Collection: Joe Zawinul

Joe Zawinul grew up in Vienna, won a scholarship to the city's conservatory at seven, played accordion and piano through his teens, and arrived in the United States in late 1958 after winning a place at Berklee, which he left after a week to join Maynard Ferguson's band. Brief stints with Dinah Washington and Harry "Sweets" Edison preceded his nine years in the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, where he wrote "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" in 1966, a piece that reached the pop charts and became one of the most widely recognised soul jazz compositions ever recorded. By the late 1960s Zawinul was steering Adderley's band toward electric keyboards and a funkier palette, a direction that ran parallel to his work with Miles Davis, for whom he contributed the title track of "In a Silent Way" (Columbia, 1969) and played on "Bitches Brew" (Columbia, 1970). In 1970 he left Adderley to form Weather Report with Wayne Shorter and bassist Miroslav Vitous, a band that spent fifteen years as the most consistently adventurous ensemble in jazz-rock fusion. "Heavy Weather" (Columbia, 1977), which contained "Birdland", reached gold certification and made the band's commercial and critical peaks coincide. The earlier Weather Report albums, from the self-titled debut (1971) through "Mysterious Traveller" (1974), are the ones most valued on original vinyl.