Weather Report had no lead singer, refused a clear lead instrument, and threw out jazz's head-and-chorus format, yet ended up with a Billboard-charting crossover hit and stadium tours with lasers. This deep dive treats the band as a living biography, from its 1970 founding by keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter, both veterans of Miles Davis's electric era, alongside Czech bassist Miroslav Vitous, through its quiet dissolution in 1986.

The episode covers the "continuous improvisation" philosophy of the acoustic early albums like I Sing the Body Electric, the funk fracture around 1973's Sweetnighter that pushed Vitous out and brought in electric bassist Alfonso Johnson, and the arrival of fretless bassist Jaco Pastorius, whose harmonics and vocal-like playing powered 1977's Heavy Weather and the hit "Birdland." It also exami ...