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Weather Report: Sweetnighter

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Columbia Records
Released: 1973.02.07
Time:
 44:36
Category: Jazz
Producer(s): See Artists ...
Rating: ********.. (8/10)
Media type: CD
Web address: www.binkie.net
Appears with: Joe Zawinul, Jaco Pastorius
Purchase date: 2001.09.10
Price in €: 9,99



 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Boogie Woogie Waltz (J.Zawinul) - 13:07
[2] Manolete [Traditional] (W.Shorter) - 5:58
[3] Adios (J.Zawinul) - 3:02
[4] 125th Street Congress (J.Zawinul) - 12:15
[5] Will (M.Vitous) - 6:22
[6] Non - Stop Home (W.Shorter) - 3:52

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


JOE ZAWINUL - Synthesizer, Piano, Keyboards, Electric Piano
WAYNE SHORTER - Soprano & Tenor Saxophone
MIROSLAV VITOUS - Electric & Acoustic Bass, Muruga
ERIC GRAVITT - Drums
DOM UM ROMAO - Percussion, Cymbals, Gong, Tom-Tom, Multi Instruments, Bells, Caxixi, Pandeiro, Cuica, Cowbell, Wood Block
MURUGA - Percussion, Cymbals, Drums, Tympani
HERSCHELL DWELLINGHAM - Cymbals, Drums, Tympani, Clay Drums, Muruga
ANDREW N. WHITE - Bass, Guitar, Fendr Bass, English Horn

SHOVIZA PRODUCTIONS - Producer
JOHN EPHLAND - Liner Notes
PHIL GIAMBOLVO - Engineer
TOM "CURLY" RUFF - Remastering, Digital Remastering
SETH ROTHSTEIN - Project Director, Project Coordinator
PAULA WOOD - Art Direction, Design, Reissue Art, Reissue Design
BOB BELDEN - Reissue Producer
STEVEN BERKOWITZ - Reissue Series
KEVIN GORE - Reissue Series

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1996 CD Columbia 64976
1973 LP Columbia 32210
1973 CS Columbia PCT-32210



Experiments that worked. That's one way to look at early Weather Report. And Sweetnighter is clearly early Weather Report.

Unlike the band's previous two albums, however, Weather Report and I Sing The Body Electric, Sweetnighter was a stretching affair, filled with improvisational vamps and emphatic, sustained grooves. It may seem strange now, but when Sweetnighter was released, it signaled a move away from decidedly crafted material and toward simpler devices. The band's first two efforts, despite their relative rough edges and idiosyncratic formats, offered essentially composed music, the live material from the U.S. version of I Sing The Body Electric notwithstanding. And with the exception of the band's fourth album, Mysterious Traveller, everything that came after Sweetnighter saw a group returning to even more crafted productions. Tightening its forms into "songs", songs more toneful, we heard catchy "little" numbers that suggested the team of Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter were now making music that included ever more lyrical, memorable themes with those distinctive, tantalizing rhythms. Against this historical canvas, Sweetnighter can be heard as raw open-ended and, yes, fresher than just about anything else the band was to record.

On top of this mountain of grooves-meets-improv (made up of just two numbers, Zawinul's "Boogie Woogie Last Waltz" and "125th Street Congress") were also four incredibly diverse pieces that downshift into melody and mood (Shorter's "Manolete"), disconnect entirely from earth (Zawinul's "Adios"), luxuriate in rhythm (Miroslav Vitous' ethereal "Will") and return to a dancin' groove (Shorter's "Non-Stop Home").

And so, long forms mix it up with pieces so different as to make one wonder how the hell these guys could get away with it. Indeed, with the exception of the second album, Sweetnighter is the only Weather Report album that feels like a no-format kind of release, offering sonic textures and realms that broke new ground at the time and certainly stick out now in our even-more-heavily formatted musical culture. Throw on "Boogie Woogie Last Waltz" next to "Adios". Those two numbers are as different from each other as Zawinul's "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" (written and performed while the keyboardist was with Cannonball Adderly back in the '60) is from his "In A Silent Way" (recorded with Miles Davis and on his own Zawinul release in 1969). Personally, I miss, and now celebrate with this reissue, the contrast almost as much as I do the actual music "Boogie Woogie Last Waltz" and "Adios" offer. Ditto the rest of the tunes.

Then again, back in 1973 (the year Sweetnighter was recorded and released) the reaction was mixed. Like I Sing The Body Electric, Sweetnighter was received by many as either an effort worth applauding or as an experimental flop. Down Beat devoted a lead double review to cover the necessary, more-than-one viewpoint. A five-star review was followed by a three-star review. Praising the album, critic Joe H. Klee stated, the rhythm section blew "percussion with the same inventiveness and crispness that Shorter brings to his horn, Zawinul brings to his keyboards, Vitous on the bass". In perhaps a more hard-headed assessment, critic Will Smith, offering a generous three-star rating, intoned, "It's funky and it's slick and somehow the whole thing doesn't really have a great deal of meaning". Smith also took issue with the band's first two albums for the same reason: "they didn't say very much".

In fact, Smith's review was the stronger, better written, more clearheaded one of the two. His viewpoint is the logical one for any listener, jazz lover or otherwise, who realizes that the strenghts of Sweetnighter can also been heard as the album's weaknesss. "One might request at least a few more connected solo moments instead of the bits and pieces of fragmented soprano, keyboard and bass lines", continued Smith, "As a result, often the background-which becomes interchangeable with the foreground-is more interesting than the supposed solo". Finally, "as a consequence it's mostly surface, little depth".

Bingo. For those listeners interested in hearing extensions of bebop, Cannonball nad Miles with Shorter (let alone the literal connection to the jazz tradition), early Weather Report, and Sweetnighter in particular, was a musical disappointment par excellence. Music buyers would have better luck looking for '60s soundtrack music.

Today, celebrating Sweetnigher involves some suspension of belief along with preconceived notions of what one expects from artists such as we have here. For example, the idea of foreground and background can be taken as a given construct, based on jazz styles from the past. On the other hand, considering different viewpoints of what makes music musical, the extensions offered by "125th Street Congress", to pick one tune, clearly show that solos and comping could (and can!) be interchangeable, and at any given time. Shorter's soprano saxophone glides in and out of the framework set up by Zawinul's rhythms and selective keyboard musings. When I first heard this music, I felt somewhat frustrated by the fact that no one really took charge on these pieces, that the driving forces behind the music seem to come primarily from the grooved or rhythms. Nowadays, I realize that music made this way invites the listener to partecipate in different ways-to trigger memory, imagination, even to dance. Wheter the music has meaning or is interesting eventually settles on taste. Speaking of "125th Street Congress", incidentally, both this number as well as "Boogie Woogie Last Waltz" have stood the test of time, giving up rhythm samples to present-day d.j.s. hipping on Zawinul's unique, percussive sensibilities.

In addition to background and foreground, the notion of connecting the dots within and through an album assumes that all numbers be of a kind, and that each song, tune or piece have within it an organic quality that either suggests or states overtly a beginning, middle and end, and uses forms common among other musicians beyond the project at hand. Well, sorry folks, but jazz is about many things, one of which is innovation and experimentation. To take issue with a perceived lack of imagination and creativity is one thing, but "seeing" the connections that run beneath the surfaces of the music is sometimes a tough nut to crack, but crackable nonetheless (and not just by crackpots). The connections may be oscure on Sweetnighter. But who ever said listening was strictly a passive endeavor, or that musical forms need be self-evident? Rules, yes. But whose rules, and for what purpose?

An "album concept" to Sweetnighter, if one is to be found, is more one of overall sound, texture, attitude. Maybe Sweetnighter's connections are that there are no connections, maybe each track is a universe unto itself. Evalueting music, let alone jazz, this way seems to turn things upsidedown. For the well-defined parameters of jazz criticism, thinking in these terms is nonsense. I would argue, in the case of Sweetnighter, for example, that a new language, with new methods, was being attempted that criss-crossed musical idioms that included not only jazz but pop, rock, even early "world music". The beef I have goes beyond Sweetnighter to what eventually became the more popular Weather Report sound, a sound that to most ears makes Sweetnighter sound like rough sketches that should've stayed in the vaults.

But enough carping. The basic lineup to Sweetnighter was held over from I Sing The Body Electric. Eric Gravatt, holding down the drum chair for the most part and percussionist Dom Um Romao were abetted by a handful of rhythmsists playing everything from Moroccan clay drums to something called a "roller toy". Also returning was Andrew White playing both English horn and electric bass. As for the principals, Shorter's soprano saxophone (listed on tenor for "Adios" and "Will") joins Zawinul on what now sounds like contemporary electric keyboards as well as synthesizer and acoustic piano. Perhaps the most appealing thing about Sweetnighter to these ears is the funkiness of Zawniul's electric piano playing, the keyboardist seemingly coaxing, cajoling and just plain making love to that instrument as he guides his bandmates through the thickets, pastures and distant skies of Sweetnighter.

There is a poetry-in-motion quality to this music that trascends genre, a quality that makes it seem surprisingly contemporary yet free of formats. Indeed, Sweetnighter is a dance of celebration and a testament to deep, creative urges taking musical forms both innovative and seductive.

John Ephland - May, 1996
Down Beat (from the CD's booklet)



In the year since I Sing the Body Electric, Weather Report has added an ethereal electronic quality to its acoustic soundscape. Their music is now colored by eerie synthesized qualities, haunted by saxophone lyricism and nervous South American rhythms. Musical thoughts are as much implied as real, likewise the suggestions of foreign places are both geographical and neurological. Thus, Sweetnighter is strictly a travelogue of the Seventies.

Weather Report's music retains the motif of melody and the spirit of jazz improvisation. It is program work, rooted in an established form. The pieces are long, dynamic interactions—darting and daring, yet graceful. Juxtapositions abound: Dom Um Romao's energetic percussion collection churning against Wayne Shorter's arid soprano sax; Miroslav Vitous' open bass riffs fitted between Eric Gravatt's solid drumming; Joe Zawinul's synthesizer and electric piano bleeding into the acoustic mix.

The musical competitiveness gives the album an underlying sense of aggression, even in quieter numbers like "Will" or "Manolete." But they now rock more, using their electronics to direct the intensity of music, distinguishing it in the process from the style of their previous albums.

Weather Report's true musical peers are groups like the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the Herbie Hancock Sextet. Like them, they fuse rock, jazz and electronics into a descriptive music that is brilliantly innovative and accessible. In this they seem to me the epitome of a significant avant-garde trend. (RS 141)

JUD ROSEBUSH
© Copyright 2001 RollingStone.com



Right from the start, a vastly different Weather Report emerges here, one that reflects co-leader Joe Zawinul's developing obsession with the groove. It is the groove that rules this mesmerizing album, leading off with the irresistible 3/4 marathon deceptively tagged as the "Boogie Woogie Waltz" and proceeding through a variety of Latin-grounded hip-shakers. It is a record of discovery for Zawinul, who augments his Rhodes electric piano with a funky wah-wah pedal, unveils the ARP synthesizer as a melodic instrument and sound-effects device, and often coasts along on one chord. The once fiery Wayne Shorter has been tamed, for he now contributes mostly sustained ethereal tunes on soprano sax, his tone sometimes doubled for a pleasing octave effect. The wane of freewheeling ensemble interplay is more than offset by the big increase in rhythmic push; bassist Miroslav Vitous, drummer Eric Gravatt, and percussionist Dom Um Romao are now cogs in one of jazz's great swinging machines.

Richard S. Ginell
All-Music Guide, © 1992 - 2001 AEC One Stop Group, Inc.



Er habe den Original-Rhythmus des HipHop erfunden, behauptete Joe Zawinul (AUDIO live 8/96) über seine Zeit mit den Fusion-Pionieren Weather Report. Im Stück "125th Street Congress" auf dem 73er Weather Report-Album "Sweetnighter" sind tatsächlich ähnliche Rhythmen hörbar.

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