Mysterious Traveller is the fifth album of Weather Report released in 1974.. This album marked the end of bassist Miroslav Vitouš's tenure with the band. Vitouš was replaced by Alphonso Johnson. Another addition to the line-up is drummer Ishmael Wilburn. Greg Errico was the drummer for the tour between the previously released Sweetnighter and this album, but declined an invitation to be a permanent member of the band.
The record is generally considered to be the band's first that predominantly uses electric bass and incorporates liberal uses of funk, R&B grooves, and rock that would later be hallmarked as the band's "signature" sound. Also, the more restricted compositional format became evident on this album, replacing the more "open improvisation" formats used on the first 3 albums. It was voted as the album of the year by the readers of Down Beat for 1974, garnering their 2nd overall win in that category. Some consider this to be the band's best overall compositional effort.
Read more about Mysterious Traveller: Track Listing, Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words mysterious and/or traveller:
“They threw off their clothes, and he gathered her to him, and found her, found the pure lambent reality of her for ever invisible flesh. Quenched, inhuman, his fingers upon her unrevealed nudity were the fingers of silence upon silence, the body of mysterious night upon the body of mysterious night, the night masculine and feminine, never to be seen with the eye, or known with the mind, only known as a palpable revelation of living otherness.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Hesperus thy twinkling ray
Beams in the blue of heaven
And tells the traveller on his way
That earth shall be forgiven”
—John Clare (1793–1864)