WEATHER REPORT: Black Market (1976)

This is one of Weather Report's well-known tracks from one of their most popular albums. Lumped as a jazz-fusion band, they combined their jazz background with world music, and in this case, funk and Caribbean rhythms. Much of the unique keyboard sounds were from Joe Zawinul's continued modifications of the synths at his disposal. In this song, he inverted the keyboard voltages on the ARP 2600 "so that the upper portion of the keyboard played the lower sounds and vice versa" (from Weather Report Annotated Discography). What's also interesting is that drummer Chester Thompson plays the first half of the song, and with an edit it switches to Narada Michael Walden for the second half! And overall, an all-star lineup.

Song : "Black Market" by Weather Report

From the LP "Black Market" (Columbia) Apr. 1976

LINEUP :
Joe Zawinul : keyboards

Wayne Shorter : sax, lyricon

Alphonso Johnson : bass

Chester Thompson : drums

Narada Michael Walden : drums

Don Alias : congas and percussion

Alex Acuna : percussion

Link in title.