Joe Zawinul 1932-2007.

Keyboardist and composer Joe Zawinul, a founder of Weather Report and one of the most important architects of modern jazz, succumbed to cancer this morning in an Austrian hospital, aged 75. Here is the obituary from Reuters -- which unfortunately dwells on Zawinul's electric work with Miles Davis and thereafter, but omits altogether his important early soul-jazz work with Cannonball Adderley.

VIENNA (Reuters) - Keyboardist Joe Zawinul, who played with Miles Davis and helped create the sound of jazz fusion, died from cancer in Vienna on Tuesday, local news agency APA reported, quoting his son Erich.

"Joe Zawinul was born on July 7, 1932 in earth time, and on September 11, 2007 in eternal time. He lives on," APA quoted Erich Zawinul as saying.

Zawinul, 75, had been admitted to the Wilhelmina Clinic in his native city last month. The hospital said it would give a statement later in the day.

Zawinul went to the United States in his 20s and found fame as a keyboardist and a composer in trumpet legend Davis's first electric band, playing on the "In a Silent Way" and "Bitches Brew" albums that pioneered jazz fusion in the late 1960s.

In 1970 he founded Weather Report, a band that did much to bring electric piano, synthesizers and African and Middle Eastern rhythms to mainstream audiences in a jazz setting.

Zawinul has fronted the Zawinul Syndicate" for the past 20 years. He had planned to give a concert in Vienna's concert hall on September 29.

Here is a longer subsequent Reuters obit that at least mentions stints with Adderley and Dinah Washington. 

From YouTube, a great clip of Weather Report playing Zawinul's "Black Market" in 1978:

Comments

[walter horn]

I don't think enough has been said about the way in which Zawinul (for good or ill) changed the sound of mainstream improvised music. The later evolution of fusion (like the evolution of most artistic genres) illustrates how talented its earliest expositors were. The drama one could find in discs like "Bitches Brew" and "Mysterious Traveller" was never quite duplicated in second generation fusion, and this wasn't just because of the "newness." People like Miles and Joe had a deeper knowledge of how to compose and arrange than most common toilers can ever hope to achieve. Their best work had direction, surprises and treats, a deneument--everything needed to produce awe.