Joe Zawinul Dies At 75

  I  

Keyboardist Joe Zawinul, who played with Miles Davis and won wide acclaim for his work with Weather Report, died Tuesday morning in an Austrian hospital, the Associated Press has reported. He was 75.

Zawinul died from a form of skin cancer called Merkel cell carcinoma, according to a statement from his record label, Heads Up. He had been hospitalized in his native Austria since last month.

Zawinul was on the cutting edge of the electric jazz movement, playing with Davis on pioneering albums Bitches Brew and Live-Evil, among others. Along with Wayne Shorter, he founded Weather Report in 1971. The group became the definitive jazz fusion outfit, reaching extraordinary heights in popularity and charting new territory in jazz with the use of synthesizers and electric piano.

Zawinul’s other accolades include a Grammy Award for his composition “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” which he played with Cannonball Adderly during the 1960s, and praise for such later groups as the Zawinul Syndicate, his post-Weather Report combo.

This past spring, Zawinul toured Europe to mark the 20th anniversary of the Zawinul Syndicate. He sought medical attention when the tour ended.

Zawinul’s wife, Maxine, had died earlier this year. He is survived by his sons Eric, Ivan and Anthony.



  • Zakir_Hussain_2011_Symphony_Center_copy.jpg

    “Watching people like Max Roach or Elvin Jones and seeing how they utilize the whole drum kit in a very rhythmic and melodic way and how they stretched time — that was a huge inspiration to me,” Hussain said in DownBeat.

  • ART7087_Mike_Stern_by_Sandrine_Lee_72dpi_RGB_PR8391_copy.jpg

    “I love doing ballads,” Mike Stern says. “It’s just a part of me, some part of emotionally how I feel sometimes.”

  • John_and_Gerald_Clayton_by_Paul_Wellman_copy.jpg

    Gerald and John Clayton at the family home in Altadena during a photo shoot for the June 2022 cover of DownBeat. The house was lost during the Los Angeles fires.

  • KennedyCenter.jpg

    Queen Latifah extols Harlem and the Apollo Theater at this year’s Kennedy Center Honors.

  • Jernberg_Photo_Jon_Edergren_2_copy.jpg

    “With jazz I thought it must be OK to be Black, for the first time,” says singer Sofia Jernberg.


On Sale Now
February 2025
Sullivan Fortner
Look Inside
Subscribe
Print | Digital | iPad