Joe Zawinul - One People (Live (Remastered)) '2022

Tracks list

Tracklist:

01. Little Rootie Tootie (Live (Remastered))
02. Percussion Solo (Live (Remastered))
03. Black Water (Live (Remastered))
04. Bass Solo (Live (Remastered))
05. Madagascar (Live (Remastered))
06. Carnavallo (Live (Remastered))
07. Badhia Boogie Woogie Waltz (Live (Remastered))
08. Corner Pocket, Sex Machine, Corner Pocket (Live (Remastered))
09. One Eye, One Mind, One People (Live (Remastered))


 moreAt age six, Josef Erich Zawinul started to play the accordion in his
native Austria, and studies in classical piano and composition at the Vienna
Conservatory soon followed. His interest in jazz piano, initially influenced by
George Shearing and Erroll Garner, led to jobs with Austrian saxophonist Hans
Koller in 1952 and gigs with his own trio in France and Germany. He immigrated
to the United States in late 1958 after winning a scholarship to Berklee, yet
after just one week in class, he left to join Maynard Ferguson's band for eight
months, where Miles Davis first took notice of him. Following a brief stay with
Slide Hampton, Zawinul became Dinah Washington's pianist from 1959 to 1961, and
then spent a month with Harry "Sweets" Edison before Cannonball Adderley picked
him to fill the piano chair in his quintet. There Zawinul stayed and blossomed
for nine years, contributing several compositions to the Adderley band book --
among them the major pop hit "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy," "Walk Tall," and "Country
Preacher" -- and ultimately helping to steer the Adderley group into the
electronic era. While with Adderley, Zawinul evolved from a hard bop pianist to
a soul-jazz performer heavily steeped in the blues, and ultimately a jazz-rock
explorer on the electric piano. Toward the end of his Adderley gig (1969-1970),
he was right in the thick of the new jazz-rock scene, recording several
pioneering records with Miles Davis, contributing the title tune of Davis' In a
Silent Way album.

After recording a self-titled solo album, Zawinul left Adderley to form Weather
Report with Wayne Shorter and Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous in November 1970.
Weather Report gave the increasingly self-confident Zawinul a platform to evolve
even further as his interest in propulsive grooves and music from Africa and the
Middle East ignited and developed. He gradually dropped the electric piano in
favor of a series of ever more sophisticated synthesizers, which he mastered to
levels never thought possible by those who derided the instruments as sterile,
unfeeling machines. Weather Report eventually became a popular group that
appealed to audiences beyond jazz and progressive rock, thanks in no small part
to Zawinul's hit song "Birdland."

When Zawinul and Shorter finally came to a parting of ways in 1985, Zawinul
started to tour all by himself, surrounded by keyboards and rhythm machines, but
resurfaced the following year with a short-lived extension of Weather Report
called Weather Update (which did not leave any recordings). Weather Update
quickly evolved into another group, the Zawinul Syndicate, which over the span
of a decade tilted increasingly toward groove-oriented world music influences.
Zawinul showed renewed interest in his European roots, collaborating with fellow
Viennese classical pianist Friedrich Gulda from 1987 to 1994, producing a
full-blown classically based symphony, Stories of the Danube, in 1993, and
following the near-disastrous Malibu fires of 1994, moving from California to
New York City in order to be closer to Europe. In 2002 he released Faces &
Places, his first studio album in several years and one that boasted an
international roster of supporting musicians. He went on to release a handful of
albums including Midnight Jam (2005) and Brown Street (2007), the latter of
which was issued the year his life was taken by cancer.

Though he explored new musical paths at a time of life when most jazzers are
long set in their ways, Zawinul's influence upon jazz waned due to the jazz
mainstream's retreat from electronics back to acoustic post-bop. But with global
music continuing to infiltrate the jazz world of the 21st century, Zawinul's
uplifting, still invigorating later music may very well renew the departed
keyboardist's reputation as a prophet in the years ahead. ~ Richard S. Ginell

Related artists