Editing Weather Report (section)

===1973: Move towards groove===
On 1973's ''[[Sweetnighter]]'', Weather Report began to abandon the primarily acoustic group improvisation format, and the band started to take a new direction. Primarily at Zawinul's instigation, Weather Report became more [[jazz funk]]- and groove-oriented, drawing more heavily on [[Rhythm and blues|R&B]] influences and dense electric keyboard work while adding more structure to both the prewritten and the improvisational sections.

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| quote   = [Miroslav] loved funk, and he tried to play it, but he wasn't a funk player. It wasn't where he came from. He didn't connect up with how to go there. He could listen to it, talk about it, and he admired it, but that's not what came out of him, so that was something that held back where Joe wanted to go at the time I was with them. Melodically and rhythmically, Miroslav was great; what he did do, in terms of where I was coming from, was very unique. Miroslav was still playing acoustic, and it was an odd kind of a funk. It was very... interesting!
| source  = —Weather Report touring drummer Greg Errico on [[Miroslav Vitouš]]<ref name=inasilentway>Glasser, Brian. "In a Silent Way". Sanctuary Publishing Limited. 2001.</ref>
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Gravatt took his replacement in the studio sessions badly and quit the band at the end of recording, moving to [[Minneapolis]] to join the band Natural Life. Many years later, Zawinul paid tribute to Gravatt's skills and stated that he had been the finest of the band's "pure jazz" drummers<ref>Armbruster, Greg. "Joe Zawinul Interview". Keyboard Magazine. March 1984.</ref> as well as being "from the jazz side... my favorite of them all".<ref>Woodard, Josef. "Weather Report: Storm Surge". ''[[DownBeat]]''. January 2001. pp. 22–28.</ref> With Gravatt gone and former drummer Herschel Dwellingham unavailable for touring, former [[Sly & the Family Stone]] drummer [[Greg Errico]] played on the ''Sweetnighter'' tour, but did not stay with the band afterwards.

At this point, Vitouš and Zawinul found themselves at creative loggerheads, since the former preferred Weather Report's original approach and the latter wished to continue further along the road to funk. Retrospectively, Zawinul accused Vitouš of being unable to play funk convincingly (something which Greg Errico corroborated) and claimed that he had not provided enough music for the band. Vitouš countered that he had in fact brought in compositions, but that Zawinul had been unable to play them. Vitouš has also accused Zawinul of having been "a first-class manipulator" primarily interested in commercial success.<ref name="conversationvitous">{{cite journal |last1=Kot |first1=Jake |title=Conversation with Miroslav Vitous |journal=Bass Musician |date=August 1, 2009 |url=https://bassmusicianmagazine.com/2009/08/conversation-with-miroslav-vitous/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230610082135/https://bassmusicianmagazine.com/2009/08/conversation-with-miroslav-vitous/ |archive-date= Jun 10, 2023 }}</ref><ref name=innerviewsvitous>Prasad, Anil. [http://www.innerviews.org/inner/vitous.html "Miroslav Vitous: Freeing the muse"]. Innerviews. 2004.</ref> For his part, Zawinul would later recall Vitouš planning to concentrate on more bowed solos and getting the group to hire a second bassist to play the standard basslines, to which Zawinul's response was "why don't we get one bassist who can do all of that?" Zawinul claimed that "there was nothing disrespectful about it... we had to make this move. And history has proved us to have been right."<ref name="jazztimessportinlife">{{cite web |url=https://jazztimes.com/archives/joe-zawinul-sportin-life/ |title=Joe Zawinul: Sportin' Life |first1=George |last1=Varga |website=Jazz Times |date=29 June 2020 |orig-date=April 1, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230510065944/https://jazztimes.com/archives/joe-zawinul-sportin-life/ |archive-date= May 10, 2023}}</ref>

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.<ref name=conversationvitous/><ref name=innerviewsvitous/>