Baker's Dozen

Artists discuss the 13 records that shaped their lives

9. Weather ReportBirdland

I don’t remember how I was introduced to it, but whenever that was I flipped out and I would play it constantly. At this moment I can hear it in my head [vocalises]. They were just so funky. The players for Weather Report, the individual players were all geniuses. Some white and Black, and they stayed together for a really long time. They were people who were really, really, really shaking things up in the jazz world during their lifetime. Some of them have left, one or two of them are still alive. Joe Zawinul playing piano, [gasps] ah Joe Zawinul, he’s such a brilliant player.

In thinking about [the record] I started listening to it, but my wife doesn’t care for jazz by and large, and the sound reverberates around [the house] because we don’t have all the doors we need yet. If I even start to sing, she says, “don’t sing that because it’ll stick in my head’.

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