Al Di Meola was visibly anxious. “Man, my heart is pounding,” he said to no one in particular. Chick Corea nervously chewed gum while making sure the stage crew was readily available by his gear. Meanwhile, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White had a hurried last-minute discussion about a time change they had already repeatedly nailed in rehearsals.

This was the scene backstage at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas, a few minutes before Return To Forever’s May 29 return to live action after a layoff of a quarter century. Not only did the sold-out audience—which included numerous band family members—have a hard time controlling its anticipation, but the band could not wait to hit the stage. Then, as the intro music of Miles Davis’ “In A Silent Way” faded, the men took their places and launched into a soaring rendition of “Hymn Of The Seventh Galaxy.”

The fusion icon Return To Forever was alive and well. The audience was ecstatic, but the biggest smiles in the venue were on the faces of keyboardist Corea, guitarist Di Meola, bassist Clarke and drummer White.

Usually the epitome of patience and control, White couldn’t quite manage his emotions. “I’ve been fortunate to be involved in a lot of major musical events and I always try to be even-keeled about things, like a good drummer should,” he said backstage as showtime neared. “But, damn, I get excited about this coming back together.”

Corea, speaking as he bemusedly watched the semi-controlled chaos backstage less than an hour before the band performed live, characterized himself as excited and intensely curious. “I can’t wait to see what happens,” he said. “So many people—and that includes the members of the band—have waited so long for this. Playing the music again with the guys in rehearsals has been so much fun, but doing this for our fans is almost too good to be true.”

Di Meola had segued directly into the Return To Forever preparations from a month in Russia. “I played all the cities in Siberia,” he said. “I haven’t had a break in longer than I can remember, but I was ready to sacrifice almost anything to bring this band back to life.”

Herbie Hancock
Jazz Artist & Keyboard/Synthesizer Player of the Year
By Josef Woodard

Hancock garnered an embarrassment of riches in the awards department, starting with his surprise Album of the Year Grammy in February for River: The Joni Letters (Verve). It was the first time a jazz artist had earned that title since Stan Getz won it in 1964 for Getz/Gilberto.

When we informed Hancock that he had won the Jazz Artist and Keyboard/Synthesizer categories in this year’s Critics Poll, he was genuinely thrilled. Since Grammy night, Hancock has also been granted an Artist of the Year award from Harvard University, a Living Legends honor from the Library of Congress, an honorary doctorate from Soka University in Japan and landed on Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential” list.

“With these things coming back to back, I wonder, ‘Is the end in sight?’” he said with a hearty laugh. “What’s going on here? Do they know something I don’t know?”

Joe Zawinul
Hall of Fame
By Ken Micallef

By turns warm, unpredictable, funny, demanding, brusque and generous, Zawinul, who died of cancer Sept. 11, 2007, in his native Vienna, was one of the most influential figures in jazz over the past 40 years. A masterful composer and a stylistic and instrumental innovator, Zawinul’s influence circled Weather Report’s reign beginning in his early years accompanying Dinah Washington and Cannonball Adderley to his breakthrough recordings with Miles Davis to his later period leading Zawinul Syndicate. From “In A Silent Way” (which he composed for Davis) to Weather Report’s jazz-rock innovations to his unending quest for brave new world music frontiers, Zawinul’s musical legacy is certainly deserving of his induction into the DownBeat Hall of Fame.

“I see Joe as a conceptualist, as a musical force,” said keyboardist Jim Beard, who along with Erskine, Richard Bona, Victor Bailey, Amit Chatterjee and Efrain Toro is performing a tribute to Zawinul with the Metropole Orchestra at this summer’s North Sea Jazz Festival. “Joe was a great composer. He would combine elements that you might not think belonged together, but he would make it seem like they did belong together. Early on he got a strong feeling for r&b, and that stayed with him into the ’90s. That was in his blood. When he incorporated world music he kept this American harmonic approach, but then he would be mixing it with these wacky, Third World scales and tonalities coming from India. You had a guy taking two musical concepts that exist on opposite sides of the planet, and putting them together as if they naturally belong together.”

“Beauty, grace, elegance—Joe was the epitome of a composer beyond jazz,” said saxophonist and producer Bob Belden, who with Zawinul and Wayne Shorter produced last year’s Weather Report box set Forecast: Tomorrow, and assisted on the double-CD Live And Unreleased (both on Columbia/Legacy). “Joe raised the bar so high in so many areas of music. He wrote symphonically, he wrote for big band, for chamber groups and piano improvisations with classical musicians. He embodied the Viennese tradition but with that feeling for American jazz. Joe was in a constant state of evolution; he never revisited the past.”

Jo Jones, Jimmie Lunceford, Erroll Garner, Harry Carney and Jimmy Blanton
Veterans Committee Hall of Fame
By John McDonough and Ira Gitler

This committee was long overdue for DownBeat. Before this year’s Critics Poll, there were 108 DownBeat Hall of Famers. However, there are a number of artists no longer with us who deserve to be in the Hall of Fame—musicians who helped shape the direction of this music—but who have not been inducted. Unfortunately, most of these artists do not garner enough votes in either the Critics or Readers poll to gain induction, and they probably never would.

The Veterans Committee will rectify this situation. We gave a list of 28 Hall of Fame nominees to 25 jazz writers. Each could vote for up to 12 of the artists. If two-thirds of the writers voted for the artist (we rounded down to 16 votes), then this musician was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame.

Out of the 28 nominees, five jazz legends appeared on 16 or more ballots: Jimmy Blanton, Harry Carney, Erroll Garner, Jo Jones and Jimmie Lunceford. They represent the first class of Veterans Committee Hall of Famers.

Cassandra Wilson
Female Vocalist of the Year
By Ted Panken

I’d come to an emotional wall,” Cassandra Wilson said over the phone from Jackson, Miss., describing her state of mind after completing Thunderbird (Blue Note), her rootsy, quasi-poppish 2006 release. This also explained in part why her latest album, Loverly (Blue Note), includes 10 songbook standards, a Robert Johnson blues and a Yoruban praise song.

“I couldn’t find my footing,” the 52-year-old singer elaborated. “I’ve decided to backtrack, simplify, learn the blues—really learn the blues—which is not that simple.”

Asked whether her reference point is the hometown version of the blues-as-such or the blues as a world view, she opted for the former. “It’s something more particular to Jackson,” said Wilson, who has spent much time there in recent years tending to her mother. “There is a sound here. It’s halfway between the Delta and New Orleans, so it swings.

“A certain amount of narcissism goes with being a vocalist—a jazz vocalist, or whatever you want to call what I do,” Wilson continued. “Songwriting as well. You have to let go of something in order to take care of people.”