New Weather Report Book!

[bertrand]

Elegant People: A History of the Band Weather Report: Bianchi, Curt: 9781493059997: Amazon.com: Books

Bianchi runs this excellent website:

www.weatherreportdiscography.org

 

 

[JSngry]

As Jaco once said: “This shit is correct, man.” As Wayne Shorter told me: “Peter! BIG BANDS!” And, as Joe Zawinul told anyone and everyone: “This is the greatest band in the history.”

Yeah, I can get with the that.

Think I'll be ordering AND reading!

[HutchFan]

I'm in.   

Bianchi's Weather Report website is terrific.

 

[felser]

I'm in eventually, but not at a $33 pre-order price.  Could see using an Audible credit on it if that becomes an option, or an ebook purchase

 

[bertrand]

So I found out 30 minutes before that they had a Zoom meeting organized by Berklee to talk about Weather Report. A number of former members there: Peter Erskine, Chester Thompson, Omar Hakim, Mino Cinelu, Alphonso Johnson, Skip Hadden, Robert Thomas and Wayne Shorter himself who seemed very happy to be reminiscing with the cats. 3.5 hours of my life could not have been better spent!

Wayne mentioned Woody Sonship Theus several times, almost suggesting he was somehow involved in early Weather Report in some way. I can't remember how his name came up. He also seemed to be suggesting that Woody's heart was no longer in music after Coltrane died and that he became some sort of preacher, but that does not jibe chronologically,

Edited May 28, 2021 by bertrand

[ghost of miles]

From pg 134-35, discussing the recording of Sweetnighter: 

According to Joe, (drummer Herschel) Dwellingham didn’t initially feel the rhythm, either. So Joe sang it to him until he had it. If only things were that simple. As Muruga tells the story, “We did this one tune (‘125th Street Congress’) and Joe said, ‘Give me a rhythm for this.’ So Herschel had this really cool, funky rhythm. And being from Detroit, I associated, and so we laid that down. And Joe said, ‘No, do something else.’ And he took us on a half-hour to an hour tangent looking for another rhythm. And you know, after about forty minutes of grueling rhythms, Herschel came up and whispered in my ear, ‘Hey bro, you remember that beat that we did in the beginning, the first one that he didn’t like? Let’s lay that motherfucker on him again. We’re going to lay that same beat on him.’

So we gave him the first rhythm again and Joe said, ‘That’s it! That’s the rhythm I want, man! That’s perfect!’ And Herschel just stood up and yelled, ‘You motherfucker!’ And he started running and rushed him right through the center of all of the instruments, right through the whole studio and up against the wall. And he said, ‘Look motherfucker! You ain’t telling me what to play anymore! We gave you that an hour ago and you made us go through all that shit and waste our time. You could’ve had that track done!’ And I was just cracking up because Herschel is twice as big as Joe and I saw that Joe is a domineering person. Joe said, ‘Okay, man, we’re cool! I know! You’re right, man! Everything’s cool!’ Joe listened to Herschel a little bit better after that. (laughs)”