Josef Erich "Joe" Zawinul was an Austrian jazz keyboardist and composer. First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with trumpeter Miles Davis, and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, an innovative musical genre that combined jazz with elements of rock and world music. Later, Zawinul co-founded the groups Weather Report and the world fusion music-oriented Zawinul Syndicate. Additionally, he made pioneering use of electric piano and synthesizers. Zawinul was named "Best Electric Keyboardist" 28 times by the readers of Down Beat magazine. A number of prominent musical artists have honored Zawinul with compositions, notably Brian Eno's instrumental "Zawinul/Lava", John McLaughlin's instrumental "Jozy", Warren Cuccurullo's "Hey Zawinul", Bob Baldwin's "Joe Zawinul", Chucho Vald�s's "Zawinul's Mambo", Bir�li Lagr�ne's instrumental "Josef" and Toninho Horta's instrumental "Balada para Zawinul". Zawinul's playing style was often dominated by quirky melodic improvisations ? traversing bebop, ethnic and pop styles ? combined with sparse but rhythmic playing of big-band sounding chords or bass lines. 

July 7th, 1932 in Vienna as Josef Erich Zawinul  /  Died:   Sep 11th, 2007 - Skin cancer