Weather Report: Heavy Weather [LEGACY/COLUMBIA]

Why you'll love it

This Legacy reissue is remastered by Allan Tucker and pressed on 180g vinyl. Heavy Weather sold a million copies in the US by 1991, DownBeat readers voted it jazz album of the year, and it entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2011.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Remastered
• Pressed in the USA
• Stereo mix

About the album

Instrumental jazz records don't usually turn up on pop radio, but this one did. Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter had steered Weather Report through most of the decade when a young bassist named Jaco Pastorius arrived, and his playing turned their sound into something busier, funkier and far more talkative.

"Birdland" opens the album and became a jazz standard in its own right, its melody first played live inside a piece from Zawinul's solo album. Pastorius wrote and leads "Teen Town," his bass out front where the horns would normally sit, and "Rumba Mama," a percussion and vocal feature for Manolo Badrena and Alex Acuña, was taped live in Montreux in the summer of 1976. Zawinul produced and orchestrated it, with Shorter helping out, and "Havona" closes on a dazzling Pastorius workout.

It sits in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, and the singer Bilal names it among his 25 favourite albums for the way Pastorius and Zawinul talk to each other. Several generations of bass players have learned "Teen Town" note for note; so, by now, have their neighbours.

Also at Kops: more Weather Report on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Columbia / Legacy, a reissue of the 1977 album.