Birdland

"Birdland" was written by Joe Zawinul, opens Heavy Weather and was released as a single on April 19, 1977, 5:58. It is a tribute to the Birdland club on Broadway, open from 1949 to 1965 and named for Charlie Parker. Zawinul went there almost daily, heard Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, and met his wife Maxine there; he called it the most important place in his life. Shorter says it was from his time playing there with Dinah Washington, whose stomping heels inspired the beat, and that they did not think it was going to become a hit. Zawinul told International Music and Recording World in 1981 that he had the line from an old song he had never recorded and that they did it in one take; Pastorius also said so in 1978, and its melody had been played live as part of "Dr. Honoris Causa" from Zawinul's solo album. Pastorius opens it with harmonics.

Zawinul plays piano, synthesizers and melodica and sings, Shorter soprano and tenor saxophone, Pastorius fretless bass, mandocello and vocals, Badrena tambourine and Acuna drums. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2010, and the Penguin Guide to Jazz calls it one of the few contemporary jazz tunes that everyone seems to have heard. Setlist.fm counts 55 performances by Weather Report and 455 by other acts, the most covered of their songs.

The Manhattan Transfer recorded it in 1979 with lyrics by Jon Hendricks and won a Grammy; Quincy Jones recorded it on Back on the Block (1989), with rappers, winning two Grammys; and the Cuban band Los Van Van interpolated it in "Tim-Pop con Birdland". Maynard Ferguson also played it. Weather Report played it at Havana Jam at the Karl Marx Theatre on March 2, 1979, and at Offenbach in 1978. Our upload is titled with the album and is the studio version.