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*Austrian born composer and Jazz musician Joe Zawinul poses for in front of his Jazz bar "Birdland" in Vienna, on May 25, 2004. Photographer: Ronald Zak/AP via Bloomberg News
Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Joe Zawinul, who died, aged 75, in his native Vienna on Sept. 11, was an egoist who had a lot to be egotistical about.
``My songs are all improvised,'' he once told DownBeat magazine. ``I sit down and compose an entire song from start to finish. I change nothing. Later, I might think of a hipper chord, but I never go back and put it in. I believe in nature and what nature gives me.''
Saxophonist Wayne Shorter was, with Zawinul, co-founder of Weather Report, one of the few jazz-rock fusion groups to outlast the style it helped create, and the group with which Zawinul achieved his greatest fame (he wrote their polyphonic hit
``Birdland''). Shorter told me, ``there are very few musicians who are able to improvise a composition on the spot and make it both entertaining and moving. Joe does that.''
With Zawinul, every chord was an event. He had Hungarian, Czech, and -- he always pointed out -- Sinti blood. He was playing gypsy tunes, ``Honeysuckle Rose,'' and ``anything else I could find'' on the clarinet and the accordion by the age of six.
He once stuffed a piece of green pool-table felt into his Hohner squeezebox, thus constructing, he said, with no discernable irony, ``the original synthesizer. I loved that sound. It was so nasty.''
World's Best Band
The musicians in Weather Report were a cocky bunch. If not the best, they were pretty close, and when they said ``we're the best band in the world,'' you saw no point in denying it. When an unknown young man from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, introduced himself, ``Mr.
Zawinul, my name is Jaco Pastorius, and I'm the greatest bass player in the world,'' he was on the right track.
Both Shorter and Zawinul were musical sons of Miles Davis, although Zawinul repeatedly denied it: ``I wrote `In a Silent Way' (their benchmark 1969 minimalist collaboration),'' he said. ``Miles only changed some of the chords. We were brothers, I was not his son.''
``Joe is deep,'' the journalist David Breskin remembers Davis telling him in 1983 in a hotel room in Austin, Texas. ``He called Zawinul his
`collaborateur,' pronouncing it the French way, like co-conspirator. Still, it seemed clear to him that he couldn't keep Zawinul around too long because, Davis said with a sarcastic laugh, ``I would have ended up playing in HIS band.''
Viennese Funk
Zawinul also wrote the funk hit ``Mercy Mercy Mercy'' for Cannonball Adderley, with whom he also played piano. It is essential to imagine his Brooklyn-cum-Viennese accent full of hipsterisms and scatology.
``I'm always sincere, man,'' Zawinul said. ``Even when I'm full of it. My goal was always to get on scenes where I was the weakest one going in and the strongest coming out. Like you learn from your daddy and then go a little bit further. The midget on the shoulders of the giant.''
``I got a scoop for you,'' he told me during an interview in 1992. ``The drummer with my first band, Thomas
Klestil, just became president of Austria. We used to play music all night long, man. We ran the streets together. It started in 1945. Sometimes we stole food, because we didn't have nothing to eat. We sneaked in to see `Stormy Weather.' I cut a hole in the fence of a swimming pool and for one whole summer we went swimming for free.
``And then one day in 1948,'' Zawinul continued, ``we were walking in my hood and Thomas said, `You know, I'm tired of all this. I'm going to do something with my life. You're a talented musician, you should do that.' He studied economics, and I learned the piano. Later, when we were both in the States, I took him to Cannonball's house to hang out with the brothers. He had no problems with any of them. Both our master plans worked out.''
(Klestil died in 2004.)
Skull Cap, Schnapps
The band that followed Weather Report was a sort of Weather Update known as ``The Zawinul Syndicate.'' He took great pleasure from the Mafia implications of the name. He wore an African skull cap on stage, and he tugged from an ever-present bottle of schnapps.
On one tour, the Syndicate split a bill with the Malian singer Salif Keita, whose album ``Amen'' (1992) Zawinul had produced. Despite mostly negative reviews, ``Amen'' spent 13 weeks at the top of the Billboard ``world music'' chart.
``A lot of people thought it was too modern,'' Zawinul said. ``Too many chords, not `native' enough. But Salif hired me because of who I was. He could have made the record in Africa. I never listened to his old records. I didn't want to get bogged down in the past. I've been playing world music all my life, I knew we'd mix great.
``I always use all my influences,'' Zawinul said. ``I grew up with Hungarian gypsy music, Yugoslavian music, polkas. Polkas can be a gas, if you play them good.
``I'm influenced by folk music, classical music, flamenco, African music, Oriental music. Plus I've been living with black American culture more than half my life, playing their music with the best cats. I'm not worried about Duke Ellington. Baby, I ain't worried about nobody.''
(Mike Zwerin played the trombone with the original Miles Davis ``Birth of the Cool'' band. He is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
Thanks to Mike Zwerin for granting our request
to print this.
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