Overview

Josef Zawinul once said “The bass is the mother of all music and the drums are the father.” [IASW, p. 215] Since Alphonso Johnson’s recruitment for Mysterious Traveller, the “mother” had been in good hands. But the “father” remained problematic going back to the Sweetnighter days when Eric Gravatt was phased out. At least eight drummers had passed through the band by the time Ray Townley interviewed Zawinul for Down Beat in the late autumn of 1974. Townley asked him why he had changed drummers so often.

Why do you think?

We are auditioning drummers now. We have tried to audition drummers in all kinds of environments, in homes, in rehearsal studios, but the only way you really find out is on the stage. And there is no question about the difficulty of playing drums, period. And to play drums with a band that is 80% improvising is the most difficult. And we have not found the one yet. Everyone we’ve had, so far, has had something special, which was very beautiful. But there’s so much more to it.

It looks like you’re looking for a drummer whose beat is more pronounced?

Yes, but not in a rhythm and blues or rock and roll sense. STRENGTH can be expressed in many more subtle ways than that.” [DB75a]

Zawinul added this perspective in 1976: “The fact that we change the rhythm section often does not mean we have problems with them. We are moving, we are in the world, we are not standing still. Wayne and me, we’ve been together for many years, and friends for 17 years, and have had similar ideas about how things should be, and that’s our privilege. We change as many times as we feel like changing, but today is another day. Sometimes the rhythm section are not able to execute new ideas or sometimes unwilling to accept new things.” [BE76]

In 1984 Zawinul recalled the situation, saying that Mysterious Traveller “was so good that we couldn’t follow it up with a live band. Even though we had Alphonso Johnson in the band, we couldn’t find the right drummer to play all these different things. After Eric Gravatt we had Greg Errico, who used to play for Sly And The Family Stone. He’s a world-class rhythm and blues and rock drummer, but he could not play any jazz. That limited us, so after Mysterious Traveller we had to make another change. We got Ishmael Wilburn, who was already on the record, to go on tour with us. He was great when he just played, but when we were all of a sudden out there in the world and everybody was coming to see us, somehow he couldn’t do it–he lost heart. So we needed another drummer. We actually had two drummers on the bandstand: Ishmael Wilburn and Daryl Brown. Dom Um Romao was also up there playing percussion. Al Johnson brought Daryl in from Philly; he was an excellent, but light, drummer. That was the band’s hardest time as far as live performance was concerned. The music was so demanding; ‘Nubian Sundance’ is one of the hardest and longest of our pieces to play, but we did it well. Dom Um was a great help for the band. After he left, we had another Brazilian percussionist, Alyrio Lima.” [KB84]

By the time of Tale Spinnin’, “we didn’t have a band and we had to make a record,” Zawinul remembered, “and we tried to get a band together, and we rehearsed all the music with the drummer.” [BE76] Zawinul apparently wasn’t satisfied with the tracks, and a chance encounter led to Ndugu Leon Chancler’s participation. “That was a fluke situation,” Chancler recalled in 2001. “I was still with Santana at the time, but we were on hiatus. I was in the studio with Jean Luc Ponty and Weather Report was rehearsing and recording next door. As I was walking out they asked if I would like to come to do a session for them, and that lasted for a week. Those recordings turned into Tale Spinnin’.” [SI01]

At age 23, Ndugu had already recorded Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi, toured with Miles Davis, and was then Santana’s drummer. “I like the way he played,” Zawinul recalled. “I heard him with Carlos Santana, and I wanted him on that next record, Tale Spinnin’,” adding, “I liked his rhythm feel and his touch on the drums.” [IASW, p. 168] Zawinul tried hard to get Ndugu to join the band after recording Tale Spinnin’, but the drummer elected to remain with Santana. [IASW, p. 174-175]

In his Zawinul biography In A Silent Way, Glasser remarked that “Zawinul’s approach to the recording model that he’d learned from Miles [Davis] on Bitches Brew came closer on this record than on any other.” [IASW, p. 170] Townley asked Zawinul if his experiences with Miles Davis helped get his ideas together for Weather Report. “Not from the music, but from the way Miles handled a recording session I learned a whole lot. They had the tapes running constantly, not to lose certain things. The best things are usually happening when you just get together and try this shit, you know. Miles is a leader, but in such a relaxed way that you never feel like someone is trying to tell you something. There was very little talking going on. It was more just a vibe.” [DB75a]

According to Alphonso Johnson and Ndugu, that was much the style of the Tale Spinnin’ sessions. Johnson told Glasser, “There was a lot of freedom in how it was put together. That was part of what made the music so special. It was very reminiscent of how I imagine Miles used to record. They would just start rolling tape and the song would start immediately from the first note. Then later Joe and Wayne would go back and splice the tape. So what may have been the middle of what we did would all of a sudden become the introduction, so it would start at a high point.” [IASW, p. 170] Ndugu concurred, telling Glasser, “There wasn’t a lot of dialog about what they were trying to do musically. We would go in and just start playing, and they would roll the tape, or they would give me a sketch of a tune, which would be eight bars or something.” [IASW, p. 170]