Set List

1. NUBIAN SUNDANCE (ZAWINUL)

Josef Zawinul:	Vocal, pianos, synthesizer, percussion
Ishmael Wilburn:	Drums
Skip Hadden	Drums
Dom Um Romão:	Percussion
Muruga:	Percussion
Wayne Shorter:	Tenor and soprano saxophone
Alphonso Johnson:	Bass
Edna Write:	Vocalist
Marti McCall:	Vocalist
Jessica Smith:	Vocalist
James Gilstrad:	Vocalist
Billie Barnum:	Vocalist

Zawinul told Jazz Forum magazine, "'Nubian Sundance' is a complete improvisation of mine which I taped at home. Then I took the music from the tape and orchestrated it. So, as a matter of fact, you have an improvisation which was worked over later in such a manner that you never lose this feeling of purity--this remains an inspiration." [JF76]

He told journalist Conrad Silvert, "I ain't scared of Beethoven or nobody when it comes to composing. I wrote 'Nubian Sundance' in ten minutes, and it's a smoker--every bassline, every statement was originally improvised." Zawinul went on to describe the piece at length: "It was originally a 22-page score written down from my improvisation. I had just moved to California, and my parents were visiting, so it was a good time to compose. The music isn't about Nubia, really--it's a wedding dance. You can hear the man's voice calling Godinia, and later on she calls him, Accru. And then you hear the people cheering and applauding, that's like a toast, a certain ritual. The moral of the story is that if you meet the right person in your life, you always know from the very beginning." [DB78b]

2. AMERICAN TANGO (ZAWINUL/VITOUS)

Wayne Shorter:	Tenor and soprano saxophone
Auger James Adderley:	Vocal
Josef Zawinul:	Rhodes piano and synthesizer
Miroslav Vitous:	Bass
Alphonso Johnson:	Bass
Ishmael Wilburn:	Drums
Dom Um Romão:	Percussion

"'American Tango' was improvised in the studio," Zawinul told Jazz Forum magazine. "Mirsoslav Vitous had a little background but no melody to go with it. After some time, we began to feel a little frustrated. Now, I remembered a melody I had written long time ago. I added it to Miroslav's background and, in the studio, we improvised on it. This is the origin of 'American Tango.' [JF76]

3. CUCUMBER SLUMBER (ZAWINUL/JOHNSON)

Josef Zawinul:	Electric piano and EML synthesizer
Wayne Shorter:	Soprano and tenor saxophone
Alphonso Johnson:	Bass
Ishmael Wilburn:	Drums
Dom Um Romão:	Percussion
Ray Barretto:	Percussion

"'Cucumber Slumber' was a jam," Johnson told Zawinul biographer Brian Glasser. "We were recording in a studio in Connecticut, and I just came up with [sings the famous bassline]. All of a sudden, the drummer started playing, and it just took off from there. It was a total improvised jam. I'd have to say it was one of the best tracks for me. Not just because of that bassline--that was a stroke of luck--but when I listen to Wayne and Joe's solos, they're like, the perfect solos. Every note, all the phrasing, is just perfect, and I marvel at that. Even now I listen to that track and I go, 'God, how'd they do that?'" [IASW, p. 164]

"I'll let you in on a little secret, Johnson continued. "We kind of knew the three sections we'd done, and we were doing another take of it. At one point, Joe's playing, and I went to what you might call the bridge and I looked over and Joe's headphones had fallen off, so he was still playing the previous section. Then all of a sudden his radar went up and he just shifted gear, and it was brilliant, really amazing. It's still there, if you listen, because when they mixed the record back then, the big thing was quadraphonic sound, so they couldn't lose it." [IASW, p. 164]

"Cucumber Slumber" has been extensively sampled by rappers in the late 1980s and 1990s, a practice that often included no remuneration to the original artist. This led to some legal action, which was the subject of a 1992 article by Fred Shuster, which talked about a recent Federal court discussion determined that unless authorization is given by the copyright owner of the original material, the resulting new recording is against the law. In the article, Zawinul said the first responsibility of an artist is to give credit where credit is due:

"If you steal something, steal it and play it yourself," Zawinul said. "In the case of sampling, some type of money should be paid depending on what is being used."

Rapper M.C. 100 Ft. Jesus appropriated 16 measures of the Weather Report tune "Cucumber Slumber" for the track "Truth Is Out of Style," Zawinul said, "and they never even got in touch with us."

Maureen Woods, owner of Mizmo Enterprises, which administrates Zawinul's music publishing, said that her company had contacted I.R.S. Records, which represents M.C. 100 Ft. Jesus, but that there had been no reply so far.

"Usually, you work out something to do with royalties or a fee or something," Woods said. "If worse comes to worst, you go to court." [LADN92]

SIDE TWO

4. MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER (SHORTER)

Wayne Shorter:	Tac piano, soprano saxophone, tenor, sea shell
Josef Zawinul:	Rhodes piano
Alphonso Johnson:	Bass
Ishmael Wilburn:	Drums
Skip Hadden:	Drums
Dom Um Romão:	Percussion

In Glasser's book, In A Silent Way, Zawinul says, "This was one of Wayne's tunes, which I arranged. The end of it I more or less put together. We just played the wonderful keyboard line with that rhythm at the beginning, and Wayne is very particular about his writing--everything is written out. We practiced this tune very hard. I felt now when it's happening there should be a little more, so we just carried on and built it up a little bit." [IASW, p. 163]

Alphonso Johnson told Glasser, "There were two distinct drummers [on this track], one of whom was Skip Hadden, who played a kind of swing beat against Ishmael Wilburn, who played a straight-ahead rock/funk beat. It was the combination of the two drums that came up with that pattern. It was too complicated to explain to get one drummer to play that way. I think they lucked out because they had the drummers play separate, and when they brought the tracks together it worked perfectly. It wasn't like anybody had planned that pattern." [IASW, p. 163]

For "Mysterious Traveller," Zawinul took advantage of Risner's modifications to the ARP 2600s so that he could create a much fuller sound. "What I always liked about them," Zawinul once recalled, "was the way they were coupled together, so that I had six oscillators instead of three. On 'Scarlet Woman,' the melody chords would have been impossible to play without coupling the 2600s and detuning the oscillators." [KB84]

"Mysterious Traveller" also appears on the Weather Report compilation album This Is Jazz, Vol. 10 and various artists compilation Meltdown: The Birth of Fusion.

5. BLACKTHORN ROSE (SHORTER)

Wayne Shorter:	Soprano saxophone
Josef Zawinul:	Acoustic piano, melodica

6. SCARLET WOMAN (JOHNSON/SHORTER/ZAWINUL)

Wayne Shorter:	Soprano saxophone
Alphonso Johnson:	Bass
Josef Zawinul:	Rhodes piano, synthesizer
Dom Um Romão:	Percussion, drums
Steve Little:	Timpani

Zawinul described the creation of "Scarlet Woman" in 1976: "'Scarlet Woman' was conceived this way: Al Johnson brought the melody in, the first melody (sings it). That's the only thing he brought in. I put in the harmony, the bridge and I arranged it, and Wayne Shorter played the beautiful solo on it. So we just created it out of this first line. In my mind I could see the Himalayas, the mountain; and the great Welsch writer, Aleister Crowley, he called his wife 'Scarlet Woman.' He was in Tibet a lot, so I felt this kind of atmosphere. I saw people trekking, camels, shepherds, man, I saw the shepherds." [BE76]

Another description from a 1978 interview: "The atmosphere of this tune was set in the title. I was reading a book by Aliester Crowley, a famous Welsh mystic, and also a famous mountain climber. He was talking about being in Nepal, up on a mountain cliff in the Himalayas with his wife, whome he called 'the scarlet woman.' We have the cold wind in the beginning to set this atmosphere. Mystic. He called himself 6-6-6, the reincarnation of the devil. He was talking about the fourth dimension and all of this." [BAM78]

Alphonso Johnson told Glasser, "'Scarlet Woman' was a song that I wrote, and I'd conceived it totally differently to the way it turned out! Joe, in his infinite wisdom--and Wayne too, actually--he was the one who said a lot of times, when he was with Miles, he would bring in a chart and Miles would just play the intro, and that became a great song. So that's kind of what they did: they took that [sings descending four-note melody], and they eliminated the other three-fourths of my song. I like their version better. I've never even recorded the rest of the song. What they did was perfect." [IASW]

7. JUNGLE BOOK (ZAWINUL)

Josef Zawinul:	Vocal, piano, guitar, clay drum, tamboura, tac piano, kalimba, maracas, organ
Don Ashworth:	Ocarinas and woodwinds
Isacoff:	Tabla, finger cymbals
Dom Um Romão:	Triangle, tambourine, cabassa

"Jungle Book" was an improvistation that Zawinul recorded in his home studio. "It's taken over on the record exactly the way I played it at home for the first time!," Zawinul told Jurn Solothurnmann for Jazz Forum. "This is an improvisation which I could never reproduce in that way! Later, I overdubbed various instruments, but the main tape is from hime, with the laughing and crying of my children. I recorded it just with a cassette tape recorder, an improvisation from the first to the last note. It's my favorite piece, not because of structural or suchlike reasons but because it's nearest to this higher energy source!"

"The piano was slightly out of tune. You know, my piano is unique, as also is my house, for recordings. It happened in a big room with almost now furniture because we had just moved. While playing, my youngest son always bugged me: he wanted me to read to him from the 'Jungle Book.' I didn't respond and he started crying. Later on, I went to the studio and cleaned out the tape a little bit. And then I made many overdubbings with instruments I play myself: the kalimba, the guitar, the tabla, the sitar and many more." [JF76]

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