By Curt Bianchi. Last modified on December 27, 2014

© 2021 Curt Bianchi. All rights reserved.

Track Listing

Overview

Columbia Records press photo for Domino Theory. Left to right: Hakim, Bailey, Zawinul, Rossy, Shorter. Photo: Bruce W. Talamon.

Columbia Records ad for Domino Theory.

Domino Theory was the second album for the Hakim-Bailey-Rossy rhythm section, and Josef Zawinul spoke enthusiastically about it in the March 1984 issue of Keyboard magazine.

“It’s coming out in February,” Zawinul told Greg Armbruster. “We had so much fun making it that it was one of the easiest albums we’ve ever done. There are three live performances on it, and those were done after we had played 84 concerts. Then we went into the studio and recorded four more songs with this feeling from the live performances. On this album, we’re also dealing with a question; the first song is appropriately called ‘Can it Be Done?’, which is sung by Carl Anderson. We don’t have any answers, but we have questions. The next song, ‘D Flat Waltz,’ is eleven minutes long. After I wrote it, I analyzed it, and it’s more or less a Johann Strauss kind of form. There are different movements and there’s another melody every eight bars, and yet, altogether, it works well. The last song on Side A is ‘The Peasant.’

“Side B opens with ‘Predator,’ a Wayne Shorter composition, followed by ‘Blue Sound, Note Three,’ which my son Erich named. The third song is called ‘Swamp Cabbage,’ by Wayne. I use an accordion-type sound on that tune. The last song is the title cut, ‘Domino Theory,’ with the drum machine. The album has a strong feeling throughout, a certain musical reference that creates the whole feeling. For instance, part of the intro to the very first song is found in the intro to ‘Blue Sound, Note Three,’ on Side B. I did certain background lines on Wayne’s song which are continued on ‘Domino Theory.’ You can listen to the album from beginning to end and feel a completeness.” [KB84]

In a 1984 interview for Modern Drummer magazine, Robin Tolleson asked Omar Hakim about his co-producer credit. “Well, producer is such a vague word, but for me it did have a meaning. I was mixing the record. I have a great interest in studio stuff. All my friends know I’m a fanatic about that stuff… Joe knew I was a fanatic, so he brought me in and he trusted me a lot. I was very involved. It was actually hands-on for all of us. I mixed, and made some suggestions about effects, and made some arrangement suggestions occassionally. I learned so much from Joe and Wayne–just their sense of placing sounds in the music. What Joe would do is say, ‘You got it.’ He would leave the studio and so I would mix it the way I heard it. I would do a mix, Joe would come back and say, ‘Okay, see you later. Go get something to eat,’ and then he would do something. After that, we would work on it together. Then we would program things into the NECAM [a Neve computer system that could record certain mix settings], and do more things together. Then we would do panning, and set up echoes and delays. Like I said, I’m crazy about that stuff, so we had a lot of fun.” [MD84]

The August 1984 issue of Down Beat described Zawinul’s keyboard arsenal at the time of Domino Theory. Zawinul’s stage setup included seven keyboards: an Oberheim 8 Voice, an ARP Quadra, an E-Mu Emulator, a Rhodes Chroma, a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, a Korg Vocoder with auxiliary keyboard, and a Prophet T-8. The T-8 was Zawinul’s newest instrument, an eight-voice synthesizer with a touch-sensitive keyboard. “I have as much control as you can have,” Zawinul said of the T-8. “It’s velocity- and touch-sensitive so when you touch down, you can get your own vibrato; you can preprogram your vibrato and speed.” In addition, Zawinul used a Linn LM-1 drum machine, a Sequential Circuits Polysequencer, and various harmonizers and digital delay units. [DB84]

Zawinul’s keyboard technician Jim Swanson, explained to Down Beat some of the modifications he had made to the Prophet 5. “There’s no other Prophet in the world like that,” he said. “The way it’s hooked up now with the MIDI is polyphonically. So when I throw [a] switch, it shuts off the audio of voices one through four, takes its own control voltage-out, and feeds it back to its control voltage-in so that voice one is making no noise but sending its control voltage and driving voice five. So that every new note you play, like on the Korg [Vocoder] up here, will trigger a note on the Prophet and jump it around so you get that flute-on-top-of-strings effect.” The article went on to describe the equipment in Zawinul’s home recording studio: “In his home recording studio he has an Amek 2016B 24-track mixing desk, an Ampex MM-1200 24-track tape recorder, and for mix-down an Otari MX5050 two-track machine. He listens to his music through Yamaha and Tannoy speakers. And despite his wealth of electronics, in the middle of it all, sits a Yamaha acoustic grand piano.” [DB84]

Side One

1. Can It Be Done (Willie Tee) 3:59

Willie Tee (Wilson Turbinton) was a pianist, singer and songwriter from New Orleans who Zawinul befriended when he was a member of Cannonball Adderley’s band. Tee’s brother Earl, a saxophonist, performed on Zawinul’s 1971 eponymous album. Ironically, Willie Tee passed away on the same day as Zawinul, September 11, 2007. (Earl died the previous month.) Both Willie and his brother lost their homes in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. Weeks later, Willie joined Zawinul for a benefit concert called “Charity Event for the Lost Children of New Orleans” at Joe’s Vienna club, Birdland. Photographs from the event can be seen here. More background about Joe’s relationship with Willie Tee and other New Orleans musicians can be found in my article, “Joe Zawinul’s New Orleans Connection”.

On this track, Zawinul plays all of the instruments backing the vocals using his keyboards and electronic percussion machines. “It’s only keyboards, and I have the drum machine playing the hi-hat,” he told Down Beat. “The string sound is incredible. I have a nice bass sound on the ballad that’s from the Fairlight.” [DB84]

Domino Theory was the first album on which Zawinul used drum machines. “The drum machine is for composing music perfectly,” Zawinul explained to John Diliberto. “You can lay out a chord, and you always have that click track. If you listen to the ballad ‘Can It Be Done,’ it has a perfect hi-hat beat. It cannot be played better. And you can shape that note here and there. The bass drum on the Linn [LM-1 drum computer], you can tune to any note. And once I put it through the Oberheim, I get a sound you wouldn’t believe–BOOM!–like a big military drum. You can still play your little percussion instruments next to it, and it’s groovin’. You can overdub some real instruments later and leave it out, but for starting out it’s ideal.” [DB84]

Willie Tee’s own version of this composition can be heard on the compilation album Keys To The Crescent City.

2. D Flat Waltz (Zawinul) 11:09

This tune and “The Peasant” were ones Zawinul had originally earmarked for his long put-off solo album, which eventually became Dialects. “A lot of material–like on Domino Theory, a tune called ‘D Flat Waltz,’ and ‘The Peasant,’ and some other material from prior times, ‘Madagascar’ on the Night Passage album, things like that–I always had to take apart my solo concept so that we have enough for Weather Report.” [EM86]

3. The Peasant (Zawinul) 8:13

The E-Mu Emulator was the first affordable digital keyboard sampler, an instrument that could digitally record a sound and then play it back across the keyboard’s range, transposing the original sound’s pitch. Zawinul explained its use to John Diliberto: “Over the years I’ve collected hundreds of instruments. I’ve put those instruments I like, like the kalimba and pan flute, into the Emulator. Like in ‘Peasant’ there’s a high flute sound. It’s the pan flute my father had given me. I just put one note in there, and I play it [on the solo].” [DB84]

Side Two

4. Predator (Shorter) 5:14

In a 1984 interview, journalist Robin Tolleson, noting the “incredibly funky groove” on “Predator,” asked Hakim what Shorter told him about playing the tune. “Wayne hears those kinds of rhythms,” Hakim said, “so he handed me a little slip of paper one day and said, ‘Check this out.’ It had a different beat than that actually; I changed it up a little. Wayne will give you an outline and just say to play what you hear. Wayne doesn’t talk much about the music. He’s into the experience. You have to look at where he comes from and what it was like back then–those gigs with Art [Blakey] and Miles [Davis]. They were doing what I was talking about–going to the gigs and having an experience every night with the music. He likes to keep that in the music, and so does Joe. So we were in the studio jamming and we struck up this groove. Sometimes songs come about that way.” [MD84]

Asked in a 1984 interview about thumb playing or slapping, Bailey said, “I do it on my solo in our shows. But I really don’t see a need for it that much in Weather Report. I played a lot of that stuff, especially in sessions, and that’s what I grew up doing. It’s just something that’s natural; you’re a black kid growing up, and you hear Larry Graham and the Brothers Johnson. But not with Weather Report. I did it on the beginning of ‘Predator’ on Domino Effect [sic], but I don’t want to do it just to show people, ‘Hey, everybody, I can do that.’ I love that kind of playing, too. I really have to do my own record so people know what I’m about–not Victor Bailey with Weather Report or Victor Bailey with Hugh Maskela, but the real me, right there on tape.” [GP84b]

5. Blue Sound–Note 3 (Zawinul) 6:48

A concert staple of later versions of Joe’s post-Weather Report band, The Zawinul Syndicate. A live performance by the Syndicate can be heard on 2003’s Vienna Nights: Live at Joe Zawinul’s Birdland.

As mentioned above, Joe stated that his son, Erich, named this song.

6. Swamp Cabbage (Shorter) 5:19

7. Domino Theory (Zawinul) 6:06

Robin Tolleson asked Hakim who programmed the “outrageous” drum machine part on “Domino Theory.” “Joe did,” Omar recalled. “Joe’s nuts with that stuff. He’s hearing all these rhythms. Man, he’s crazy. He’s a madman, but he loves it. I think I’ll be playing along with that machine live, because he wants to start it out by himself.” [DB84] Zawinul described it this way: “I’ve done a whole tune with the Linn LM-1 drum machine. It’s fun; I can play everything I want to play, right here at home. Plus, you can change the sound and get it just the way you want it. The title track on Domino Theory is actually the LM-1 with Omar overdubbed.” “When you listen to Domino Theory, I have four or five different rhythms changing and coming back.” [DB84]

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