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Original Album Classics (Weather Report/Tale Spinnin/Heavy Weather/Mr Gone/Weather Report) (5CD set)

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5 classics from Weather Report – presented in cool tiny LP-sleeve covers! First up is the original Weather Report album from 1971 – a massive session that took fusion to a whole new level for the 70s! Most of the players here had been associated with Miles Davis at some point in the year or two beforehand – and Miles' electric work is definitely a starting point for this group – but they quickly flow off in whole new directions, thanks to the mighty legacy of their own talents on previous records! Next is Tale Spinnin – a beautiful title for a beautiful little record – one that really does have Weather Report spinning out musical tales in sound – with a free-flowing and soulful sense of energy! The groove's definitely tighter than the earlier years, but it's never slick – and Joe Zawinul handled the overall orchestrations for the record, with an approach that's often highly rhythmic, vamping, and building up nicely as the tunes roll on. Next is Heavy Weather – one of the biggest hits ever for Weather Report – thanks to Joe Zawinul's leadoff track "Birdland" – one of those tunes that entered the canon immediately, and saw countless covers pop up over the years – kind of a rare thing for a jazz tune at this point in time! The track's driving, building energy shows a newly focused side to Weather Report – one that's traded some of the spacier, more experimental moments of the past for a dynamic energy that still puts them ahead of most other 70s fusion supergroups. The 4th album is Mr Gone – A great late 70s set from Weather Report – a record that's certainly got more polish than the early years, but which still sounds plenty darn great to our ears – thanks to a really free-flowing sense of imagination! The tunes here have a wonderfully chunky sort of approach to the groove – that kind of building, pulsating quality that always marked Weather Report as organic, even when electric – and which gave their music a sense of soul, even when it was sometimes smooth. And 5th is the Weather Report album from 1982 – a self-titled early 80s set from Weather Report – not to be confused with the group's debut over a decade before – and one that still has key core members Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, and Jaco Pastorius in place! Shorter's reeds seem even more angular than before – really chopping against the rhythms, which are themselves quite pronounced – not in a funky way, but more in a chunky style – thanks to tight work on the kit from Peter Erskine. (CDs come in mini LP-style sleeves.)  © 1996-2013, Dusty Groove, Inc.