“I’d rather go in and just be Jaco. I improvise all the time. I never play the same thing twice”: The genius of Jaco Pastorius in one of the greatest jazz songs of all time – performed with fusion legends Weather Report

Jaco Pastorius performing with Weather Report at the Berkeley Community Theater on November 26, 1978.

Birdland is the closest thing that fusion trailblazers Weather Report ever had to a hit single – and a landmark recording in modern jazz.

Written by the group’s founding keyboard player Joe Zawinul, the song would end up winning three Grammy awards after being covered by The Manhattan Transfer and Quincy Jones in the years following its original release in 1977 as the opening track for the seventh Weather Report album, Heavy Weather.