The Manhattan Transfer won a Grammy Award with their 1979 version of the song, which had lyrics by Jon Hendricks.
[1] Quincy Jones won two Grammy Awards for the version of the piece he included on his 1989 album Back on the Block.
This was where Zawinul, who visited the club almost daily, heard performances by Count Basie,[3] Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis.
According to Jaco Pastorius in a 1978 interview, the studio version of the song released on Heavy Weather was recorded in just one take.
[6] The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings comments that “Birdland” typifies the formula that made the band successful, and “is one of only a handful of contemporary jazz tunes that everyone seems to have heard.”[7] The Weather Report recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2010.