Joe Zawinul: Money in the Pocket

The late, great Joe Zawinul is most fondly remembered for Weather Report and for his later leadership of one of the best world-jazz fusion bands, the Zawinul Syndicate. Money in the Pocket, however, represents the Zawinul story earlier on, in 1965, after he had been playing in Cannonball Adderley's band for four years. That band's catchy themes were significantly influenced both by Adderley's gospel roots and by Zawinul's melodic powers, and this session reflects the driving grooves of that popular soul-jazz style – so there are a lot of backbeats, repeating riffs, horn-harmony wailing and stagey stop-time breaks. But if some of this is generic early jazz-funk, Zawinul's piano-playing reveals his sophistication and sumptuous elegance, notably on solo outings such as the ballad My One and Only Love. The funky Some More of Dat is squarely in Lee Morgan's Sidewinder mode, but the closing Del Sasser shows how complete a jazz pianist Zawinul already was by this time, and what a distinctive composer, too.