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Charted: April 2, 1977


Rating: 4.574 (average of 8 ratings)


Genre: jazz > funk


Quotable: --


Album Tracks:

  1. Birdland
  2. A Remark You Made
  3. Teen Town
  4. Harlequin
  5. Rumba Mamá
  6. Palladium
  7. The Juggler
  8. Havona


Sales:

sales in U.S. only 1 million
sales in U.K. only - estimated --
sales in all of Europe as determined by IFPI – click here to go to their site. --
sales worldwide - estimated 1 million


Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart 30
peak on U.K. album chart --


Singles/Hit Songs:

  • none


Awards:

Rated one of the top 1000 albums of all time by Dave’s Music Database. Click to learn more.


Heavy Weather
Weather Report
Review:
“Weather Report’s biggest-selling album is that ideal thing, a popular and artistic success – and for the same reasons. For one thing, Joe Zawinul revealed an unexpectedly potent commercial streak for the first time since his Cannonball Adderley days, contributing what has become a perennial hit, Birdland, …a remarkable bit of record-making, a unified, ever-developing piece of music that evokes, without in any way imitating, a joyous evening on 52nd St. with a big band” (Ginell).

“The other factor is the full emergence of Jaco Pastorius as a co-leader; his dancing, staccato bass lifting itself out of the bass range as a third melodic voice, completely dominating his own ingenious Teen Town (where he also plays drums!)” (Ginell).

“By now, Zawinul has become WR’s de facto commander in the studio; his colorful synthesizers dictate the textures, his conceptions are carefully planned, with little of the freewheeling improvisation of only five years before. Wayne Shorter’s saxophones are now reticent, if always eloquent, beams of light in Zawinul’s general scheme while Alex Acuña shifts ably over to the drums and Manolo Badrena handles the percussion. Released just as the jazz-rock movement began to run out of steam, this landmark album proved that there was plenty of creative life left in the idiom” (Ginell).


Review Source(s):


Last updated December 24, 2008.