Set List

1. BIRDLAND (ZAWINUL)

Zawinul:	Oberheim polyphonic synthesizer, ARP 2600 synthesizer, acoustic piano, vocal, melodica
Shorter:	Soprano and tenor saxophone
Pastorius:	Bass, mandocello, vocals
Acuña:	Drums
Badrena:	Tambourine

A tour de force for Zawinul and Weather Report. Zawinul knew he had something special from the beginning. "When we rehearsed it the very first time it was easy to see that there was something special there. It's a wonderful feeling." [BAM83] Birdland, of course, was the famous New York jazz club that had a great impact on Zawinul's life. "All of us in Vienna knew about this fabulous place," Zawinul explained to Leonard Feather in 1990. "Friederich Gulda, the great pianist, played there with a jazz group and told me all about it. We all dreamed about visiting Birdland some day ... That club made such an impact on me. I met Miles there, and Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong; I met my wife Maxine there. Everyone I worshiped I met at Birdland." [LAT90]

Sy Johnson interviewed Zawinul for the Fall 1977 issue of Jazz magazine. Johnson remarked that it was a long trip from those days in Birdland to the tune "Birdland," and asked Zawinul how he happened to write it, and how the record went together.

"To me Birdland was the most important place in my entire life. I met everybody including my beautiful wife in this club. I met Miles, I met Duke Ellington. I met anyone I ever cared for in this business. I used to hang out there every night.

"I write my music only by improvising. All these tunes are improvised. And then I just take them from the tape and orchestrate them--not really writing any orchestrations, but just having in my head what I want to do. I had a concept for this album to go back to those good old days when stuff was happening in New York. I wanted to show some of the feeling happening in those days, man."

"The first line I had was [Joe sings]. I said, 'This sounds to me like when I was working with Dinah Washington.' Nothing remotely like the music we were into, but the kind of atmosphere we'd have when she was stompin' her heel. That's why I got into this tune."

I told him it sounded uncannily to me like the big bands at Birdland.

"You got it, you got it!! Exactly like when I used to come down the stairs at 2 o'clock and Count Basie or Duke used to be working there. This is the feeling I got from the whole thing. And the saxophone thing I do on the Oberheim synthesizer really sounds like a big ol' reed section."

I commented on the muted brass-like colors and how the chromatic section made me laugh aloud when I first heard it. Joe told me that it sounded exactly like the record when they played it in person.

"Even fuller, man. 'Cause we know it better, swingin' better. We're cookin' on the music. We phrase it like we improvise it. Everything is right on the tit!!" [Jazz77]

Zawinul told Feather that his management was skeptical about the title. "Who cares about Bird or Birdland?" they asked. Zawinul was adamant: "I don't care what you say, that's what I want to call it. And, of course, it was not only a big hit then in the 1970s, but also when Jon Hendricks set lyrics to it in the '80s and Manhattan Transfer recorded it, they won the Grammy. So now we're in the '90s and it's on an album [Quincy Jones' Back to the Block] that will sell 10 times as many as all the rest together." [LAT90]

Heavy Weather's liner notes give special thanks to Tom Oberheim for his polyphonic synthesizer. Tom Oberheim was founder of Oberheim Instruments, and creator of a line of analog synthesizer modules that were packaged in multi-voice configurations. "Birdland"'s sound was largely due to Zawinul's use of the Oberheim Eight-Voice polyphonic synthesizer, which was unveiled at the June 1975 National Association of Music Merchants show. Mark Vail, in his book Vintage Synthesizers, states that Oberheim was "especially proud" of the way Zawinul used a Four Voice on "Birdland":

Shortly after Zawinul had gotten the instrument, Tom paid him a visit. Though he spent the whole evening with Zawinul, explaining in detail how the [instrument] worked, Tom left convinced that Zawinul didn't understand anything he had said, and that the new instrument would be pushed into a corner to gather dust. Then, about a week later, Zawinul invited Oberheim over to hear the rough mix of "Birdland." Tom remembers being bowled over by the great big-band sound Josef had created on his Four Voice. And "Birdland" became one of Weather Report's biggest hits. [VS, p. 153]

International Music & Recording World's Hugo Bruton caught Zawinul and Pastorius in a particularly grumpy mood in 1981. ("Interviews are for what?" Zawinul asked Bruton. And Jaco dismissed him at first, saying, "I don't do interviews. I know I'm the best.") They did do the interview of course, and Zawinul told Bruton, "I had the line on 'Birdland' from an old song I had never recorded. We did it in the studio in one take." [IM81] Indeed, on unofficial recordings from 1975 and 1976 Zawinul repeats the opening line from "Birdland" on his Rhodes electric piano as a sort of intro to "Dr. Honoris Causa."

Another notable aspect of "Birdland" is Jaco's use of false harmonics on the introduction--one of best-known innovations on the electric bass. In 1984 Bill Milkowski asked Jaco about his harmonics techniques. "For students who want to learn the basics of harmonics, all you've got to do is get a really good violin book and read about flageolet tones [natural harmonics]. It's been done for years and years on violins, cellos, etc. All you've got to do is learn where they're at, spend a lot of time working on it, and know what they are. If you learn all the open-string harmonics on a bass--all the natural harmonics--you can play just about every note chromatically. The other way is your picking technique. Let's say on 'Birdland,' for example, where I pick out that intro part in harmonics, I get that sound by using my thumb on my right hand to lightly touch the string at the octave and picking behind it, almost like a steel guitar player would. You can get harmonics this way; it's just a matter of subdividing the string. So I play the note with the left hand on the fingerboard, holding it down. Then with my right-hand thumb, I'll be on the note an octave higher, up around by the pickup, and pluck the string with my first and second fingers behind the thumb. That way you hear the harmonic. It's actually very simple. You just have to spend a lot of time doing it, and you've got to have really good chops because it hurts your fingers. You have to pick it very hard to get it to come out." [GP84a]

The aforementioned Bruton tried to get Jaco to explain the same thing, but being in an, um, less expansive mood, Jaco summarized it for him: "I invented that shit, man. OK. You want technique. I'll tell you quickly. You know how to hit a G in the middle on a harmonic to tune up, and you hit a D. If you put a capo on the same thing will happen. Halfway you'll get your harmonic, the fifth, etcetera. They you pick it another half of the half. Ahh, it's so goddamn basic, it's mathematics we're talking about. It's all fractions and shit. Basic." [IM81] Other examples of Jaco's use of harmonics can be found on "Three Views Of A Secret" and "Port Of Entry," both on the Night Passage album, and on "Continuum" from Jaco's debut album.

"Birdland" has become something of a fusion era standard, having been recorded by dozens of artists ranging in diversity from Snoopy's Jazz Classiks on Toys (yes, the comic strip characters) to Lalo Shifrin's Jazz Meets Sympony Collection. The Manhattan Transfer version on their 1979 album Extensions, with lyrics by Jon Hendricks, won a Grammy award and prompted Zawinul to invite the Transfer onto the stage with Weather Report for a surprise encore performance of "Birdland" at the Playboy Jazz Festival. Zawinul didn't always take kindly to covers of his tunes, remarking in early 1979, "I don't believe in other people playing my music unless it's done right. I don't believe in Buddy Rich playing my 'Birdland.' That's shit." [CW79] Zawinul played on Quincy Jones' version of "Birdland" on the latter's 1990 album Back On The Block, which went platinum and reached the national top ten chart. "I had just gotten back from a trip to Japan with the Zawinul Syndicate," Zawinul told Leonard Feather, "and found a message that Quincy Jones was looking for me. He needed the exact line; he had seen lead sheets but wanted to have it exactly the way I wrote it. He said, 'Hey man I'm going to record it and I want to use rappers. I'd like to turn on a lot of young folks, the black kids especially, who never saw Birdland but need to know what it represented.'" [LAT90]

This track is also included in the Weather Report compilation album This Is Jazz, Vol. 10, and the various artist compilations Classic Jazz Funk, Vol. 4, Instrumental History of Jazz, and Ken Burns Jazz: The Story of America's Music.

2. A REMARK YOU MADE (ZAWINUL)

Zawinul:	Rhodes electric piano, ARP 2600 synthesizer, Oberheim polyphonic synthesizer
Shorter:	Tenor saxophone
Pastorius:	Bass
Acuña:	Drums

"A Remark You Made" is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful ballads Zawinul has ever penned. "I wrote 'A Remark You Made' the first day that I had my Oberheim string synthesizer and I found that sound that I use on the song. The next day, Jaco came over and we just did it. I knew it was special right away." [BAM83]

In a 1988 interview, Woodard commented to Zawinul that "in a tune like 'A Remark You Made,' the very tone of the bass makes the melody sing." "I'm a composer who works with sound," replied Zawinul. "If you drop a dime, I can write a song based on the tone. When I heard Jaco's tone, I immediately began to write a song, based on him and the saxophone and my little jive. That's where I'm coming from. I dial myself up a sound on my synthesizer and turn on my tape recorder and that's for sure a song. I live from sound, and he had a sound for all time. Nobody had a better, cleaner sound." [DB88] Zawinul explained to Milkowski, "That boy had a sound that was so easy to write for, especially ballads. There were many strengths that Alphonso brought to the band, but tone-wise he was in another category. What I wrote for Jaco, I could never have written for Alphonso." [Jaco, p. 81] Jaco's own comments about his sound can be found in the description of "Cannon Ball" on the Black Market page.

In his Zawinul interview, Sy Johnson told Zawinul the tune reminded him of "one of those ballad features for the tenor player that every big band had in the book."

"The first day I got the Oberheim, I sat down to try it," Zawinul responded. "It had a string setup on it. I just played it. Every note Wayne played was there. I wrote it down and we did it in one or two takes. All I did was overdub a little harmony. It was all there in one time through from the music. People love it when we play it in person."

That little harmonic and melodic turn in there sounds like the kind of thing guys used to know how to do that everybody today seems to have forgotten.

"Ain't it the truth. It's what we were working for on this record. I was taking it home every night to check it out with earphones. See what you do next. How to make it better. It really sounds clean. When you hear with earphones, it's such a fine recording job we did." [Jazz77]

3. TEEN TOWN (PASTORIUS)

Pastorius:	Drums, bass
Zawinul:	Rhodes electric piano, ARP 2600, melodica, Oberheim polyphonic synthesizer
Shorter:	Soprano saxophone
Badrena:	Congas

"Teen Town" takes its title from a youth club where Jaco grew up. In addition to composing the tune and playing bass, Jaco also plays drums, explaining to Williamson that he played the drums first, and overdubbed the bass part afterwards. Jaco went on to describe "Teen Town" at length:

It's... TRICKY! I'm a drummer: that was my first instrument when I was a kid, and I switched to the bass because I broke my arm in an accident. I didn't have to go to the bass, but I had to stop drums because I had no power left in my left arm, and from about age 13 to 18, my left arm was pretty useless. I couldn't push, man; and like, to play the drums, you gotta push. I was playing in a band on drums--one that I'd started actually--and I got kicked out! But they asked me back if I was playing bass, so I bought a bass and joined them again!

I was 15, I didn't know where the notes were or anything, I just started grooving, y'know? And I've never been out of work since, with the bass! But yeah, "Teen Town" was actually a place I use to go to dance when I was 13, and it was a church on the Intra-Coastal waterway, in Pompano Beach, Florida. I used to just wish I could be up there playing drums, that's why I sorta had to play the drums on this tune--because the drums are talking with the bass, too--because now I'm a bass player, but I can still play the drums, y'know? It's a lot of fun: "Teen Town" is like a little theater thing, yeah? You're a kid and you go to Teen Town; you're 13 years old; you wanna hang out with some chicks; there are all sorts of little ego trips going on in there; all that sorta shit is going on in there. And at the end, it gets a little mysterious, because you start growing up... It's all in there! (laughs) [BBC78]

In In A Silent Way, Zawinul says, "You know what? This bassline is played by both of us! It was the Oberheim eight-voice which doubled his bass, and we played so well together that it sounds like one instrument. The bass is a wonderful instrument, but sometimes you need a little more attack on it to really cut it, and that's what it was on this song. Jaco brought it in, and it was very quickly done. As a matter of fact, the whole album was played as well as we have ever played in the studio." [IASW, p. 198]

In a 1977 interview, Brian Risner described how "Teen Town" had a long gestation period. The interviewer, Gil Podolinsky, asked Risner about the band's practice of taking a day's recordings home to see what they had. "Right," replied Risner, "every bit of 16 track is put on cassette and everybody goes home and does their homework. It's a constant evolution in the studio where a tune three months later will have the basic root but the rest has changed. 'Teen Town' is a good example. We lived with that tune for a month, and nobody was really pleased with it; then one afternoon we went in, brought the tempo up and changed it all around. Sometimes you just wait for something to affect someone's life so that he'll see the tune differently and then it happens." [MR77]

A transcription of "Teen Town" appears in the January 1988 issue of Guitar for the Practicing Musician magazine.

4. HARLEQUIN (SHORTER)

Shorter:	Soprano saxophone
Zawinul:	ARP 2600 synthesizer, Oberheim polyphonic synthesizer, acoustic piano, Rhodes electric piano
Pastorius:	Bass
Acuña:	Drums
Badrena:	Vocal

SIDE TWO

5. RUMBA MAMA (BADRENA/ACUÑA)

Badrena:	Vocal, timbales, congas
Acuña:	Congas, tom toms

This recording comes from Weather Report's July 8, 1976 performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

6. PALLADIUM (SHORTER)

Shorter:	Soprano and tenor saxophone
Zawinul:	ARP 2600 synthesizer, Rhodes electric piano
Pastorius:	Bass, steel drums
Acuña:	Drums
Badrena:	Congas, percussion

Shorter's inspiration for this composition was the Latin jazz concerts he attended as a kid at the Palladium Club in New York City.

7. THE JUGGLER (ZAWINUL)

Zawinul:	Rhodes electric piano, ARP 2600 synthesizer, acoustic piano, guitar, tabla
Pastorius:	Bass, mandocello
Shorter:	Soprano and tenor saxophone
Acuña:	Drums, handclap
Badrena:	Percussion

In a 1978 Rhodes advertisement, Zawinul described how "The Juggler" came about. Asked how he creates, Joe said, "Sometimes in the usual way--thinking through a melody on my Rhodes and scoring as I go along. But creativity is funny and unpredictable. Take "Juggler" on our album, Heavy Weather. I was just improvising and unknown to me, Brian Risner, our engineer, taped my playing. A year later, he ran the tape for me. I wrote it down exactly and Weather Report recorded it. You never know when you're creating." [Rhodes78]

On "The Juggler," as well as "Birdland," Jaco is credited with playing the mandocello in addition to the bass. For those curious, a mandocello is a larger, baritone version of a mandolin. It is to the mandolin what the cello is to the violin. For more information see "The Mandocello" by David Brown.

8. HAVONA (PASTORIUS)

Pastorius:	Bass
Shorter:	Soprano saxophone
Zawinul:	Acoustic piano, Oberheim polyphonic synthesizer, ARP 2600 synthesizer
Acuña:	Drums

One of Jaco's finest statements as a member of Weather Report. Yet curiously, there isn't much written about it in the Weather Report literature. According to an article in the January 2002 issue of Bass Player magazine, Jaco originally conceived "Havona" well before joining Weather Report. The article includes a reproduction of Jaco's hand-written circa-1973 lead sheet. In the article bassist Mark Egan recalls receiving a ten-bar "Havona" exercise from Jaco while a student of Jaco's at the University of Miami in 1972. A raw version of "Havona," with Jaco, Herbie Hancock, Lenny White and Don Alias, was recorded during the sessions that produced Jaco's 1976 debut album, but has not been released. [BP01b]

Ingrid Pastorius, Jaco's widow, thinks he must have written "Havona" after he started reading The Urantia Book. In that book Havona is a special place, and Ingrid says it has been described as follows:

Paradise lies at the center of Havona, a perfect universe consisting of one billion spheres of "unimagined beauty". This universe was created in perfection, not evolved. Havona is a source of perfect love, beauty, and satisfaction.

"Guess his solo pretty much says the same thing," says Ingrid.

Alex Acuña told Brian Glasser, "I think my favorite [track on Heavy Weather] is 'Havona.' That, for me, is how I always want to play, that kind of a conversation. When I hear that tune, I still get the chills. Everything was improvised in that moment--it's almost no overdubs." [IASW, p. 197]

HOME