One day I heard a pianist play `Honeysuckle Rose,’ … and I was hooked. I said, `What is that?’ He said, `jazz,’ which was a word I had never heard, and I asked him to spell it for me. My life was changed after that. – Joe Zawinul
I am an improviser, … I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it all, it is all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised. – Joe Zawinul
For a white Viennese boy to write a tune that’s that black is pretty remarkable. He just captured the essence of the African-American heritage, just the statement of melody and feeling of that song. Clearly, in some past life, Joe must’ve been black. – Herbie Hancock on “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.”
Zawinul has been gone nearly two years. For a Rifftides reminiscence posted upon his passing, go here. It includes the story of why Cannonball Adderley’s first-choice take of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” was nixed by the record company.
Even though I read your reminiscence of Joe Zawinul nearly two years ago, I still clicked on the link to it – mainly because I’d forgotten the Cannonball Adderley story about the ‘take’ on MERCY MERCY MERCY. Once on that page, I decided to click on the highlighted word ‘signifying’, which I hadn’t done the first time around. That took me to the Wikipedia page* where ‘signifying’ is explained and discussed by none other than Henry Louis Gates Jr., the gentleman who recently had a beer in the White House garden with the President, a Cambridge police officer and Joe, the Vice-Bama.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signifyin‘