Piano, Keyboards | 1932–2007

Zawinul came to jazz from a Vienna conservatory education and an early grounding in accordion and classical piano, and the breadth of that technical foundation never left his playing even as he moved from acoustic hard bop through soul jazz, electric fusion, and eventually world music across a fifty-year career. He arrived in the United States in late 1958, left Berklee after a week for Maynard Ferguson's touring band, and after stints with Dinah Washington and Harry "Sweets" Edison joined Cannonball Adderley's quintet in 1961, where he stayed for nearly a decade. It was there that he wrote "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" (Capitol, 1966), a slow gospel-blues piece recorded live on Fender Rhodes that became one of the most commercially successful jazz compositions of the decade. His parallel work with Miles Davis produced the title track of "In a Silent Way" (Columbia, 1969) and an appearance on "Bitches Brew" (Columbia, 1970). In 1970 Zawinul left Adderley to co-found Weather Report with Wayne Shorter and Miroslav Vitous, a band whose fifteen-year run on Columbia produced some of the most collected fusion records of the era, from the self-titled debut (1971) through "Heavy Weather" (1977), the album that contained "Birdland" and brought the band its widest audience.