Bob Schwartz

Starting in the early 1970s, Weather Report and its virtuoso composers and players—Joe Zawinul on piano, Wayne Shorter on sax, and by the time of this track Jaco Pastorius on bass—were part of the loosely-defined jazz fusion movement. Fused with what? With whatever sounded good to master musicians, in hope that listeners would come along. Their motto might have been “listen without prejudice”. Listeners did and made Weather Report musical stars.

I’ve picked A Remark You Made from the Heavy Weather album (1977), not just because it might be more pleasing to non-jazz people, but because it is so beautiful and contemplative, as indicated by one YouTube listener commenting, “I want this played at my funeral.”