Weather Report - Mysterious Traveller (1974 US Columbia CBS Export Vinyl LP)

Weather Report - Mysterious Traveller | Vinyl LP - 1974 US Columbia (PC 32494, CBS export sticker over label, Artisan Sound Recorders cut)

Mysterious Traveller is where Weather Report found the groove. The band's first three albums had been abstract and open, closer to the free end of jazz, but this 1974 record, their fourth, brought in a new bassist, Alphonso Johnson, whose electric playing pulled the music towards funk and firmer rhythm without losing any of its strangeness. Josef Zawinul and Wayne Shorter co-produced, and the range is enormous. "Nubian Sundance" opens the album with ten minutes of layered keyboards, massed voices and a roaring crowd, a piece of controlled chaos that still sounds like nothing else. "Cucumber Slumber" is a deep, slinking funk built on Johnson's bassline, "Mysterious Traveller" is Shorter's atmospheric title tune, and "Blackthorn Rose" strips everything back to Shorter's soprano and Zawinul's piano alone. Dom Um Romão's percussion runs through the record, and the closing "Jungle Book" pulls in ocarinas, tabla and kalimba. It won DownBeat's album of the year, and it remains one of the band's finest.

The album marks a turning point. Alphonso Johnson's arrival began the move towards the funk-inflected sound that would carry Weather Report to its commercial peak with Heavy Weather and Jaco Pastorius three years later, and Mysterious Traveller is where that shift starts. This particular copy has a story of its own. It is a US Columbia pressing, with lacquers cut at Artisan Sound Recorders in Hollywood, but the label carries a CBS sticker applied over the Columbia original. Columbia held the Columbia name only in the US and Canada, so stock sent abroad went out under the CBS banner, and this copy was dressed for export before ending up in Japan, where it was found. The jacket is the standard US Columbia sleeve. This is the 1974 US pressing, catalogue number PC 32494, in export dress.