
of composition became the norm for the albums Black Market,
Heavy Weather, and Mr. Gone. Black Market
was the first album to introduce Jaco Pastorious, and his
presence is heavily felt on Heavy Weather and Mr.
Gone. His presence was also monumental onstage, as evidenced
by the live recording 8:30 released in 1979. Pastorious
was also around for the band’s next two albums, Night
Passage, and 1982’s Weather Report, the
group second eponomously-titled release. The group’s
final four albums—Procession, Domino Theory, Sportin’
Life, and This Is This—are characterized
by shifting personnel, though bassist Victor Bailey and drummer
Omar Hakim remain pretty consistent presences.
It’s challenging to put together a retrospective of
this group’s work, but the new box set, Weather
Report—Forecast: Tomorrow does a nice job of presenting
the group’s evolving sound in 3 CDs and a DVD. Forecast:
Tomorrow begins with the four minute, eighteen second
Miles Davis performance of Joe Zawinul’s theme "In
a Silent Way." One can certainly hear the beginnings
of Weather Report here, which should come as no surprise since
the track features Zawinul and Shorter, with John McLaughlin
on guitar. The slow unfolding of the melody is a strategy
Zawinul would use again and again in the Weather Report years.
Stripped of the rock/rhythm groove of the second section,
it is very reminiscent of the first Weather Report recordings.
The music unfolds in an organic way and allows itself to be
discovered rather than imposing itself on the listener. Next
up is Wayne Shorter’s “Supernova” from the
album of the same name. This is something of a free jazz experiment,
with Shorter joined by guitarists John McLaughlin and Sonny
Sharrock, Jack DeJohnette, Chick Corea, and Airto Moreira
as well as future Weather Report bassist Miroslav Vituous.
It demonstrates the freer side of Shorter’s music, and
experience that he brought with him to Report. Though free
improvisation was used less to create tension and more as
a coloring with Weather Report, it was still an element of
the mix. The third pre-Report track here is from Cannonball
Adderley, an excerpt from Zawinul’s “Experience
in E.” Produced by longtime Adderley producer David
Axelrod, the piece begins atmospherically but then slides
into the kind of Fender Rhodes and ride cymbal groove demonstrated
on Miles’ In a Silent Way album. Zawinul definitely
was one of the pioneers of the Fender Rhodes in jazz, as were
fellow Davis alumnus Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea.
When Zawinul and Shorter announced they were forming a new
band with bassist Miroslav Vitous and a drummer to be named
later, expectations were high. And the resulting album, Weather
Report, did not fail to fascinate and to point the way
towards jazz music’s future—a future that was
not out of line with its recent past, but which many did not
want to hear of. Still, what could have prepared listeners
for the opening track, “Milky Way,” included here?
A duet for acoustic piano and saxophone, it utilizes the sound
created when Zawinul would hold down a chord on the piano
and Shorter would play an arpeggio into the piano’s
soundboard. Only the return sound from the piano was recorded,
not Shorter’s actual notes, giving the piece, which
was edited together in the studio, an ethereal sound. The
next track included from the 1971 debut album are “Tears”
which used a funk-rock sound and drummer Alphonse Mouzon’s
voice singing syllables as a pure instrument. The full version
of “Eurydice,” in many ways the most traditional
jazz sound here (albeit a very modern conception) is heard.
The players do solo, which is not really done on the rest
of the album. Also included is Zawinul’s “Orange
Lady” which was originally recorded by Miles, but which
was not released until the Complete Bitches Brew
sessions came out. Weather Report’s debut album created
a huge stir that went through the jazz community as well as
reverberating beyond. The album won jazz album of the year
in the Down Beat Readers Poll. The music was hard to pin down,
offering the freedom of modern jazz, yet it was also in snych
with what was happening in the rock music world.
