Category Archives: Sweetnighter

Elegant People Excerpt at Wax Poetics

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The good folks at Wax Poetics have an excerpt of my book Elegant People: A History of the Band Weather Report up on their website right now. You can view it here. The excerpt I chose deals with the making of Weather Report’s third album Sweetnighter. It was the beginning of the transition to Weather Report’s mature style, exemplified by the album’s two dominant tracks, “Boogie Woogie Waltz” and “125th Street Congress.” (The book chapter on Sweetnighter delves into many other aspects of that album as well as the changes that happened to the live band in the aftermath.)

It is appropriate that Wax Poetics host this excerpt. The editor Brian Digenti gave me my first opportunity to interview Joe Zawinul at his home in Malibu in 2003. That led to the publication of my article about Joe in Wax Poetics issue 9. This in turn planted the seeds for what eventually became my book many years later. If it hadn’t been for Brian, I don’t know that I would have pursued a book at all.

At its core, Wax Poetics is rooted in hip-hop, a music whose antecedents are the soul, jazz, funk, and disco of the sixties and seventies; hence, the nexus to Joe Zawinul and Weather Report. At least initially, hip-hop was constructed by sampling bits and pieces of old records—a horn stab, a drum beat, or a bassline—a measure here, a measure there. Once sampled, these fragments could then be looped and repeated, tempo- or pitch-shifted, and layered with other sounds likewise captured to build up an entirely new musical work.

Since records were the raw materials in this process, it was important to find the ones that contained the best material. This gave rise to the evocative term cratedigger, which describes someone who searches for rare vinyl in musty used record stores, garage sales, and flea markets. The true experts at the game develope an encyclopedic knowledge of the producers, labels, and musicians of yore, and when they find a good one, they collect anything he or she has done. As one prominent hip-hop producer noted, “If someone is great, I’ll follow everything they do. There’s no way they can hit something great one time and not do it again.” Weather Report, it turns out, was something great. Its records are documented to have shown up in 165 hip-hop titles as of this writing.

Joe had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he was all for making music this way. Regarding sampling, he told me, “Why not? Let people express themselves. These kinds of things are like an instrument. It’s like a language.” But he was opposed to the appropriation of his work without compensation. A 1992 Down Beat interview described Joe as “raging” as he complained about rappers “borrowing” portions of Weather Report tunes without permission. “If you steal something, steal it, and play it yourself. In the case of sampling, some type of money should be paid depending on what is being used,” he said.

Earlier that same year, he also addressed the topic in Music Technology magazine. “People do this [extract samples] on my music a lot. You know what I think about it? I think it’s good, but it’s only good if the original people (a) get credit for it, and (b) get paid for it. That’s only fair.” He cited one use of “125th Street Congress” in which the group’s management contacted him for permission, and the end result was that Joe and the group shared publishing, and he got credited on the record. “This is okay with me, it’s fine,” he said.

But in another example—a track by MC 900ft Jesus called “Truth Is Out of Style” that uses sixteen bars of “Cucumber Slumber” throughout—he complained, “They never contacted me. See, this to me is illegal. Herbie Hancock got me with this guy who is one of the greatest detectives of things like that. He got Herbie back $175,000 for one song. I mean, this is serious money being made. Some of these groups are getting No. 1 hit records using your ideas as a fundament.” (Listening to the track, you can see why Joe would be upset, as “Cucumber Slumber” provides the basis of the rhythm for the entire tune.)

Among the 165 samples of Weather Report tunes listed at whosampled.com are eight uses of “125th Street Congress.” This led Joe to boldly claim that he had invented the first hip-hop beat in 1973. An exaggeration? Of course! But that didn’t stop Joe from repeating the claim, including to me. You can read more about that in my book.

Andrew Nathaniel White III, 1942–2020

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Andrew White

Andrew White—saxophonist, oboist, bassist, educator and scholar—passed away on Wednesday, November 11. He was 78 years old. White is best known to Weather Report fans for playing electric bass on Weather Report’s third album, Sweetnighter. He also played English horn on the band’s previous LP, I Sing the Body Electric.

When I think of Andrew White, the first phrase that comes to mind is “one of a kind.” There truly was no one quite like him in the jazz world, if not the world at large.

For nearly fifty years he ran Andrew’s Music from the same unassuming house in Washington, D.C. He never entered the computer age, never had an email address, and didn’t use a cell phone. If you wanted to contact him, you either had to call his home (which invariably resulted in getting his answer machine, one of his few nods to the modern age), or you had to write him a letter and send it via postal mail.

Whenever I wrote him, I addressed him as:

Mr. Andrew White
President, executive producer, producer, editor, collaborator, transcriber, copyist, recording supervisor, arranger, accountant, publicist, typist, engineer, composer, performer, author, manager, booking agent, package handler, mail boy and janitor

I got these titles from his books. It’s how he described the various roles he undertook while running the one-man shop that he used to produce and sell his own records and publications. He billed himself as “the most voluminously self-published artist in the history of the music business (so I’ve been told),” and his catalog listed thousands of items for sale from Andrew’s Music.

White was recruited by Joe and Wayne to play electric bass on Sweetnighter because Joe had seen him with the Fifth Dimension on television. Zawinul thought White could provide the funky underpinnings that he wanted for Weather Report’s new music. Before the Fifth Dimension, White played bass in Stevie Wonder’s band. These gigs paid well, and they bankrolled his other activities, including making his own records and faithfully transcribing hundreds of John Coltrane solos.

He also sold a transcription of his bass part on “125th Street Congress.” “That’s one of my biggest bass transcriptions in terms of sales,” he told me in 2017. “And every time Columbia puts that record out, people look on there to see who the bass player is, and it’s me. And then they start calling me. And I say, well, if you want to play like me, you buy that transcription. I’ve been selling that transcription for thirty years.”

White was a music scholar, graduating cum laude from Howard University in 1964 with a major in music theory and a minor in the oboe. He continued his academic career at the Paris Conservatory of Music, Dartmouth College, and the State University of New York, and became the principal oboist for the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra in 1968. But he also had a bawdy sense of humor that was unfiltered by the norms of polite society. One of the forty-odd LPs he self-produced was Far Out Flatulence: A Concerto for Flatulaphone, which consists of 56 minutes of White farting into a microphone.

While jazz was White’s primary love, he was never fully accepted as a jazz artist of stature. In a 2019 Jazz Times profile, White said, “My whole career started out, even in 1960 when I came to Washington, with a severe handicap, which is, I was told very early on that I had no commercial viability,” he says. “My saxophone sound has too much resonance in it, and I was told it would not register well on recording tape, so I couldn’t make good records-and they wouldn’t even know what to do with the records anyway. So I’ve been off in the corner ever since. But nobody ever said I couldn’t play.

“Nobody was knockin’ on my door, so I knocked on my own door, because I had the resources from [professionally performing] rock ‘n’ roll. There are other fellas in my ilk like Coltrane and Eric Dolphy and Ornette [Coleman], they probably didn’t have the resources to do it themselves, and if they did who knows what we could have had from those cats, because they were working under what they call professional supervision. I’ve done all this myself, so I’ve never had anyone tell me what won’t sell,” he laughs in his deep, distinctive guffaw. “I put it all out myself and it’s done well for me, but then I’m not ambitious either. I’m happy with the sales I get, which wouldn’t impress somebody else who would tell me what won’t sell and who probably wouldn’t put it on the record. And who knows how much music that Coltrane had, and all those cats, who never got to even play it in the studio because somebody told them, ‘Well, we don’t need this.’

“I was considered an oddball just like they were. I think Coltrane and Eric and Ornette, to a lesser degree, they didn’t have so much resonance in their sound that it wouldn’t register well on tape.”

If that lack of acceptance hurt Andrew, you wouldn’t know it by talking to him. He was a cheerful man with a big, hearty laugh. He conducted himself with the satisfaction of having done things on his own terms. I will miss him.

Herschel Dwellingham’s Soul Bass

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Soul Bass Album Cover
Fans of Weather Report’s Sweetnighter album know the name Herschel Dwellingham. He’s the drummer that brought the funk. A few years ago I wrote a post updating readers about Herschel’s current activities. Now he has produced a new album called Soul Bass, utilizing his Sweetnighters Band. As the band’s name suggests, the inspiration comes from his experience playing on Sweetnighter. But Soul Bass is a very different kind of album, one that highlights Herschel’s love of R&B and his own writing and arranging. In addition to Zawinul classics such as “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” and “Boogie Woogie Waltz,” as well as Wayne’s tune, “Palladiium,” you’ll find a bunch of Herschel’s original material on Soul Bass, some of it dating back to his days before Sweetnighter when he was a fixture in Boston’s R&B scene.

The Sweetnighters BandThe Sweetnighters band on the last day of recording at Studio In The Country, Bogalusa, Louisiana.

Herschel asked me to write the liner notes for Soul Bass, which I was happy to do. I have reproduced them below. You can find the album itself on Apple iTunes. You can also find the tunes on YouTube, and I believe a CD is in the works.

In February 1973, Herschel Dwellingham got a call from Bob Devere, a producer at Columbia Records, inviting him to a recording session. This wasn’t unusual–Herschel was doing a lot of sessions in those days–but when he arrived at Connecticut Recording Studio a few days later, he realized that this one would be different. For in the studio were legendary jazz musicians Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, along with the rest of their band, Weather Report.
Upon seeing them, Herschel’s first thought was, “These guys want to play with me?” At the time, Weather Report was an avant-garde jazz band, whereas Dwellingham was known for his R&B grooves. It seemed like an odd pairing.

But unbeknownst to Herschel, his sound was exactly what Zawinul was looking for and together they spent several days recording Weather Report’s third record, Sweetnighter. With Dwellingham providing the funky underpinnings the album sold over 300,000 copies and proved to be the turning point in Weather Report’s fortunes. Years later, Joe would greet his old friend as “the Boogie Woogie Waltz man,” a reference to the album’s best known track. “There wouldn’t be Weather Report if it wasn’t for you,” Zawinul would say.

Forty some odd years later, Herschel had a dream in which Zawinul, who died in 2007, urged him to start a new group dedicated to performing some of Joe’s old tunes, as well as showcasing his own writing. In the past, such dreams had led to some of Dwellingham’s most successful projects, so this was something to take seriously. In response, he assembled a topnotch thirteen-piece band populated by many of his favorite musicians, some of whom he’s known for decades, and augmented them with a full string section and guest vocalists. Together they recorded Soul Bass, an album consisting of two of Zawinul’s best-known pieces, one of Wayne Shorter’s, and a clutch of Dwellingham originals, all dressed in luxurious string and horn arrangements and tasty grooves.

The leadoff track is “Big Girl,” the first of two Dwellingham-penned instrumentals. Listeners who know Herschel only from his drumming would be unaware that his real passion is writing and arranging his own music—something he’s done since high school. This tune dates back to Herschel’s college days and features a fine tenor sax solo by multi-instrumentalist Ed Pazant and the trumpet work of Cullen Knight. Both are among Herschel’s oldest musical associates. Pazant died not long after this recording, and Herschel has dedicated this album to him and Zawinul.

“Boogie Woogie Waltz” was the centerpiece of Weather Report’s Sweetnighter album–a thirteen-minute groove with a lot of improvising around a handful of melodic themes. Dwellingham’s version is more to the point, expanding the orchestration behind the melodies and providing another platform for Pazant, this time on soprano sax. As with the Weather Report version, Herschel grounds the tune by rapping out every beat on his snare drum, while his bass drum never deviates from emphasizing the and-one.

The soulful ballad, “Cold Spot,” features vocalist Marlena Lady Black Lace, formerly known as Molly Holt of the Rascals. Her musical association with Dwellingham goes back many years and this tune has long been among their favorites. The lyrics explore the heartache of unrequited love, and Marlena delivers an emotive performance worthy of the tune’s message, emphasized by the sustained tones of Tony “Strat” Thomas’ electric guitar.

“Flex-a-ble” is Dwellingham’s take on soul-meets-rap. With its chromatic melodies and deliberate rhythm, it sounds as if it could be at home in a 1960s secret agent movie. But just as listeners get comfortable with that vibe, into the mix comes the rapping of Kenyell Brown. The point, Dwellingham says, is that you can’t be rigid in life and in love. Sometimes you have to compromise and learn to be flexible.

Joe Zawinul’s tune, “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” was a surprise instrumental hit for Cannonball Adderley in 1967. It quickly rose to number eleven on the Billboard pop chart and within weeks two vocal versions, each with different lyrics, were also released. At one point, all three of them occupied spots on the R&B singles chart. Here Dwellingham fashions it as an R&B powerhouse, with full-throated horns and a vocal chorus, and after Michael Lemmler’s Hammond B-3 intro, the band hits a toe-tapping groove behind Beverly Crosby’s stirring vocal. An added bonus is the baritone sax solo played by Roger Lewis, a founding member of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

“Palladium” is Dwellingham’s nod to Zawinul’s musical partner, Wayne Shorter. It originally appeared on Weather Report’s 1977 album, Heavy Weather, which also includes “Birdland,” Joe’s well-known ode to the famous New York City jazz club of the same name. “Palladium” is its counterpart, named after the Palladium Ballroom, which was located just down the street from Birdland. In the 1950s it was the epicenter of the mambo craze that took the country by storm, and Wayne spent many evenings there as a young man, dancing to the likes of Tito Puente, Tito Rodríguez, and Machito. Dwellingham’s arrangement lends the tune an easy going Latin feel. Dig the conga work of Kahlil Kwame Bell.

“Soul Bass” is another Dwellingham instrumental, with fine solos by Ed Pazant on flute and Cullen Knight on trumpet. The tune is based on a catchy drum-and-bass groove that Herschel improvised in his home studio. He wrote the melody and chart the day before the rest of the musicians arrived for the recording session. As with all of these tunes, Dave Ellis is rock solid holding down the bottom on electric bass.

Closing out this collection is the ultra funky “What I Got, I Got,” a throwback to Herschel’s Boston days when he led the house band at the Sugar Shack, then the city’s biggest and best soul venue. Dwellingham originally recorded this tune in 1971, with lyrics written and sung by Maurice Rice. Here Eli “Paperboy” Reed delivers a vocal straight out of that era, while “Strat” Thomas wraps a searing guitar solo around the melody. This is Boston soul, Dwellingham style.

Decades after its release, Sweetnighter continues to have a lasting impact on Dwellingham. Numerous hip-hop artists have sampled it, and Joe Zawinul went so far as to say it contains the first hip-hop beat.

“That one album put me on the map,” Herschel says. “My wife and my friends say I really don’t realize what I did and how important to drumming my playing was. I’m just a country boy who doesn’t think nothin’ about that. To me, I was just trying to make money to feed a wife and three little kids. That’s what I was doing. I didn’t think I was making history or anything. I was just trying to keep money in the house.”

It’s safe to say that Herschel did more than that. And now Soul Bass gives us a broader taste of his musical range—his love of soul and R&B, and his affinity for arranging for large ensembles. Let’s hope there’s a sequel.

Catching Up With Herschel Dwellingham

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Herschel Dwellingham

I recently interviewed Herschel Dwellingham, one of the drummers who performed on Weather Report’s third album, Sweetnighter. I’ll be updating that page soon, but in the meantime, here’s some background about Herschel himself.

Weather Report fans who know him solely from his work on Sweetnighter may not know that in the sixties and early seventies, Herschel was quite active in the soul and R&B scene in the Boston area, having arrived there in 1963 to attend the Berklee School of Music after graduating from high school in Bogalusa, Louisiana. By the time Weather Report came calling, he was a much-in-demand session drummer, and would soon move to New York to work with top-notch arranger-producers such as Phil Medley (writer of “Twist & Shout” and “One In A Million”), Bert Keyes (Stephanie Mills), Paul Leka (Harry Chapin), and Bert De Coteaux (Sister Sledge and the Manhattans). He and his wife also started their own production company, Helva Records.

One of the earliest tunes Herschel produced in Boston was “Young Girl,” sung by little known Frank Lynch. A few years ago, contemporary R&B artist and Boston native Eli “Paperboy” Reed told the story of “Young Girl” in a post on The Southern Soul List Yahoo group:

[Herschel] became THE arranger, producer and session drummer for basically all the R&B and soul records that came out in Boston between 1963 and 1973. He also was the band leader and drummer at the biggest and best Boston soul club at the time, The Sugar Shack, in addition to writing and arranging commercial jingles at Ace Recording Studios in Boston’s famed combat zone.

Herschel really transformed the soul scene in Boston by combining the southern sound he had gotten growing up in Bogalusa (about 70 miles north of New Orleans) with the formal training he received at Berklee. In fact, the first record he produced in Boston was a cover of a big New Orleans hit, “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye,” which had been recorded by singer Danny White. Herschel’s version is a great example of that combination of styles and was sung brilliantly by Billy Thompson, and arranged by Herschel’s friend from Berklee, Alf Clausen, who later went on to garner much fame for arranging and writing for The Simpsons television show!

“Young Girl” single

“Young Girl” was recorded in late 1967 and was the second record Herschel ever produced, after the Billy Thompson record. He and the singer, Frank Lynch, had known each other for a few years and after a local DJ failed to follow up on a promise to record Lynch, Herschel decided he would produce him himself. He wrote the song “Young Girl” along with the b-side of the single “People Will Make You Say Things.” This time Herschel did the horn and string arrangements himself, in addition to producing and playing drums. His friend Alf Clausen was involved again, playing the distinctive french horn part on the session! Herschel recorded the song on his own dime and then brought it out on his label, My Records, which he co-owned with his wife, Alva, and Boston area record store impresario Skippy White.

As soon as the record came out in 1968 it was given pick hits by Billboard, Cashbox, and several other trade magazines. “Young Girl” was on its way to taking off before fate intervened. On a Friday night, Frank Lynch was playing with Herschel and his band at the famous Boston club, Paul’s Mall. At the time, Lynch was living with his aunt, with whom he had recently moved in with after living with Herschel and his wife for almost two years. After the gig, Herschel was driving Frank home and said that he was acting “funny” and kept talking about death and about how he knew he was going to die.

That night, Lynch got into an argument with his aunt which escalated into a physical fight. A neighbor called the police who, in the process of arresting Frank, broke his arm. He was taken, along with another prison, to Mass. General Hospital and an armed police officer was stationed there to guard both prisoners. Apparently Frank was still in an odd state because when he came out of the bathroom he started waving a towel at the police officer in a threatening manner. The other prisoner decided to join in and they both advanced toward the officer. The cop shot Frank three times in the head at close range, killing him instantly.

After that night, there was an uproar in Boston’s black community. Frank Lynch’s family sued the city of Boston along with the Boston Police force, but their case was unsuccessful. Boston was still a very racially divided city in 1968 and no one was surprised by the verdict.

Fast forward 40-some years and “Young Girl” was re-discovered by Eli Reed. As Herschel tells it, “Eli found it on the floor of Skippy’s record shop after Skippy had moved out. He took it home and got interested in me and the song. When he got a deal with Capital Records, he told what made the deal go was that they loved the song, and he re-recorded it. He copied my arrangement for Frank Lynch just the way I did it originally. And I just got an email from a music supervisor that it’s going into a new movie, [Kevin Costner’s] Black and White.”

Nowadays, Herschel’s back home in Bogalusa, running his current record company, Bogue Magic City Records. “We started it in 2004,” Herschel recently told me. “I’m an owner. Mary Starr, with whom I’m married to now, is one of the owners. And the singer Marlena, who was Molly Holt from the Rascals, is one of the owners. Right now we’ve got something like 50 releases and 30-some artists. We’re an Internet record label and we’ve been doing pretty well.”

Sweetnighter has had a lasting impact on Dwellingham. “I go to places around the country and they say ‘Herschel Dwellingham’… Even in L.A.… I played the Whisky A Go-Go and people must have known I was going to be there. A lot of drummers were there. Drummers come out wherever I go. That one little album [Sweetnighter] must have put me on the map. Even in Europe. I was in Frankfort and I did master classes and private teaching. It was just unbelievable. My wife and my friends say I really don’t realize what I did and how important to drumming my playing was. I’m just a country boy who doesn’t think nothing about that. To me, I was just trying to make money to feed a wife and three little kids. That’s what I was doing. I didn’t think I was making history or fame or anything. Just trying to keep money in the house.

“When Zawinul was in town at the Blue Note, I was playing somewhere else on the same night, so I couldn’t get there. So I called and asked for him. They said he’s on stage, call back in ten minutes. I called back and said, ‘Tell Joe Zawinul that Herschel Dwellingham is on the phone.’ I thought, this guy isn’t going to remember who the hell I am. But he came to the phone and said, ‘The Boogie Woogie Waltz man!’ I said, ‘You remember me?’ He said, ‘Man, are you kidding?! There wouldn’t be no Weather Report if it wasn’t for you.’ That’s what he called me, The Boogie Woogie Waltz Man. We talked and we were trying for me to come to L.A. and do another album with him, and then he got sick.”

Herschel with DJDJ and Herschel

Herschel keeps busy producing a variety of artists from his Bogalusa office and studio. “We have a young girl named Annie Gambino that Marlena and I have been writing and producing for. I’ve got a new Tony Williams, he’s nine years old. His name is DJ; I call him DJ the drummer. I just started teaching him the [Berklee percussion teacher] Alan Dawson system. He’s got a good groove, his tempo is solid, he doesn’t speed up or anything, and he’s going to be a great drummer.” For Herschel, it’s a part of passing down the tradition. “As a kid, I used to watch the great Earl Palmer, and that’s how I got interested in being a drummer. Earl gave me a set of sticks, and I just gave another little guy that I’m teaching a set of sticks. When I go places and I see young people who are enthused and want to play, I keep a bunch of brand new sticks that I give them.

“The latest artist I produced is a 16-year old girl, Marce, who’s going to be another Whitney Houston. She’s dynamite–got the chops and everything. We recently did a Christmas song for her that Marlena and I wrote it, and we put it out on iTunes and all the Internet stores. Early this year there will be a new release from Marlena, a new album by Timothy Wilson, and another song from Marce.

“I also have my own album, Enlightenment. I play all the instruments and Marlena sings. Everything on it is me. And there’s a song called ‘I Thank You Joe’ dedicated to Joe Zawinul. It’s what I think Joe’s style is.

“I’ve got a growing production company and record company, and we’re busy producing and writing,” Herschel concludes. It sounds like life is good for the Boogie Woogie Waltz Man.