JazzStories: Joe Zawinul

From: Murray Street Productions
Series: JazzStories
Length: 12:59

"I was brought up in small farm of my grandfather, and in the city. And My father was…working class. My father was working, my mother was working. I was on the streets all day. So it is – I went to school, OK – often I didn't. Especially after the war when all those movies from America came out after the war....I didn’t go to school...I used to steal food. There was no food. We were starving to death, man. For a long time...But I had a great time growing up. And I think without out that, I don't think we would be having this conversation right now.…all that put a certain “ingredient” in the way you look at life...and music is nothing more than a reflection of it, of life." Read the full description.

Piece Audio

Playing: JazzStories: Joe Zawinul
From: Murray Street Productions

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A child piano prodigy at the Vienna Conservatory, the late Joe Zawinul fell in love with jazz by watching Stormy Weather, which he saw more than 100 times in his life. After a decade as a sideman to Maynard Ferguson, Dinah Washington, Cannonball Adderley, and Miles Davis, Zawinul teamed up with Wayne Shorter to form Weather Report, one of the most original jazz groups of the 1970s. JALC Radio's Andrew Rosenblum interviewed Zawinul a few months before the great keyboardist passed away in 2007 -- Zawinul discusses his childhood as a "street kid," his distaste for bebop mimicry, and how he conceived of Weather Report as "sort of" a big band.

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Piece Description

A child piano prodigy at the Vienna Conservatory, the late Joe Zawinul fell in love with jazz by watching Stormy Weather, which he saw more than 100 times in his life. After a decade as a sideman to Maynard Ferguson, Dinah Washington, Cannonball Adderley, and Miles Davis, Zawinul teamed up with Wayne Shorter to form Weather Report, one of the most original jazz groups of the 1970s. JALC Radio's Andrew Rosenblum interviewed Zawinul a few months before the great keyboardist passed away in 2007 -- Zawinul discusses his childhood as a "street kid," his distaste for bebop mimicry, and how he conceived of Weather Report as "sort of" a big band.