Artist: Joe Zawinul

Josef Erich Zawinul was an Austrian jazz and jazz fusion  keyboardist and composer. First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with  Miles Davis and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, a musical genre that combined jazz with rock.

He co-founded the groups Weather Report and The Zawinul Syndicate. He pioneered the use of electric piano and synthesizer and was named "Best Electric Keyboardist" twenty-eight times by the readers of  DownBeat  magazine. 

In 1959 he moved to the U.S. to attend Berklee College of Music, but a week later he received a job offer from Maynard Ferguson, so he left school and went on tour. He then accompanied Dinah Washington. He spent most of the 1960s with  Cannonball Adderley. During this time, he wrote "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" and "Walk Tall", and "Country Preacher" and played electric piano.

Zawinul recorded with Miles Davis on In a Silent Way and  Bitches Brew, as Davis was establishing the genre of jazz fusion, combining jazz with rock. 

In 1970, Zawinul founded Weather Report with  Wayne Shorter.  Their first two years emphasized a relatively open, group improvisation format similar to what Miles Davis was doing in a more rock oriented format. However, Zawinul started making changes with their third album, Sweetnighter. Funk elements such as bass guitar and wah-wah pedal began to be introduced to the band's sound. With the fourth album, Mysterious Traveller, the musical forms were composed similar to classical music, and the combination of jazz harmonies with 1970s groove helped move the band into its most commercially successful period. 

The band's biggest commercial success came from Zawinul's composition "Birdland" on the 1977 album Heavy Weather, which peaked at number 30 on the Billboard pop albums chart. "Birdland" is one of the most recognizable jazz pieces of the 1970s, recorded by The Manhattan Transfer, Quincy Jones,  Maynard Ferguson, and Buddy Rich among others. The song won him three Grammys. 

Weather Report was active until the mid-1980s, with Zawinul and Shorter remaining the sole constant members through multiple personnel shifts.