Other prominent members throughout the band’s history included bassists Jaco Pastorius, Alphonso Johnson and Victor Bailey, drummers Chester Thompson and Peter Erskine, and percussionists Airto Moreira and Alex Acuña.

From the start, Weather Report took the unusual approach of abandoning the traditional "soloist/accompaniment" demarcation of straight-ahead jazz and featured opportunities for continuous improvisation by every member of the band.

Initially, the band's music featured an improvisational method (similar to Miles Davis's Bitches Brew-period),[1] but eventually that shifted to a more groove-oriented approach and catchier compositions (as epitomized by their 1977 hit single "Birdland").

Joe Zawinul's playing style was often dominated by quirky melodic improvisations (simultaneously bebop-, ethnic-, and pop-sounding) combined with sparse but rhythmic big-band chords or bass lines.

Working with companies such as ARP and Oberheim, Zawinul developed new ways of voicing and patching electronic tones for textures, ensemble roles (including emulations of traditional band instruments) and soloing.

Rather than continually taking the lead, he generally added subtle harmonic, melodic, and/or rhythmic complexity by responding to other member's improvisations (although he could and did sometimes exercise a more frenetic style akin to that of John Coltrane or Michael Brecker).

Playing both tenor and soprano saxophones, Shorter continued to develop the role of the latter instrument in jazz, taking his cue from previous work by Coltrane, Sidney Bechet, Lucky Thompson, and Steve Lacy.

According to Zawinul, it began when he and Shorter recruited another Miles Davis associate, the classically trained Czech-born bass player Miroslav Vitouš, who had previously played with each of them separately (as well as with Herbie Mann, Bob Brookmeyer, Stan Getz, and Chick Corea).

To complete the band, Zawinul, Shorter and Vitouš brought in McCoy Tyner's former drummer Alphonse Mouzon and began recording their debut album while looking for a full-time auxiliary percussionist.

It built on the avant-garde experiments which Zawinul and Shorter had pioneered with Miles Davis on Bitches Brew, including an avoidance of head-and-chorus composition in favor of continuous rhythm and movement.

Primarily at Zawinul's instigation, Weather Report became more jazz funk- and groove-oriented, drawing more heavily on R&B influences and dense electric keyboard work while adding more structure to both the prewritten and the improvisational sections.

"[12] When Shorter sided with Zawinul, the original three-man partnership broke down acrimoniously and Vitouš left Weather Report, moving on to a solo career as composer and band leader.

His final contribution to Weather Report was to play bass on a single track, which appeared on the band's 1974 album Mysterious Traveller ("American Tango", which he had co-written with Zawinul).

Vitouš' departure marked the end of the first phase of Weather Report and the shift of overall creative dominance of the band to Josef Zawinul, although Shorter remained an integral, influential, and vital part of the project.

Vitouš has subsequently accused both Zawinul and Shorter of having used foul play to edge him out of the band, to deny the scale of his contribution to Weather Report's history and creative approach, and to cheat him out of remuneration.

During a break in activity halfway through the recording of Black Market, Johnson opted to leave Weather Report to play with the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band (which featured a young John Scofield on guitar).

For the subsequent tour, Alex Acuña moved from percussion to the drum kit, and Don Alias was replaced by the young Puerto Rican percussionist Manolo Badrena, who had previously played with various Latin rock bands and with Art Blakey.

He could play muscular, lightning-fast groove lines influenced by R&B or funk, as well as demonstrating an extraordinary solo control of tone and string harmonics, often sounding more like a horn player.

Over the next few years, Mitchell hired the Weather Report line-up en masse (although without Zawinul in each case) to play on her studio albums Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (1977) and Mingus (1979).

[14] At the time they were once again without either a full-time drummer and percussionist, with Alex Acuña having returned to Las Vegas for a career as a studio musician and Manolo Badrena having been fired for "non-musical reasons".

By the late '70s, Weather Report was a quartet of Zawinul, Shorter, Pastorius, and Erskine, and (for the first time) had dispensed with the auxiliary percussionist role, which had been integral since the band's inception.

[16][17] The larger scale and multimedia staging of the band's tours (complete with stagehands, laser and film projections) began to take on the kind of rock-star proportions mostly unknown in jazz circles.

The 1979 double live album 8:30 (which won that year's Best Jazz Fusion Performance) was recorded on the Mr. Gone tour and captured the direct power and energy of this lineup of Weather Report.

"[18] Between March 2 and 4, 1979, Weather Report traveled to Havana, Cuba, to participate in the historic Havana Jam festival, a break in mutual Cuban/American political hostilities, which had American artists such as Stephen Stills, the CBS Jazz All-Stars, Bonnie Bramlett, Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, and Billy Joel play alongside Cuban artists such as Irakere, Pacho Alonso, Tata Güines, and Orquesta Aragón.

At the same time, Pastorius was spending more of his creative attention on his Word of Mouth project: his only writing for the Weather Report album was his contribution to a single group-composed piece.

On the recommendation of Michał Urbaniak,[19] Zawinul and Shorter recruited 23-year-old drummer Omar Hakim, a talented session player and multi-instrumentalist, who had played with a variety of musicians including Mike Mainieri, David Bowie, and Carly Simon.

Having failed to secure Marcus Miller as bass guitarist,[20] he selected Victor Bailey (a recent graduate from the Berklee College of Music, with whom Hakim had played while backing Miriam Makeba).

In keeping with Zawinul's technological curiosity, the album heralded the arrival of MIDI, which allowed him to rapidly and inexpensively write, demonstrate, and record music via a set of synthesizers.

[1] For this project, he reunited with recent Weather Report alumni Victor Bailey, Mino Cinélu, and Peter Erskine, but replaced Shorter with guitarist John Scofield.

This lineup was short-lived, with Los Angeles session guitarist Steve Khan and former Weather Report percussionist Robert Thomas Jr. replacing Scofield and Cinélu prior to live appearances.