WEATHER REPORT - Gibraltar His parents were workers, they were Czech/Hungarian, they were gypsies...
He was Austrian as he was born in Vienna, unlike us, where if your parents are not Italian and you are born in Italy, you are not automatically Italian, damn those unjust and inhumane rules...
His first musical instrument was the clarinet, but at the age of six, he was gifted an accordion, and he taught himself to play both...
Then he enrolled at the Vienna Conservatory to study cello, but at the age of twelve, his family moved (due to World War II) to Czechoslovakia...
There, he continued to study music, this time with the piano...
Until one fine day he became fascinated by Thomas Waller “Fats” for friends & for friends, by Arthur Wilson “Dooley” for friends & for friends, by Harold Lloyd & Fayard Antonio also known as “The Nicholas Brothers,” by Ada Scott Brown, by Lena Mary Calhoun Home, by Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, by Cabell Calloway III a.k.a. Cab Calloway & “His Orchestra,” etc., etc., all strictly “of color,” who performed in the dramatic film “Stormy Weather,” and thus, as the story goes, his endless passion for jazz was born...
A passion that would take him to play with his trio around the American bases scattered throughout Europe...
A passion that would lead him to perform in the States, where he won a scholarship at the “Berklee College of Music” in Boston. He was twenty-seven years old, and his name was Josef Erich Zawinul, um “Joe” for those who loved him, the rest is History...
