Category Archives: Fifty Years Ago Today

Fifty Years Ago Today—Ishmael Wilburn Joins the Band

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Dayton Daily News ad for Weather Report's Nov. 2 performance.
Okay, I’m a day late with this, but we need to commemorate Ishmael Wilburn’s first gig with Weather Report! It took place on Nov. 2, 1973, at the Palace Theatre in Dayton, Ohio, a 1920s-era movie palace that saw its share of live music going back to the heydays of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie.

The advertisements for the show listed Eric Gravatt as the drummer, even though Gravatt had left the band in June. Taking his place was Greg Errico, whose first gig I wrote about here. By October, Errico was preparing to leave the band, so Joe and Wayne began looking for a replacement.

Ishmael, who was born and raised in Philadelphia, was then in a local band that featured original material in a funky-jazz vibe with a female vocalist. Weather Report came to town on October 14. This was the night Joe and Wayne heard Alphonso Johnson play bass with Chuck Mangione, leading to Alphonso joining Weather Report. It was also the night that Wilburn got on Joe and Wayne’s radar.

“We had a guy who sort of managed our group, and I think he was somehow connected to Wayne Shorter,” Ishmael recalled. “He went down to the show to see them—I didn’t go to the show—and he let them hear a demo tape of some originals we were working on, and they liked the drumming. Joe liked my foot. That’s what I remember the guy saying when he came back. He said, ‘Hey man, those guys want to talk to you. They want you to do an album with them. Joe really likes your foot.’ I said, ‘Wow, my foot!'” [laughs]

I asked Ishmael what Joe meant by his “foot.” “My kick drum,” he explained. “How I play my kick drum. Where I drop and how I played my kick drum. He really liked the feel of how I played.” Going back to the recording of Sweetnighter, Joe was keen on finding a drummer with a powerful bass drum sound. Ishmael fit the bill.

Ishmael Wilburn in 1973-74. Photo courtesy Ishmael Wilburn.
I have to imagine that getting an offer to play with Weather Report, let alone record an album with them, was probably the last thing on Wilburn’s mind at the time. He was twenty years old and his experience was mainly limited to local groups. “I had done some things with local bands in Jersey, New York—small club stuff, maybe a big venue where we weren’t the main draw—you know, a doo-wop group or something like that. I had backed up a lot of doo-wop groups up to that point. That was the thing in Philly.”

Nor was Wilburn all that familiar with Weather Report’s music. “I had never really heard of Weather Report. [laughs] I was more into Cold Blood, Earth, Wind & Fire, Rare Earth, Chicago—that kind of stuff. I was coming from a gospel background.” Nevertheless, when the offer came, Ish was willing to give it a try.

Joe and Wayne wasted little time getting Wilburn to a gig. Ten days after they were in Philadelphia, Weather Report had a show in Washington, D.C., and they invited Wilburn to come down. “Somehow or another I was supposed to go meet them,” Wilburn told me. “They paid for me to go to D.C.; they were supposed to play at Constitution Hall. I took the Amtrak down and I think I was going to sit in or do something at soundcheck so they could get a feel for me. But something happened. They didn’t get into town and I was delayed, and it was getting late. I think the show was pushed back or something. Anyway, I didn’t meet them. So I came back to Philly and started doing my daily thing.

“And then I got a call from their manager, and he said, ‘Listen, they want you to play a gig with them.’ I said, ‘What? I have never even played with them. I have never met them. You’ve got to be kidding me.’ So I said okay.” Wilburn caught a plane to Dayton—he had never been on an airplane before—where he met the band for the first time. After checking into the hotel, he went to the Palace Theatre for soundcheck.

“I was actually playing on Greg Errico’s drums. He had these Ludwig clear acrylic drums—huge drums—and I’m not very good at playing other people’s drums. I hate that. I don’t like going and sitting in. But anyway, we did a soundcheck for about forty minutes, and I was nervous as hell.

“Then we did the concert. I had never played a room that size. Scared as hell. That was really something. It was a standing ovation. I really hadn’t understood how big they were in the jazz market. And afterwards Joe told me how great it was. Joe Zawinul was a character. Oh my God, man! He took a tape off the soundboard and gave me a cassette of it and said, ‘This is you. Listen to this. This is you!’ I didn’t even recognize me playing the drums with them. I said, ‘No, this is not me.’ He said, ‘Yeah, that’s you!'”

As I wrote in my book, so began a whirlwind that found Ishmael playing with one of the leading jazz bands of the day. A month later he was at Devonshire Sound Studio recording Weather Report’s fourth album, Mysterious Traveller. There’s no question that Wilburn’s playing was instrumental in creating the unique sound of that album, one of Weather Report’s best.

“Great memories for me out there,” Ishmael said of his time in Los Angeles. “We were out there recording, and I was staying in this little hotel bungalow. I had my own room. Dom Um [Romão] was like a mentor to me. I remember him cooking me lentil soup, stuff like that. I drove around L.A. a little bit, but I was twenty years years old. I got home sick. They flew me home for Christmas. It was weird being in L.A. with Christmas trees and Santa in shorts. I just couldn’t handle that.” [laughs]

There’s lots more about Ishmael’s experience with Weather Report and the recording of Mysterious Traveller in my book Elegant People: A History of the Band Weather Report. When I interviewed Ish for the book, I told him that Mysterious Traveller was one of my favorite albums, and that it must be gratifying to know that people are still listening to it decades later.

“It is,” he replied. “That’s my claim to fame. Every musician wants to be associated with an album like that.”

Fifty Years Ago Today—Greg Errico Joins the Band

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Melody Maker review of Weather Report's Jul. 6, 1973, performance.
On July 6, 1973, former Sly and the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico made his debut with Weather Report. The band’s performance was part of the Newport Jazz Festival, which had been transplated to New York City the previous year after a near-riot forced the cancelation of the festival in 1971. Festival events were spread across the city in multiple venues over multiple days, group in themes. In Weather Report’s case, it appeared at Philharmonic Hall on a double-bill with Chick Corea’s Return to Forever.

Errico replaced Eric Gravatt, who had been the band’s drummer since October 1971. Gravatt was a truly great jazz drummer, but with Weather Report’s third album, Sweetnighter, the band began moving in a funkier direction that demanded a different approach from the rhythm section. This was made clear by the fact that Joe Zawinul brought in an R&B drummer for the recording session, replacing Gravatt on several of the album’s tracks. That, coupled with some interpersonal issues with Zawinul, made it increasingly clear that Gravatt’s days with the band were numbered. He soldiered on for several months, but behind the scenes Zawinul began looking for a replacement.

Meanwhile, bassist Miroslav Vitous had been introduced to Errico by mutual friend Doug Rauch, who was the bassplayer in the rock group Santana. Miroslav and Errico got along well, jamming together when they had the opportunity, and even talked of doing an album together. So When Zawinul mentioned that he wanted to make a change, Miroslav asked Errico if he would be interested in going out with the band. He was.

“When Mirsolav asked me to join them, I think it was like a week or two before the tour was going to start,” Errico told me when I interviewed him for my book Elegant People: A History of the Band Weather Report. “They wanted me come back to New York and rehearse a little, meet everybody, meet Joe, and I said fine. I went back a couple of days early, and I remember Joe lived in a loft. So I went there and for the first time I met Airto and Flora [Purim]—they were hanging out with them. And Jan Hammer, met him. It was a whole different circle of people in relation to where I had come from. It was very refreshing and I enjoyed it. And we did a couple of rehearsals and we hit.”

Adding Greg Errico must have raised eyebrows within the jazz community—and the rock community, too. It would have been an unmistakeable signal that Weather Report was making a more overt effort to combine elements of rock and funk into its music. “Well, you know, there was a lot of that happening,” Errico told me.

Up to then, the jazz world had always been segregated. I remember growing up in San Francisco and there was a lot of jazz around here, and they had their own club, and that was it. But this time period [the late-sixties/early-seventies] was when Miles [Davis] got turned on to us [Sly and the Family Stone]. He came up to the Newport Jazz Festival and hung out with us the whole weekend. And so the jazz world wanted some of that new audience, that bigger audience. They wanted to reach out to bigger audiences and younger people to sustain, to continue to be. Because I think in the fifties and the early-sixties, they were the thing. They had the world watching there for a while, and they saw this new thing happening, these huge audiences, which was new for everybody, even in the rock world. It was like a phenomenon that was happening. The music changed the world, from the Beatles to Woodstock, and all these things that were happening socially all around the planet.

So they wanted some of that, and they started listening and looking, and finding things that they could connect with, to latch onto—like something they could grab onto to get catapulted and pulled into this thing. I mean, they didn’t just go get whatever pop tune that was number one for a week; they were looking for something valuable. And there were things. There was a lot of great writers and creative people, like Sly himself, the Beatles, the arrangements, and some of the things that were happening musically. It was real music. It wasn’t just Tinker Toys. So that was happening a lot during that time period.

Look at what Miles was getting into. And Herbie [Hancock]. I mean, there was a lot of passing the ball around, everybody trying out each other’s things and doing something with it. Those were very interesting times. The stuff that came out of the late-sixties and early-seventies still lives today, recreating itself through young audiences five generations removed. So there’s something there. Obviously, there are elements that connect with people that weren’t around then. And it keeps on connecting.

Errico’s tenure with Weather Report was relatively short-lived. He toured with the band for about four months, going to Japan and Europe, in addition to performing numerous gigs in the United States. Joe always said that Greg played “Boogie Woogie Waltz” better than anyone before or since.

“Musically, it was like he threw me the keys to the car, and I just had a lot of fun,” Errico told me. “It was challenging, but it all worked. The Chemistry was good. And sometimes Dom Um [Romão] would jump on the drum set, too. He was a percussionist, but he had a small set of traps up there and once in a while he would jump on them.”

“I really enjoyed traveling the world with them,” he told me. “Whether it be the musical experience or the exposure to different audiences, it was a whole different vibe, a whole different paradigm. I really enjoyed it.”

The Time Weather Report Was So Loud It Shut Down the Venue

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If you attended a Weather Report concert back in the day, you know it was loud. This is because Joe Zawinul liked it that way, perhaps inspired by the raw power that he admired in rock bands. And so as part of my “Fifty Years Ago Today” theme, we remember the time Weather Report was so loud that it actually shut down a music venue.

After a month-long break that began just before Christmas 1972, Weather Report resumed performing in late January of the following year, with gigs at the University of New York at Stony Brook, a weeklong return to the Smiling Dog in Cleveland, and three nights at a tiny Atlanta music venue called the Twelfth Gate.

Weather Report then traveled up the Eastern Seaboard to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where it spent five days in early February recording its third album, Sweetnighter. After those sessions, the band immediately hit the road again, arriving in Boulder, Colorado, for a gig at a new venue called Edison Electric on February 12.

At the time, Boulder’s live music scene was dominated by Tulagi, located just a few blocks from the University of Colorado campus. But in late 1972 Talagi found itself in competition with Edison Electric, a short-lived and little-remembered music venue (“behind the McDonalds” according to the advertising) that angled for many of the same acts that Talagi was attracting. Taking over the space of a previous club, Edison’s owners upgraded the premises with newly installed quad sound systems, new stage lighting, and “supergraphics” (whatever those are) on the walls, plus seating for 600 patrons. It was considered one of the best live music venues in town, and in its first few months of operation Edison Electric hosted Hot Tuna (when over a thousand people crammed inside), folk musician John Stewart, and the Dillards. The owners had eyes on bigger things for 1973, and booked Crazy Horse, Gram Parsons and Weather Report for early the next year.

So it was that Weather Report blew into town and proceeded to put on a well-received show for an audience of 550. It went so well that Weather Report vowed to be back soon. Everyone was pleased; that is, everyone but the motel owner next door.

Unhappy with the noise and crowds that Edison Electric attracted, he managed to get Colorado state officials to turn up at Weather Report’s show armed with decibel meters. Standing outside the club, they determined that the sound emanating from within ran afoul of the state’s legal limits and shut the place down.

According to contemporaneous reports, the legal limit was 55 decibels, whereas Weather Report was measured at 62 dB outside the club. How loud is 62 decibels? 60 dB is about the loudness of a normal conversation, or background music, or normal piano practice. As a point of comparison, the city where I live limits outdoor music to 70 dB measured 25 feet or more from the source until 10:00 p.m., after which it can be no louder than 60 decibels. The same applies to indoor music as heard outside the business. So a threshold of 55 dB seems a bit low, but that remains Colorado state law in commercial areas from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Maybe the club should have invested in more sound insulation than “supergraphics.”

In any event, Edison Electric was instantly caput. “Thanks to my good neighbor at the motel next door, I’ve got a permanent injunction not to open,” club owner Conboy grumbled to the Colorado Daily. “My voice right now is about 60db. The traffic out on the turnpike is more than that. The Boulder ordinance is 80 dB. They came out and measured outside our door. Sixty-two dB, but…”

“If I sound bitter, I am,” Conboy added. “I just took a $560,000 bath. Out of business, bankrupt, down the tubes.”

With or without Edison Electric, Weather Report did return to Boulder, performing at Tulagi for five nights in June, and giving a concert in October at the 2,000-seat Macky Auditorium on the University of Colorado campus. That was a lot of gigs in an eight-month period for a metro area of about 140,000 people. Evidently Boulderites had good taste in music.

Remembering Weather Report’s 1972 Tour with Santana

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Advertisement for Weather Report's performance in Lubbock, TX. Check out the ticket prices: $4 in advance, $5 at the door!
So in keeping with my “fifty years ago today” theme, I should have written this post in mid-December. Oops! Still, it’s worth highlighting these unique gigs, even if a month late, so here goes.

In December 1972, the rock group Santana was fresh off a 19-concert, 27-day jaunt across Europe when it returned to the United States for a short tour that kicked off in New Orleans on December 9. At the time, Santana was hugely successful commercially—its previous two albums had hit #1 on the commercial charts—and it had just released its fourth studio album, Caravanserai. That record was a departure from Santana’s previous work, emphasizing improvisation and open-ended structures. In that endeavor, Carlos Santana and his musical partner Michael Shrieve were influenced by “all sorts of funk and jazz stuff,” but especially Miles Davis, Weather Report and Herbie Hancock. So a concert pairing with Weather Report wasn’t completely outlandish even though Weather Report was still essentially an avant garde jazz group at this point. And given that both were signed to Columbia Records, it was probably welcomed by the label.

I have contemporaneous confirmation for four shows: New Orleans; Dallas; Lubbock, Texas; and Tuscon, Arizona. A website visitor remembers a show in San Antonio, Texas, and there may have been one in El Paso as well. They were arranged by Bill Graham, the San Francisco–based promoter who was an early supporter of Santana’s, and who accompanied the troupe on this tour. (Brian Risner remembers him always being first off the airplane and immediately on the pay phones, conducting business.) When Graham asked Santana who he would like to have as the opening act, it took him “less than a second” to say Weather Report.

Santana was especially enamored with Wayne’s playing, and he and other band members would listen to Weather Report’s sets from the side of the stage each night. However, it wasn’t the happiest of tours for Weather Report. They got about 45 minutes of stage time in front of crowds that weren’t there to see them, and the response could be rather rude. Even Carlos found it uncomfortable when people would scream “Santana” while Weather Report was playing, as he related in his autobiography, The Universal Tone. “I wanted to go onstage, grab the mike, and say, ‘Hey, shut the fuck up! This is Weather Report—this is Wayne Shorter. You’re embarrassing me!’” He thought that maybe Santana could open the shows instead, but Graham dissuaded him of that idea, explaining, correctly, that people would leave as soon as Santana was done.

I have one review from these shows (from Tucson) and it confirms the audience’s attitude toward Weather Report.

The unknown and the well-known—that’s what it was at the Community Center Arena last night. Santana and Weather Report. Who has ever heard of Weather Report? Well, now Tucson has. They weren’t well received at all and it’s difficult to say why. I’m sure they won’t be forgotten.

None of Weather Report’s five men spoke a word—not even to introduce their songs, if that’s what you call them.

It was very free-form music, the success of which depends upon how well the musicians can interact with one another spontaneously. All of this added up to a set pervaded with subtle, fleeting, morsels of music followed by tense moments of waiting for them to do it again. I waited gladly, but “boos” could be frequently heard between numbers along with the cheers of the few but vociferous devotees.

Maybe the day will come when teenagers can trust a group with a balding piano player.

After that show, Santana recalled going up to Wayne and finding him “a little cool to me. I could tell that opening for Santana was not his favorite experience.” Nevertheless, Wayne took away some lessons that he recalled 35 years later in a JazzTimes article by George Varga.

There was a big snowstorm [in Lubbock]. And even after the storm let up a little and we went to the venue, we didn’t see any cars in the parking area, just a few buses. Then we went inside and the place was packed! We, as Weather Report guys, kind of realized, “People will get here super-early, even in a snow storm, to hear Santana.” This kind of affectionate crowd, with that degree of dedication, was something we didn’t see in a straight jazz-oriented setting.

Beyond the music, I could see in Carlos’s eyes and even in the attitude of the guys in the band that there was a humanistic approach to almost everything they did and were doing. I noticed that they were not like a band, but like a family. And I just couldn’t help but see this tremendous, reciprocal respect from Carlos to the band and from the band to Carlos. Of course we’d heard about him from Woodstock. But when we signed with Columbia Records, Carlos was the number one record-seller. Where Carlos was a challenge for us was to try to achieve that kind of audience, to gather that kind of audience in those kinds of numbers, to hear what we were doing. Carlos’s fame, audience-wise, ignited our imaginations to see if we could do that our way and accomplish that kind of audience recognition. We considered our music [to be] storytelling and almost very visual.

Another byproduct of this tour was the friendship that developed between Miroslav Vitous and Santana bass player Doug Rauch. The latter introduced Miroslav to former Sly and the Family Stone drummer Greg Errico, and the three of them would jam at Errico’s house in the San Francisco Bay Area. This would eventually lead to Errico joining Weather Report in June 1973.

The day after the Tuscon gig, everyone took a charter flight to San Francisco, where Graham gave Weather Report two more gigs at Winterland, opening for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention the first night and B.B. King the second night. The San Francisco crowd seemed more receptive to the band than those of the Santana tour. Philip Elwood, the longtime music writer for the San Francisco Examiner, wrote that Weather Report was “the first new-sounds, or ‘jazz,’ group to have ever gotten a Winterland rock crowd really turned on.” The band turned in “a perfectly beautiful short set. Their ability to indicate rhythmic integrity and use dynamic surprise to perfection made their music exciting while still artistically valid. . . . If you are going to Winterland tonight be sure to hear Weather Report. Incredible.”

Weather Report performed with Santana at least one other time, at the Cleveland Coliseum in 1976. John McLaughlin’s Shakti was also on the bill. (Weather Report and Shakti did a number of joint concerts that year.) Over the years, Wayne and Santana also performed at several benefit concerts and a friendship developed, culminating in them touring together in 1988. Their performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival tour is preserved in CD and DVD form (Live At The 1988 Montreux Jazz Festival by the Carlos Santana–Wayne Shorter Band). And of course, one other Weather Report–related Santana connection is that he played on Weather Report’s final album, This Is This, effectively substituting for Wayne, who had already begun his post–Weather Report career and was unavailable for all but a cameo on that record.