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Brown Street

by

Joe Zawinul

 
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Brown Street

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Avg: 4.5 (39 ratings)

Weather Report keyboardist delves into his copious back catalogue.

  • We Say...

    Review by Britt Robson

    This smashing swan song is poetic justice for Zawinul, who was somewhat underrated for most of his career. The Viennese native handed Cannonball Adderley a pair of funky hits, provided one of the skeleton keys that helped Miles Davis unlock the door to quality fusion on In a Silent Way, and supplied the compositional bounce and snazzy but celestial keyboard riffs that defined the music of Weather Report more thoroughly than Jaco Pastorius or Wayne Shorter. That he died at age 75 just six months after the release of Brown Street, in the winter of ’07, is poignant because this sprawling live performance at Birdland, the club he owned in Vienna, was a rare delving into his copious back catalogue, yet is more of a lively refresher than a retrospective.

    As with Michael Brecker’s Some Skunk Funk in 2005, Brown Street augments a core band (in this case, bassist Victor Bailey, drummer Nathaniel Townsley and ace percussionist Alex Acuna) with the 15-piece, WDR Big Band from Köln and the arrangements of Vince Mendoza. But where the Brecker disc sounds noisy and cluttered, Zawinul’s sturdy melodies and zesty, dynamic rhythms can carry the instrumental weight. It’s not disparaging (or even a backhanded compliment) to refer to most of these songs (the ballads “In a Silent Way” and “A Remark You Made” excepted) as rock or dance tracks as much as they are jazz. The interplay is complex but driving and explosive, and while some of Mendoza’s arrangements are apt to be too radical or clever for lovers of the originals (“In a Silent Way,” “Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz”), others are resplendent (especially the obscure title track). The Weather Report here is stormy but beautiful.

  • They Say...

    Review by Richard S. Ginell, All Music Guide

    Like his friend and onetime collaborator Miles Davis, Joe Zawinul was not one to look back on his past and savor the view. Yet as in the case of Miles (his parting concert in Montreux), Zawinul finally took the plunge in central Europe late in life by revisiting his old Weather Report repertoire -- live at his Vienna nightclub, Joe Zawinul's Birdland. The significant difference is that while Miles doubled back to a re-creation of the original Gil Evans charts, Zawinul retrofitted his tunes with new big-band arrangements by Vince Mendoza, read with gusto and heft by the crack visiting WDR Big Band of Cologne, Germany. To this, Zawinul added his own synthesizer virtuosity and some overdubs from his Malibu studio, two distinguished WR alumni who still play with him off and on -- bassist Victor Bailey and percussionist Alex Acuña -- and drummer Nathaniel Townsley. In just about every case, Mendoza's charts replicate and flesh out every twist and turn in the Weather Report originals, paying off big-time with "Brown Street," an overlooked swinger from the WR 8:30 album that gets the remake album off to a percolating start. Occasionally he piles on additional harmonic tissue, as in the Miles-period "In a Silent Way." Some of the writing seems a bit redundant, yet things never become too overloaded thanks to the ceaseless drive of the rhythm section, and there is plenty of room for solos. Only on "Procession" does Zawinul write his own big-band chart; though tied tightly to the original recording, it sounds looser than most of the Mendoza charts as it works out over the drone. A few of the song choices are unexpected: the frantic "Fast City" and the strutting title tune from the Night Passage album; the former features some liquid synth solos by Zawinul and stimulating tenor sax by Paul Heller, and the latter some relaxed flügelhorn from Kenny Rampton. Others aren't from the WR catalog at all; "Silent Way" predates it, of course, though WR did play the tune in concert, and "March of the Lost Children" and the perennial "Carnavalito" are from the post-WR solo years. Unlike most jazz tribute projects -- including a fairly bloodless, multi-artist 1999 salute to Weather Report on Telarc -- this double-CD set isn't burdened with artificial nostalgia, and it benefits a lot from the presence of one of the two founding co-leaders (the other being the absent Wayne Shorter). And Zawinul is the crucial one, because the crusty Austrian keyboardist sees to it that the swing is the thing and that the groove is deep.

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