music: September 2007 Archives

If New Orleans musicians were drafted like basketball stars, this guy would be the blue-chip first-rounder. He's one of a celebrated lineage of musicians, the Andrews family, as well as a vanguard of young players in New Orleans who freely mix traditional styles with pop music. I'll be writing more about him, and you'll be hearing more about him, but for now this, from my piece in this week's Village Voice.

Joe Zawinul was one badass mutha. At 70, he could swim a mile, hard. Or outdrink you, glass after glass of that sweet Slivovitz wine he favored. Or kick your ass -- OK, maybe just scare you in to to thinking he would with a single glare.
Or he could sit at a piano and play the most tender ballad you'd ever heard. Or, from behind one of his arsenal of electonic keyboards and synths, create a groove that, as one musician put it, "just entered your body."
But at 75, early this morning in his native Vienna, Austria, Zawinul died after a lingering illness.