Weather Report, Heavy Weather

With its seventh album, Heavy Weather, this pioneering jazz-rock fusion juggernaut hit its stride, scoring a pop hit with the buoyant Joe Zawinul-penned "Birdland" and achieving a seamless balance of jazz chops, sophisticated arrangements and indelible melodies. Although keyboardist Zawinul, displaying his most kaleidoscopic palette of synthesizer sounds and electric piano textures yet, and the legendary saxophonist Wayne Shorter were still running the show, the band got a big boost from the electric bass virtuoso Jaco Pastorius, who'd joined Weather Report for the previous album, Black Market. He contributed two compositions — the funky, pre-disco throb of "Teen Town," where doubles on some incredibly crisp, propulsive drums, and the rising-and-falling energy of "Havona" — but his forceful, extremely flexible playing provided a low-end presence and pop polish that helped make the album a commercial smash.

In some ways, Weather Report approached pop here the same way Steely Dan tackled jazz on their classic Aja the same year — both albums were released in 1977. Both entities understood the styles they were embracing, but they refused to be cowed or compromised by them.

Here no single approach is privileged; the arrangements, improvisations and compositions are all equally important. With remarkable concision and focus, Weather Report created a dynamically varied collection rife with meticulously executed idea. Zawinul tapped into his early stint with Julian "Cannonball" Adderley to bring some soul jazz flavor his Charlie Parker homage "Birdland," while Shorter's rigorous "Palladium" recasts the moody post-bop of his Miles Davis days as a fiery, electric breakdown. The band's drummer Alex Acuña craft a spontaneous-sounding Afro-Latin summit on the brief but action-packed "Rumba Mama." It's an undeniably slick effort, and it's a long way from the more amorphous sound explorations Weather Report delivered on its 1971 debut, but they were gunning for something very different here and they found the bull's eye. Gone was the self-indulgent excess that had come to dominate so much '70s fusion in favor of music that placed a premium on precision and high-impact performances.