title: Madden NFL

text: EA also introduced the "QB Vision" feature in the 2006 installment. With this feature, a cone of spotlight emits from the quarterback during passing plays, simulating his field of vision. To make an accurate pass, the quarterback must have his intended receiver in his field of vision. Passing to a receiver not in the cone reduces pass accuracy significantly. The size of the quarterback's vision cone is directly correlated to his Awareness and Passer Accuracy rating; Brett Favre and Peyton Manning see nearly the entire field at once, whereas an inexperienced quarterback such as J. P. Losman or Kyle Boller sees only a sliver of the field. This feature also allows for bigger plays and more interceptions.


title: Madden NFL

text: Also, EA sports added the "Smart Route". This means that when pressing a hot route to the corresponding receiver, you put the analog stick down and the receiver will run to the first down, and you can throw him the ball.


title: Madden NFL

text: While current gen Madden remained the same with the exception of a "Smart Route" and "QB Vision", this was also the first year Madden was released on the next-gen Xbox 360. It was completely stripped down, almost every change made in the previous gen was wiped away.


title: Madden NFL

text: This is an arcade game developed by Global VR and released in 2005. The game comes in standard and deluxe cabinets. It can be played with up to four players and includes five game modes: Exhibition, Training, Tournament, Competition, and Career. It features rosters from the 2004–2005 season.


title: Madden NFL

text: In "Madden NFL 07", EA introduced "Lead Blocker Controls" which allow users to control blockers during running plays. In addition, EA redefined the Truck Stick into the "Highlight Stick". With the Highlight Stick, users can have their running backs perform different running moves and combos, instead of just bowling over defenders. Truck Stick features still exist for bigger backs, but not for smaller backs who would never realistically use them anyway. Instead, more agile backs perform acrobatic ducks and dodges to avoid tackles. Seattle Seahawks running back Shaun Alexander is the cover athlete.


title: Madden NFL

text: This game is the sequel to EA Sports Madden NFL Football. Like the original, it was also developed by Global VR. It was released in 2006 only in arcades. This version adds QB Vision, the Hit Stick, and the Truck Stick. The rosters are also updated for the 2006–2007 season.


title: Madden NFL

text: In "Madden NFL 08", the "Weapons" feature was added, allowing superstar players to be noticed. Randy Moss, for example, is a Go-To-Guy, allowing him to make amazing one-handed grabs. Peyton Manning is a Franchise QB. It also includes new skill drills, Hit Stick 2.0, and Ring of a Champion features. Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young is on the cover. "Madden NFL 08" was also the last GameCube game ever released. The 2008 edition was the last to appear on PC until "Madden NFL 19" in 2018.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 09" was released on August 12, 2008. Citing business concerns, EA chose not to release it on the PC platform. The game features quarterback Brett Favre on the front cover, initially in a Green Bay Packers uniform, but also with a downloadable cover featuring Favre in a New York Jets uniform. Favre had retired before the start of the season as a member of the Packers, but came out of retirement late in the summer and was traded to the Jets. "Madden NFL 09" was the first of the series to offer online, league game play, allowing up to 32 players to compete in an online, simulated NFL season. EA Sports Senior Producer Phil Frazier, up to 32 players were able to participate in competitive games, the NFL Draft and conduct trades between their teams. The game was also the first of the series to incorporate a Madden IQ. The Madden IQ is used to automatically gauge your skills through a series of mini-games consisting of run offense, pass offense, run defense, and pass defense. At the end of each of the drills, the player receives a score ranging from rookie to all-Madden. The final Madden IQ is a mixture of those scores which is used to control the game's difficulty.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 10" was released on August 14, 2009. It features Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald and Pittsburgh Steelers strong safety Troy Polamalu. Compared to previous iterations, Madden NFL 10 has been extremely transparent with its development efforts, maintaining a weekly blog updates as well as a constant presence on various message boards. A new design team has also taken over the game, including members from NFL Head Coach 09. The direction of Madden NFL 10 has been shifted to much more of a realistic and simulation focus, with info already released including Procedural Awareness (a robust head tracking system), a new philosophy on player ratings, and big improvements to realism in QB play, WR/DB play, and other areas across the game. Madden 10 has several new features including the PRO-TAK animation technology, which allows up to nine man gang tackles and fumble pile-ups to help players 'fight for every yard', in this year's tagline. Madden 10 also features an in-game weekly recap show called The Extra Point. Madden 10 offers a series of multiple play packages. This allows for more options to score. This version features a completely overhauled rating system for players, featuring new categories such as throw on the run and specific ratings for short, medium, and deep passes. The game's soundtrack features rap, alternative rock, rap metal and hard rock bands such as Nirvana, Pantera, System of a Down, and Kid Rock.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 11" was released on July 27, 2010 (moved up from its original release date of August 10, 2010 for promotional reasons), and features New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees on the cover. It features several new additions to the franchise, such as Online Team Play, Online Scouting and online attribute boosts for co-op play. Along with these new game additions is a new rating (sponsored by Old Spice) known as Swagger. Although early speculation was that this new rating would be reflective of "confidence" or "composure," it was quickly confirmed to be directly tied to a player's personality for celebrations.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 12" was released on August 25, 2011. The release was delayed by two weeks due to the NFL lockout, and features Cleveland Browns running back Peyton Hillis on the cover. However, there is a limited edition in which the cover features St. Louis Rams running back Marshall Faulk.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 13" was released on August 28, 2012, and features Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson as the cover athlete. "Madden NFL 13" is the first "Madden" game to be released on the PlayStation Vita, and it is also the first game in the series to have Kinect support as well as a new physics engine promoting real in game physics.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 13" included a complete revamp to online franchise mode which became known as Connected Careers Mode (CCM). Some of the new CCM features included player contracts, the ability to trade draft picks, a salary cap, and up to 30 seasons worth of gameplay.


title: Madden NFL

text: In early 2013, EA Sports announced that the next installment of the Madden series would be released on August 27, 2013. As this installment is the 25th anniversary of the series, the game is called "Madden NFL 25", instead of "Madden NFL 14" with the year like the previous versions. The cover vote consisted of two brackets containing past players ("Old School") and active players ("New School").


title: Madden NFL

text: "Old School" player and Pro Football Hall of Famer Barry Sanders was chosen as the cover athlete for "Madden NFL 25" on the April 24, 2013, episode of ESPN's "SportsNation". The "New School" finalist was Adrian Peterson.


title: Madden NFL

text: On March 13, 2014 EA Sports posted on its website that user would be able to design and submit uniforms for Connected Careers by March 17, 2014, for "the next Madden NFL." On April 28, 2014, EA announced the release of Madden 15 pre-ordering in a release video with NFL linebacker and 2013 Defensive Player of the Year Luke Kuechly. The game was released August 26 in North America and on August 29 in the EU for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The game featured "dramatic all-new camera angles, as well as dynamic pre-game and halftime features." During the Detroit Lions 10th pick of the 2014 NFL Draft, Barry Sanders announced fans again would be able to vote for the cover athlete. On June 6, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman was announced as the cover athlete.


title: Madden NFL

text: EA decided not to have players vote for the cover athlete through a traditional bracket, but rather through collectible cards in "Madden NFL Mobile", or through Ultimate Team on the console devices. On May 4, 2015, the four finalists were announced for the 2016 game cover: New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, Arizona Cardinals cornerback Patrick Peterson, New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown. On May 13, Beckham Jr. beat out Gronkowski in a fan vote for the cover of "Madden 16". It was released on August 25, 2015.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 17" was released on August 23, 2016. The features in the game include an upgrade of the Ground Game, a redesigned and better Franchise Mode, "Madden 365", new Ball Carrier UI Prompts, the new Path Assist and more. New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski serves as the cover athlete.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 18" was released on August 25, 2017. The game is the first in the series to be developed in the Frostbite Engine, and it incorporates a story mode titled Longshot Mode, akin to "The Journey" in FIFA 17. It was announced that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady would be on the cover, marking the second consecutive year where a Patriot will be on the cover. Furthermore, an enhanced G.O.A.T. edition was also announced.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 19" was announced with Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown as the cover athlete. It was released on August 10, 2018. The game was released to the PC in addition to the console versions, the first one to do so since "Madden NFL 08" in 2007.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 20" was announced with Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes as the cover athlete. It was released on August 2, 2019.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 21" was announced with Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson as the cover athlete. It was released on August 28, 2020.


title: Madden NFL

text: Due to the Washington Redskins announcing the retirement of the team's controversial moniker on July 13, 2020, EA announced on July 17 that it would be doing an update on "Madden NFL 21" to remove the team's logo and name and replacing them with a generic Washington logo and name pending further developments.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 22" was announced with both Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes as the cover athletes. It was the second cover appearance for both players.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL 23" was announced with head coach John Madden as the cover star on Madden Day (June 1, 2022, the same day the series' first installment, "John Madden Football", was released) in honor of his death on December 28, 2021. The cover of the next gen version is a picture of Madden celebrating his victory as the head coach of the Oakland Raiders at Super Bowl XI. The All Madden Edition is based on the cover of the series' 1st installment, "John Madden Football", made by Chuck Styles.


title: Madden NFL

text: Until 1993, the Madden series did not have official licenses from the National Football League (NFL) or National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). "Madden NFL '94" was the first game in the series to include real NFL teams, and "Madden NFL '95" added an NFLPA license for real players through the National Football League Players Incorporated (NFLPI). The licenses restrict EA from including certain content in current "Madden" games, such as the humorous ambulance that picks up injured players in 1991's "John Madden Football II". The NFL Coaches Association sold the rights to have NFL coaches' names appear in the "Madden NFL" games; "Madden NFL 2001" was the first game in the series to feature this license. Neither New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick nor Bill Parcells appeared in the game as they are not members of the NFL Coaches Association. Likewise, non-NFLPA players (such as Thurman Thomas during his playing career) do not appear in the game, instead being replaced with generic placeholders.


title: Madden NFL

text: In 2004, EA signed an exclusive licensing rights agreement through 2009 with the NFL and the NFLPA to give the company the exclusive rights to use the NFL's teams, stadiums, and players in a video game. Mike Mika, who was working on "NFL 2K", described the agreement as "like a nuclear bomb going off in the game industry", canceling rival NFL projects. This exclusive license prevents other rival video game developers from producing official NFL video games. The deal, reportedly worth $300 million and later extended to 2013, has been widely criticized. Some competitors, such as the "" series, have elected to continue, seeking to distinguish themselves through innovative gameplay while others, such as the "NFL 2K" series, have ceased production. In 2007, 2K Sports released "All Pro Football 2K8", which used former NFL stars.


title: Madden NFL

text: In 2020 2K gained the rights for "non-simulation football game experiences" from the NFL. The deal is said to not impact Madden which will remain the only "simulation" football game.


title: Madden NFL

text: In 2020 the NFL extended its exclusive rights with EA which were due to expire in 2022, which changed to until 2026 for a reported $1.5 billion, with a provision for an additional year of exclusivity if EA hits revenue targets.


title: Madden NFL

text: In August 2006, EA Sports debuted "NFL Head Coach", which utilized the "Madden" engine to create a football management simulation. The game was criticized as buggy and unrealistic. EA Tiburon rebuilt the game from the ground up, addressing flaws and creating a proprietary engine, over the course of three years. "NFL Head Coach 09" was released on August 12, 2008, bundled with the special edition of "Madden NFL 09" and as a standalone game on September 2, 2008.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL Social" was an early version of "Madden NFL Mobile" for Facebook and iOS that was released November 1, 2012 and shut down September 2, 2013.


title: Madden NFL

text: Released on November 24, 2009, the game is 5-on-5 and takes the best 10 players from each of the 32 NFL teams.


title: Madden NFL

text: "Madden NFL Mobile" was released on August 26, 2014, and is only the third Madden game on mobile devices. The game is very similar to the Madden Ultimate Team (MUT) game mode, and the game is currently on its 9th season.


title: Madden NFL

text: Voice commentary in "Madden" allows players or watchers to hear the game being called as if it were a real game on TV. For early versions of the game, this commentary was performed by Madden himself and his play-by-play partner. Initially, this was Pat Summerall, his partner during their days at CBS and Fox from the early 1980s to the early 2000s until Summerall retired; the role was then filled by Al Michaels, John's broadcast partner on "Monday Night Football" (2002–2005) and "NBC Sunday Night Football" (2006–2008). For the first Madden games on the Xbox 360 and PS3, they featured a generic EA Sports radio announcer doing play-by-play. This started with "Madden 06" and ended with "Madden 08". Other versions of those games still featured Madden's commentary.


title: Madden NFL

text: Madden recorded thousands of lines for each "Madden" game. "Madden NFL 09" was the last version to feature Madden's commentary, albeit in a reduced role. By that time, he felt that reciting a script covering every single scenario in the game was boring and tedious—Madden recalled the long hours spent alone in the recording studio as "the most difficult part of any part that I've ever had in the game and the least amount of fun"—but said that in the decision to remove him from game commentary, "I feel that something is being taken away from me".


title: Madden NFL

text: Madden and Michaels were replaced by Cris Collinsworth as color commentator and Tom Hammond on play-by-play in "Madden NFL 09" and "Madden NFL 10". Gus Johnson replaced Hammond in "Madden NFL 11" and "Madden NFL 12", with Collinsworth handling color commentary in both games. "Madden NFL 13" marked the debut of real-life announcing team Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, including them appearing in an in-booth cutscene before the game. Nantz and Simms stayed until "Madden NFL 16", when they were replaced by Fox's Brandon Gaudin and Charles Davis for "Madden NFL 17". Nantz continued to work as the primary play-by-play announcer for CBS, while Simms later left the CBS broadcast booth to work on "The NFL Today". Gaudin and Davis returned to the studio throughout the 2016 NFL season to add new commentary relevant to each week of the season.


title: Madden NFL

text: In addition, "Madden NFL 08" and "Madden NFL 09" were also released in Spanish, featuring ESPN Deportes announcer Álvaro Martín providing both play-by-play and analysis.


title: Madden NFL

text: Electronic Arts has sold more than 100 million copies of "Madden NFL", and more than five million in one year, for more than $4 billion in total sales. At EA Tiburon in Orlando, Florida a team of 30 developers and more than 100 game testers works on each new game in the series, which contains more than 10 million lines of source code.


title: Madden NFL

text: Madden, once better known for Ace Hardware commercials than football despite winning Super Bowl XI as the head coach for the Oakland Raiders, is now better known for "Madden NFL" than as coach or broadcaster. He received an estimated $2 to 3 million each year for his endorsement but describes himself as "never a good player" of "Madden" and prefers to watch others play. Although Madden says that "a computer is a helluva lot smarter than me" he has influenced the series' design from the first game, and since retiring from broadcasting and doing video-game voice commentary in 2009 his participation in each "Madden"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s development has increased:


title: Madden NFL

text: EA estimates that the series has five to seven million dedicated fans, and an underground circuit of "Madden" cash tournaments exists. Marshall Faulk in 2010 estimated that "50 percent on up" of NFL players are "Madden" players, who play in the league with or against childhood heroes they once chose to play as in the game. Players typically play as themselves regardless of their electronic counterparts' abilities and immediately check new releases of the game for changes in the more than 60 ratings of their talent. They often complain to Madden and EA about allegedly inaccurate ratings (only Emmitt Smith has told him that the game rated him too high), or ask for changes in their in-game appearance. Such complaints began as early as 1990, confusing the broadcaster, who did not contribute the player statistics for that year's version due to lack of time.


title: Madden NFL

text: Coaches and players at all levels of the sport such as K. J. Wright and Joe Brady say that "Madden" has influenced them and recommend the game to learn football strategy and tactics, practice plays and assignments, and simulate opponents. Teddy Bridgewater, who has used "Madden" to practice plays since college at Louisville, created Brady's playbook in the game to help his backups P. J. Walker and Will Grier. Young players who grew up with "Madden" reportedly understand plays better than those who did not. "Wired" in 2010 wrote that the growing use of rookie quarterbacks and the spread offense was influenced by the game, stating that "the sport is being taken over by something you might call Maddenball — a sophisticated, high-scoring, pass-happy, youth-driven phenomenon". When the Denver Broncos' Brandon Stokley in 2009 burned six seconds of the clock with an unusual run before scoring the winning touchdown against the Cincinnati Bengals, "Madden" designers—who were watching the game with Madden—immediately recognized his action as "what happens in the game!"


title: Madden NFL

text: Football broadcasts on television use "Madden"-like visual cues to more closely resemble it, and the NFL considers the series its "33rd franchise" because each week during the season EA Sports receives the same searchable film database of every play that each of the league's 32 teams do. The game is the NFL's second-largest source of licensing revenue, after apparel, and an important part of the league's recruitment of children as new football fans


title: Madden NFL

text: The Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2003 opened an interactive exhibit in which visitors play "Madden", three years before its namesake's induction. Museum of the Moving Image in New York City in early 2014 celebrated "Madden NFL"s 25th anniversary, with an exhibit including five playable versions of the game.


title: Madden NFL

text: In a similar approach used by the automobile industry, until "Madden NFL 25", the "Madden" series has always historically been numbered one year later than the year in which it is released. However, the season it represents is the year in which the game is released (thus, "Madden NFL 13" was actually released in 2012 and is modeled after the 2012 NFL season).


title: Madden NFL

text: In 1996, "Next Generation" listed the Genesis installments of the series collectively as number 30 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", calling them "One of the best two-player games of all time, the game that reinvented EA, and, (along with "Sonic the Hedgehog"), the game that launched Sega's 16-bit assault on Nintendo."


title: Madden NFL

text: During the mid-1990s, the series came under increasing criticism for its exploitable AI in single-player mode, as certain plays would consistently trounce AI-controlled teams, and came to be regarded as primarily a multiplayer experience.


title: Madden NFL

text: On August 26, 2018, a mass shooting occurred at an esports tournament in Jacksonville, Florida, that was a qualification event for the "Madden NFL" Championship Series, playing "Madden NFL 19". The incident was live-streamed on Twitch, and shots can be heard in the streaming coverage. 3 people, including the suspect were killed and at least 11 people were injured. One victim was not hurt by gunfire.


title: Madden NFL

text: Since "Madden NFL 06" on the seventh generation of consoles, Electronic Arts has received criticism for not evolving the Madden games for next generation consoles, while graphics have certainly improved, certain popular features from older games in the series have been removed for unknown reasons, then some come back in newer iterations slightly altered and advertised as a new feature. Many glitches and poor balancing of the meta have been seen in the games and some gamers and reviewers think there has been little to no improvement with recent iterations of "Madden". Some reviews of recent "Madden" games have criticized the series for not evolving and not making changes to the series and saying older iterations of the series are better games. EA has also received criticism not improving Franchise Mode, which was one of its flagship modes and instead only focusing on Ultimate Team, its team-building card game mode introduced in "Madden NFL 10" which gradually started to get monetized throughout the 2010s. The trailer release for "Madden NFL 21" on June 17, 2020, was widely panned by gamers and reviewers as seen in its like-to-dislike ratio and its user review score on " Metacritic" are at an all-time low, sitting at 0.2 as of January 2021.


title: Madden NFL

text: Prior to 1998, every annual installment of the "Madden NFL" series primarily featured Madden on its cover. In 1998, Electronic Arts selected Garrison Hearst to appear on the PAL version's cover, although Madden remained on the North American release. Beginning with Eddie George in 2000, the series has since featured one of the league's top players on every annual installment, despite Madden's opposition. While appearing on the cover has become an honor akin to appearing on the Wheaties box, much like the "Sports Illustrated" Cover Jinx, certain players who appeared on "Madden" video game box art have experienced a decline in performance or an injury. This run of misfortune for "Madden" cover athletes has been dubbed the ""Madden" curse".


title: Madden NFL

text: When asked about the Madden Curse, EA Sports' Chris Erb said, "I don't know that we believe in the curse. The players don't believe in the curse." Running back Shaun Alexander, who was featured on the cover of "Madden NFL 07", commented, "Do you want to be hurt and on the cover, or just hurt?" "Madden NFL 08" cover athlete Vince Young expressed skepticism, while "Madden NFL 12" cover athlete Peyton Hillis attributed his subpar season that year to the curse.


title: Madden NFL

text: The perception that the curse is real has resulted in fans lobbying for their favorite players not to be on the cover, such as fans of LaDainian Tomlinson who were strongly opposed to EA Sports' initial decision to feature him on the cover of "Madden NFL 08", so much that a fan created "SaveLTfromMadden.com" to voice their disdain. Tomlinson declined the offer, but later said it was solely due to contract negotiations. Starting with "Madden NFL 11" EA has allowed fans to choose their favorite player for the cover. However, EA believes that many fans vote against their favorite player to avoid the "curse". It has become so prominent that bookmakers create odds on how likely an injury will occur to the player appearing on the cover.


title: Madden NFL

text: The injuries that "Madden" cover athletes experience can be attributed to the physical nature of football. Critics of the curse also note that several cover athletes had successful seasons when they appeared on the cover, such as "Madden NFL 13"s Calvin Johnson, who set the single-season record for receiving yards, "Madden NFL 18"s Tom Brady, who was named MVP, and "Madden NFL 20"s Patrick Mahomes, who won Super Bowl LIV.


title: Madden NFL

text: In December 2010, EA announced plans to develop a comedy film based on the Madden curse. However, EA Entertainment executive Pat O'Brien stated in October 2014 that EA is not working on a Madden curse movie.


title: Madden NFL

text: The Madden Bowl is a single elimination tournament held on the most current edition of "Madden NFL". It has been held since 1995 during Super Bowl weekend in the host city and, in the past, participation included NFL players and celebrities. The Madden Bowl's participation has changed over the years from being an event held with athletes, musicians, and celebrities, to become an event where only NFL players who are invited to participate get a chance to play. Participants in the Madden Bowl are free to choose whichever team they like. Winners receive a Madden Bowl trophy and recognition in the upcoming "Madden" video game.


title: Madden NFL

text: The 2006 Madden Bowl, held during the weekend of Super Bowl XL in Detroit, was televised on ESPN and premiered in April 2006. Concurrently, ESPN also hosted a separate series of competitions called "Madden Nation", which was a reality television show that chronicled a cross-country trip to crown the best Madden player in the United States and aired from 2005 to 2008.


title: Madden NFL

text: From 2011 to 2012, the Madden Bowl competition utilizes the new Online Team Play feature included in "Madden NFL 11". Rather than competing as individuals, players form groups of three to square-off for the trophy. After this feature was discontinued, the Madden Bowl competition continued in a Head-to-Head format.


title: Madden NFL

text: Since 2004, EA Sports has run a simulation of the Super Bowl using the latest game in the "Madden NFL" series and announced the result. The game simulations conducted by EA have correctly predicted 11 of the last 19 Super Bowl winners. The company accurately predicted the final score for the 2015 game and other details, including a score of 24–14 in favor of Seattle in the third quarter, despite skepticism within EA that Seattle would lose after a double-digit lead. The predictions were incorrect in 2008, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022. EA also releases a computer-generated description of the simulated game as if it were a summary of the real Super Bowl. The results of the simulated and actual Super Bowl games are listed below.


title: Middleweight

text: Early boxing history is less than exact, but the middleweight designation seems to have begun in the 1840s. In the bare-knuckle era, the first middleweight championship fight was between Tom Chandler and Dooney Harris in 1867. Chandler won, becoming known as the American middleweight champion. The first middleweight fight with gloves "may" have been between George Fulljames and Jack (Nonpareil) Dempsey (no relation to the more famous heavyweight Jack Dempsey).


title: Middleweight

text: Below is a list of longest reigning middleweight champions in boxing measured by the individual's longest reign. Career total time as champion (for multiple time champions) is "not" counted.


title: Middleweight

text: The World Lethwei Championship recognizes the middleweight division with an upper limit of . In World Lethwei Championship, Naimjon Tuhtaboyev is the Middleweight Champion.


title: Warlord Era

text: The Warlord Era was a period in the history of the Republic of China when control of the country was divided among former military cliques of the Beiyang Army and other regional factions from 1916 to 1928.


title: Warlord Era

text: In historiography, the Warlord Era began in 1916 upon the death of Yuan Shikai, the "de facto" dictator of China after the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China in 1912. Yuan's death created a power vacuum that spread across the Mainland China regions of Sichuan, Shanxi, Qinghai, Ningxia, Guangdong, Guangxi, Gansu, Yunnan and Xinjiang. The Nationalist Kuomintang government of Sun Yat-sen based in Guangzhou began to contest Yuan's Beiyang Government based in Beijing as the legitimate government of China. The Warlord Era was characterized by constant civil war between different factions, the largest of which was the Central Plains War which involved more than one million soldiers. The Warlord Era ended in 1928 when the Kuomintang under Chiang Kai-shek officially unified China through the Northern Expedition, marking the beginning of the Nanjing decade.


title: Warlord Era

text: Several of the warlords continued to maintain their influence through the 1930s and the 1940s, which was problematic for the Nationalist government during both the Second Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War.


title: Warlord Era

text: During World War I the New Culture Movement leader Chen Duxiu introduced the term "Junfa" (軍閥), taken from the Japanese "gunbatsu". It was not widely used until the 1920s, when it was taken up by left-wing groups to excoriate local militarists. Previously, these militarist leaders were known as a "Tuchun" (督軍), or provincial military governor, owing to the system Yuan Shikai introduced after his centralization of power.


title: Warlord Era

text: The origins of the armies and leaders which dominated politics after 1912 lay in the military reforms of the late Qing dynasty. During the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), the Qing dynasty was forced to allow provincial governors to raise their own armies, the "Yong Ying", to fight against the Taiping rebels; many of these provincial forces were not disbanded after the Taiping rebellion was over, like Li Hongzhang's Huai Army.


title: Warlord Era

text: Strong bonding, family ties and respectful treatment of troops were emphasized. The officers were never rotated, and the soldiers were handpicked by their commanders, and commanders by their generals, so personal bonds of loyalty formed between local officers and the troops, unlike Green Standard and Banner forces. These late Qing reforms did not establish a national army but instead they mobilized regional armies and militias that had neither standardization nor consistency. Officers were loyal to their superiors and formed cliques based upon their place of origins and background. Units were composed of men from the same province. This policy was meant to reduce dialectal miscommunication, but had the side effect of encouraging regionalistic tendencies.


title: Warlord Era

text: Although the post-Taiping Rebellion governors are generally not recognized as the direct predecessors of the warlords, their combined military-civil authority and somewhat greater powers as compared to earlier governors provided a model for Republic-era provincial leaders. The fragmentation of military power due to the late Qing's lack of a unified military force, exacerbated by the rise of provincialism during the revolution, was also a strong factor behind the proliferation of warlords. Apart from administrative and financial obstacles, the late Qing government seemed to have relied on this divided military structure to maintain political control.


title: Warlord Era

text: The Confucian disdain for the military was swept aside by the rising necessity of military professionalism, with scholars becoming heavily militarized, and many officers from non-scholarly backgrounds rising to high command and even high office in civil bureaucracy. At this time, the military upstaged the civil service. Influenced by German and Japanese ideas of military predominance over the nation, coupled with the absence of national unity amongst the various cliques in the officer class, led to the fragmentation of power in the warlord era.


title: Warlord Era

text: The most powerful regional army was the northern-based Beiyang Army under Yuan Shikai, which received the best in training and modern weaponry. The Xinhai Revolution in 1911 brought widespread mutiny across southern China. The revolution began in October 1911 with the mutiny of troops based in Wuchang (Present-day Wuhan). Soldiers once loyal to the Qing government began to defect to the opposition. These revolutionary forces established a provisional government in Nanjing the following year under Sun Yat-sen, who had returned from his long exile to lead the revolution. It became clear that the revolutionaries were not strong enough to defeat the Beiyang army and continued fighting would almost certainly lead to defeat. Instead, Sun negotiated with Beiyang commander Yuan Shikai to bring an end to the Qing and reunify China. In return, Sun would hand over his presidency and recommend Yuan to be the president of the new republic. Yuan refused to move to Nanjing and insisted on maintaining the capital in Beijing, where his power base was secure.


title: Warlord Era

text: Reacting to Yuan's growing authoritarianism, the southern provinces rebelled in 1913 but were effectively crushed by Beiyang forces. Civil governors were replaced by military ones. In December 1915 Yuan made clear his intentions to become emperor of China and found a new dynasty. The southern provinces rebelled again in the National Protection War; but this time the situation was far more serious because most Beiyang commanders refused to recognize the monarchy. Yuan renounced his plans for restoring the monarchy to woo back his lieutenants, but by the time he died in June 1916 China was fractured politically. The North-South split would persist throughout the entire Warlord Era.


title: Warlord Era

text: Yuan Shikai cut back on many government institutions in the beginning of 1914 by suspending parliament, followed by the provincial assemblies. His cabinet soon resigned, effectively making Yuan dictator of China. After Yuan Shikai curtailed many basic freedoms, the country quickly spiraled into chaos and entered a period of warlordism. "Warlordism did not substitute military force for the other elements of government; it merely balanced them differently. This shift in balance came partly from the disintegration of the sanctions and values of China's traditional civil government." In other words, during the warlord era, there was a characteristic shift from a state-dominated civil bureaucracy held by a central authority to a military-dominated culture held by many groups, with power shifting from warlord to warlord. A notable theme of warlordism is identified by C. Martin Wilbur. "He pointed out that a great majority of regional militarists were 'static', that is to say that their principal aim was to secure and maintain control of a particular tract of territory."


title: Warlord Era

text: Warlords, in the words of American political scientist Lucian Pye, were "instinctively suspicious, quick to suspect that their interests might be threatened, hard-headed, devoted to the short run and impervious to idealistic abstractions". These Chinese warlords usually came from strict military background, and were brutal in their treatment toward both their soldiers and the general population. In 1921, the "North China Daily News" reported that in the Shaanxi province, robbery and violent crimes were prevalent and frightened the farmers. Wu Peifu of the Zhili clique was known for suppressing strikes by railroad workers by terrorizing them with execution. A British diplomat in Sichuan province witnessed two mutineers being publicly hacked to death with their hearts and livers hung out; another two being publicly burned to death; while others had slits cut into their bodies into which were inserted burning candles before they were hacked to pieces.


title: Warlord Era

text: Warlords placed great stress on personal loyalty, yet subordinate officers often betrayed their commanders in exchange for bribes known as "silver bullets", and warlords often betrayed allies. Promotion had little to do with competence, and instead warlords attempted to create an interlocking network of familial, institutional, regional, and master-pupil relationships together with membership in sworn brotherhoods and secret societies. Subordinates who betrayed their commanders could suffer harshly. In November 1925 Guo Songling, the leading general loyal to Marshal Zhang Zuolin—the "Old Marshal" of Manchuria—made a deal with Feng Yuxiang to revolt, which nearly toppled the "Old Marshal", who had to promise his rebel soldiers a pay increase; that, together with signs that the Japanese still supported Zhang, caused them to go back on their loyalty to him. Guo and his wife were both publicly shot and their bodies left to hang for three days in a marketplace in Mukden. After Feng betrayed his ally Wu to seize Beijing for himself, Wu complained that China was "a country without a system; anarchy and treason prevail everywhere. Betraying one's leader has become as natural as eating one's breakfast".


title: Warlord Era

text: "Alignment politics" prevented any one warlord from dominating the system. When one warlord started to become too powerful, the rest would ally to stop him, then turn on each other. The level of violence in the first years was restrained, as no leader wanted to engage in too much serious fighting. War brought the risk of damage to one's own forces. For example, when Wu Peifu defeated the army of Zhang Zuolin, he provided two trains to take his defeated enemies home, knowing that if in the future Zhang were to defeat him, he could count on the same courtesy. Furthermore, none of the warlords had the economic capacity or the logistical strength to inflict a decisive knockout blow; the most they could hope for was to gain some territory. None could conquer the whole country and impose a central authority. However, as the 1920s went on, the violence became increasingly intense and savage as the object was to damage the enemy and improve one's bargaining power within the "alignment politics".


title: Warlord Era

text: As the infrastructure in China was very poor, control of the railway lines and rolling stock were crucial in maintaining the sphere of influence. Railroads were the fastest and cheapest way of moving large number of troops, and most battles during this era were fought within a short distance of railways. In 1925, it was estimated that 70% of the locomotives on the railway lines connecting Wuhan and Beijing, and 50% of the locomotives on the lines connecting Beijing and Mukden were being used for mobilizing troops and supplies.


title: Warlord Era

text: Armoured trains, full of machine guns and artillery, offered fire support for troops going into battle. The constant fighting around the railroads caused much economic harm. In 1925 at least 50% of the locomotives being used on the line connecting Nanjing and Shanghai had been destroyed, with the soldiers of one warlord using 300 freight cars as sleeping quarters, all inconveniently parked directly on the rail line. To hinder pursuit, defeated troops tore up the railroads as they retreated, causing in 1924 alone damage worth 100 million silver Mexican dollars (the Mexican silver dollar was the main currency used in China at the time). Between 1925 and 1927 fighting in eastern and southern China caused non-military railroad traffic to decline by 25%, raising the prices of goods and causing inventory to build up at warehouses.


title: Warlord Era

text: Few of the warlords had any sort of ideology. Yan Xishan, the "Model Governor" of Shanxi, professed a syncretic creed that merged elements of democracy, militarism, individualism, capitalism, socialism, communism, imperialism, universalism, anarchism, and Confucian paternalism into one. A friend described Yan as "a dark-skinned, mustached man of medium height who rarely laughed and maintained an attitude of great reserve; Yan never showed his inner feelings." He kept Shanxi on a different railroad gauge from the rest of China to make it difficult to invade his province, though that tactic also hindered the export of coal and iron, the main source of Shanxi's wealth. Feng Yuxiang, the "Christian General", promoted Methodism together with a vague sort of left-leaning Chinese nationalism, which led the Soviets to support him for a time. He banned alcohol, lived simply and wore the common uniform of an infantryman to show his concern for his men.


title: Warlord Era

text: Wu Peifu, the "Philosopher General", was a mandarin who passed the Imperial Civil Service exam, billing himself as the protector of Confucian values, usually appearing in photographs with the scholar's brush in his hand (the scholar's brush is a symbol of Confucian culture). Doubters noted, however, that the quality of Wu's calligraphy markedly declined when his secretary died. Wu liked to appear in photos taken in his office with a portrait of his hero George Washington in the background to reflect the supposed democratic militarism he was attempting to bring to China. Wu was famous for his capacity to absorb vast quantities of alcohol and still keep drinking. When he sent Feng a bottle of brandy, Feng replied by sending him a bottle of water, a message that Wu failed to take in. An intense Chinese nationalist, Wu Peifu refused to enter the foreign concessions in China, a stance that was to cost him his life when he refused to go to the International Settlement or the French Concession in Shanghai for medical treatment.


title: Warlord Era

text: More typical was Marshal Zhang Zuolin, a "graduate of the University of the Green Forest" (i.e., a bandit), an illiterate who had a forceful, ambitious personality that allowed him to rise up from the leader of a bandit gang, be hired by the Japanese to attack the Russians during the Russo-Japanese war of 1904–05 and become the warlord of Manchuria by 1916. He worked openly for the Japanese in ruling Manchuria. Zhang controlled only 3% of China's population but 90% of its heavy industry. The wealth of Manchuria, the support of the Japanese, and Zhang's hard-hitting, swift-moving cavalry made him the most powerful of the warlords. His Japanese patrons insisted that he ensure a stable economic climate to facilitate Japanese investment, making him one of the few warlords who sought to pursue economic growth instead of just plundering.


title: Warlord Era

text: Zhang Zongchang, known as the "Dogmeat General" because of his love for the gambling game of that name, was described as having "the physique of an elephant, the brain of a pig and the temperament of a tiger". Writer Lin Yutang called Zhang "the most colorful, legendary, medieval, and unashamed ruler of modern China". Former Emperor Puyi remembered Zhang as "a universally detested monster" whose ugly, bloated face was "tinged with the livid hue induced by heavy opium smoking". A brutal man, Zhang was notorious for his hobby of smashing in the heads of prisoners with his sword, which he called "smashing melons". He loved to boast about the size of his penis, which became part of his legend. He was widely believed to be the most well endowed man in China, nicknamed "General Eighty-Six" as his penis when erect was said to measure up to a pile of 86 Mexican silver dollars. His harem consisted of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian and two French women. He gave them numbers, as he could not remember their names, and then usually forgot the numbers.


title: Warlord Era

text: The great ideological flexibility of warlords and politicians during this era can be well exemplified in the activities of , an important bandit leader. Even though he initially fought in support of the Qing dynasty with ultraconservative monarchists as well as warlords, Bai Lang later formed an alliance with republicans, declared himself loyal to Sun Yat-sen and formed a "Citizen's Punitive Army" to rid China of all the warlords.


title: Warlord Era

text: Many of the common soldiers in warlord armies were also bandits who took up service for a campaign and then reverted to banditry when the campaign was over. One politician remarked that when the warlords went to war with each other, the bandits become soldiers and when the war ended, the soldiers became bandits. Warlord armies commonly raped or took many women into sexual slavery. The system of looting was institutionalized, as many warlords lacked the money to pay their troops. Some took to kidnapping, and might send a hostage's severed fingers along with the ransom demand as a way of encouraging prompt payment.


title: Warlord Era

text: Besides bandits, the rank-and-file of the warlord armies tended to be village conscripts. They might take service in one army, get captured, then join the army of their captors before being captured yet again. Warlords usually incorporated their prisoners into their armies; at least 200,000 men who were serving in the army of Gen. Wu were prisoners he had incorporated into his own army. A survey of one warlord garrison in 1924 revealed that 90% of the soldiers were illiterate. In 1926 U.S. Army officer Joseph Stilwell inspected a warlord unit and observed that 20% were less than tall, the average age was 14 and most walked barefoot. Stilwell wrote that this "scarecrow company" was worthless as a military unit. A British army visitor commented that, provided they had proper leadership, the men of northern China were "the finest Oriental raw material with a physique second to none, and an iron constitution". However, such units were the exception rather than the rule.


title: Warlord Era

text: In 1916 there were about a half-million soldiers in China. By 1922 the numbers had tripled, then tripled again by 1924; more than the warlords could support. For example, Marshal Zhang, the ruler of industrialized Manchuria, took in $23 million in tax revenues in 1925 while spending some $51 million. Warlords in other provinces were even more hard-pressed. One way of raising funds were taxes called "lijin" that were often confiscatory and inflicted much economic harm. For example, in Sichuan province there were 27 different taxes on salt, and one shipload of paper that was sent down the Yangtze River to Shanghai was taxed 11 different times by various warlords to the sum total of 160% of its value. One warlord imposed a tax of 100% on railroad freight, including food, even though there was a famine in his province. Taxes owed to the central government in Beijing on stamp and salt were usually taken by regional authorities. Despite all of the wealth of Manchuria and the support of the Japanese army, Marshal Zhang had to raise land taxes by 12% between 1922 and 1928 to pay for his wars.


title: Warlord Era

text: The warlords demanded loans from the banks. The other major revenue source besides taxes, loans and looting was the selling of opium, with the warlords selling the rights to grow and sell opium within their provinces to consortia of gangsters. Despite his ostensible anti-opium stance, Gen. Feng Yuxiang, "the Christian General", took in some $20 million per annum from opium sales. Inflation was another means of paying for their soldiers. Some warlords simply ran the money printing presses, and some resorted to duplicating machines to issue new Chinese dollars. The warlord who ruled Hunan province printed 22 million Chinese dollars on a silver reserve worth only one million Chinese dollars in the course of a single year, while Zhang in Shandong province printed 55 million Chinese dollars on a silver reserve of 1.5 million Chinese dollars during the same year. The illiterate Marshal Zhang Zuolin, who engaged in reckless printing of Chinese dollars, did not understand it was him who was causing the inflation in Manchuria, and his remedy was simply to summon the leading merchants of Mukden, accuse them of greed because they were always raising their prices, had five of them selected at random publicly shot and told the rest to behave better.


title: Warlord Era

text: Despite their constant need for money, the warlords lived in luxury. Marshal Zhang owned the world's biggest pearl, while Gen. Wu owned the world's biggest diamond. Marshal Zhang, the "Old Marshal", lived in a lavish palace in Mukden with his five wives, old Confucian texts and a cellar full of fine French wines, and needed 70 cooks in his kitchen to make enough food for him, his wives and his guests. Gen. Zhang, the "Dogmeat General", ate his meals off a 40-piece Belgian dinner service, and an American journalist described dinner with him: "He gave a dinner for me where sinful quantities of costly foods were served in a starving country. There was French champagne and sound brandy".


title: Warlord Era

text: The warlords bought machine guns and artillery from abroad, but their uneducated and illiterate soldiers could not operate or service them. A British mercenary complained in 1923 that Wu Peifu had about 45 European artillery pieces that were inoperable because they had not been properly maintained. At the , the army of Gen. Xu Shuzheng, which had seized Outer Mongolia, was attacked by a Russian-Mongol army under the command of Gen. Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg. The Chinese might have stopped Ungern had they been capable of firing their machine guns properly, to adjust for the inevitable upward jerk caused by the firing; they did not, and this caused the bullets to overshoot their targets. The inability to use their machine guns properly proved costly: after taking Urga in February 1921, Ungern had his Cossacks and Mongol cavalry hunt down the remnants of Xu's troops as they attempted to flee south on the road back to China.


title: Warlord Era

text: Because their soldiers were not able to use or take proper care of modern weapons, the warlords often hired foreign mercenaries, who were effective but always open to other offers. Russian émigrés who fled to China after the victory of the Bolsheviks were widely employed. The Russian mercenaries, according to one reporter, went through the Chinese troops like a knife through butter. The most highly paid of the Russian units was led by Gen. Konstantin Nechaev, who fought for Zhang Zongchang, the "Dogmeat General" who ruled Shandong province. Nechaev and his men were much feared. In 1926 they drove three armoured trains through the countryside, gunning down everyone they met and taking everything moveable. The rampage was stopped only when the peasants pulled up the train tracks, which led Nechaev to sack the nearest town.


title: Warlord Era

text: To defend themselves from the attacks of the warlord factions and armies, peasants organized themselves into militant secret societies and village associations which served as self-defense militias as well as vigilante groups. As the peasants usually had neither money for guns nor military training, these secret societies relied on martial arts, self-made weapons such as swords and spears, as well as the staunch belief in protective magic. The latter was especially important, as the conviction of invulnerability was "a powerful weapon for bolstering the resolve of people who possessed few alternative resources with which to defend their meager holdings". Magical rituals practiced by the peasants ranged from rather simple ones, such as swallowing charms, to much more elaborate practices. For example, elements of the Red Spear Society performed secret ceremonies to confer invulnerability from bullets to channel the power of "Qi" and went into battle naked with supposedly bulletproof red clay smeared over their bodies. The Mourning Clothes Society would perform three kowtows and weep loudly before each battle. There were also all-female self-defense groups, such as the Iron Gate Society or the Flower Basket Society. The former would dress entirely in white (the color of death in China) and waved fans that they believed would deflect gunfire, while the latter fought with a sword and a magical basket to catch their opponents' bullets. Disappointed with the Republic of China and despairing due to the warlords deprivations, many peasant secret societies adopted millenarian beliefs, and advocated the restoration of the monarchy, led by the old Ming dynasty. The past was widely romanticized, and many believed that a Ming emperor would bring a "reign of happiness and justice for all".


title: Warlord Era

text: The death of Yuan Shikai split the Beiyang Army into two main factions. The Zhili and Fengtian clique were in alliance with one another, while the Anhui clique formed their own faction. International recognition was based on the presence in Beijing, and every Beiyang clique tried to assert their dominance over the capital to claim legitimacy.


title: Warlord Era

text: While Li Yuanhong replaced Yuan Shikai as the President after his death, the political power was in the hands of Premier Duan Qirui. The government worked closely with the Zhili clique, led by Vice President Feng Guozhang, to maintain stability in the capital. Continuing military influence over the Beiyang government led to provinces around the country refusing to declare their allegiance. The debate between the President and the Premier on whether or not China should participate in the First World War was followed by political unrest in Beijing. Both Li and Duan asked Beiyang general Zhang Xun, stationed in Anhui, to militarily intervene in Beijing. As Zhang marched into Beijing on 1 July, he quickly dissolved the parliament and proclaimed a Manchu Restoration. The new government quickly fell to Duan after he returned to Beijing with reinforcements from Tianjin. As another government formed in Beijing, Duan's fundamental disagreements over national issues with the new President Feng Guozhang led to Duan's resignation in 1918. The Zhili clique forged an alliance with the Fengtian clique, led by Zhang Zuolin, and defeated Duan in the critical Zhili–Anhui War in July 1920.


title: Warlord Era

text: After the death of Feng Guozhang in 1919, the Zhili clique was led by Cao Kun. The alliance with the Fengtian was only one of convenience and war broke out in 1922 (the First Zhili–Fengtian War), with Zhili driving Fengtian forces back to Manchuria. Next, they wanted to bolster their legitimacy and reunify the country by returning Li Yuanhong to the presidency and restoring the National Assembly. They proposed that Xu Shichang and Sun Yat-sen resign their rival presidencies simultaneously in favour of Li. When Sun issued strict stipulations that the Zhili could not stomach, they caused the defection of KMT Gen. Chen Jiongming by recognizing him as governor of Guangdong. With Sun driven out of Guangzhou, the Zhili clique superficially restored the constitutional government that existed prior to Zhang Xun's coup. Cao bought the presidency in 1923 despite opposition by the KMT, Fengtian, Anhui remnants, some of his lieutenants and the public. In the autumn of 1924 the Zhili appeared to be on the verge of complete victory in the Second Zhili–Fengtian War until Feng Yuxiang betrayed the clique, seized Beijing and imprisoned Cao. Zhili forces were routed from the north but kept the center.


title: Warlord Era

text: Feng Yuxiang's defection resulted in the defeat of Wu Peifu and the Zhili clique and forced them to withdraw to the south. The victorious Zhang Zuolin unpredictably named Duan Qirui as the new Chief Executive of the nation on 24 November 1924. Duan's new government was grudgingly accepted by the Zhili clique because, without an army of his own, Duan was now considered a neutral choice. In addition, instead of "President" Duan was now called the "Chief Executive", implying that the position was temporary and therefore politically weak. Duan called on Sun Yat-sen and the Kuomintang in the south to restart negotiations towards reunification. Sun demanded that the "unequal treaties" with foreign powers be repudiated and that a new national assembly be assembled. Bowing to public pressure, Duan promised a new national assembly in three months; however he could not unilaterally discard the "unequal treaties", since the foreign powers had made official recognition of Duan's regime contingent upon respecting these very treaties. Sun died on 12 March 1925 and the negotiations fell apart.


title: Warlord Era

text: With his clique's military power in a shambles, Duan's government was hopelessly dependent on Feng Yuxiang and Zhang Zuolin. Knowing that those two did not get along, he secretly tried to play one side against the other. On 18 March 1926, a protest march was held against continued foreign infringement on Chinese sovereignty and a recent incident in Tianjin involving a Japanese warship. Duan dispatched military police to disperse the protesters, and in the resulting melee 47 protesters were killed and over 200 injured, including Li Dazhao, co-founder of the Communist Party. The event came to be known as the 18 March Massacre. The next month Feng Yuxiang again revolted, this time against the Fengtian clique, and deposed Duan, who was forced to flee to Zhang for protection. Zhang, tired of his double dealings, refused to restore him after re-capturing Beijing. Most of the Anhui clique had already sided with Zhang. Duan Qirui exiled himself to Tianjin and later moved to Shanghai where he died on 2 November 1936.


title: Warlord Era

text: During the Second Zhili–Fengtian War, Feng Yuxiang changed his support from Zhili to Fengtian and forced the Beijing Coup which resulted in Cao Kun being imprisoned. Feng soon broke off from the Zhili clique again and formed Guominjun and allied himself with Duan Qirui. In 1926, Wu Peifu from the Zhili clique launched the Anti-Fengtian War. Zhang Zuolin took advantage of the situation, and entered Shanhai Pass from the Northeast and captured Beijing. The Fengtian clique remained in control of the capital until the Northern Expedition led by Chiang Kai-shek's National Revolutionary Army forced Zhang out of power in June 1928.


title: Warlord Era

text: The southern provinces of China were notably against the Beiyang government in the north, having resisted the restoration of monarchy by Yuan Shikai and the subsequent government in Peking after his death. Sun Yat-sen along with other southern leaders had formed a government in Guangzhou to resist the rule of the Beiyang warlords, and the Guangzhou government came to be known as part of the Constitutional Protection War.


title: Warlord Era

text: In September Sun was named generalissimo of the military government with the purpose of protecting the provisional constitution of 1912. The southern warlords assisted his regime solely to legitimize their fiefdoms and challenge Beijing. In a bid for international recognition, they also declared war against the Central Powers but failed to garner any recognition. In July 1918 southern militarists thought Sun was given too much power and forced him to join a governing committee. Continual interference forced Sun into self-imposed exile. While away, he recreated the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang. With the help of KMT Gen. Chen Jiongming, committee members Gen. Cen Chunxuan, Adm. Lin Baoyi and Gen. Lu Rongting were expelled in the 1920 Guangdong–Guangxi War. In May 1921 Sun was elected "extraordinary president" by a rump parliament despite protests by Chen and Tang Shaoyi, who complained of its unconstitutionality. Tang left while Chen plotted with the Zhili clique to overthrow Sun in June 1922 in return for recognition of his governorship over Guangdong.


title: Warlord Era

text: After Chen was driven out of Guangzhou, Sun returned again to assume leadership in March 1923. The party was reorganized along Leninist democratic centralism, and the alliance with the Chinese Communist Party came to be known as First United Front. The Guangzhou government focused on training new officers through the newly created Whampoa Military Academy. In 1924, the Zhilii clique fell out of power, and Sun travelled to Beiping to negotiate terms of reunification with leaders from Guominjun, Fengtian and Anhui clique. He was unable to secure the terms as he died in March 1925 from illness. Power struggles within the KMT ensued after the death of Sun. The Yunnan–Guangxi War broke out as Tang Jiyao tried to claim party leadership. In the north, there were struggles led by Guominjun against Fengtian-Zhili alliance from November 1925 to April 1926. The defeat of Guominjun ended their reign in Beiping.


title: Warlord Era

text: Chiang Kai-shek emerged as the protégé of Sun Yat-sen following the Zhongshan Warship Incident. In the summer of 1926, Chiang and the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) began the Northern Expedition with the hopes to reunify China. Wu Peifu and Sun Chuanfang of the Zhili clique were subsequently defeated in central and eastern China. In response to the situation, the Guominjun and Yan Xishan of Shanxi formed an alliance with Chiang to attack the Fengtian clique together. In 1927, Chiang initiated a violent purge of Communists in the Kuomintang, which marked the end of the First United Front.


title: Warlord Era

text: The National Revolutionary Army (NRA) formed by the KMT swept through southern and central China until it was checked in Shandong, where confrontations with the Japanese garrison escalated into armed conflict. The conflicts were collectively known as the Jinan incident of 1928.


title: Warlord Era

text: Though Chiang had consolidated the power of the KMT in Nanking, it was still necessary to capture Beiping (Beijing) to claim the legitimacy needed for international recognition. Yan Xishan moved in and captured Beiping on behalf of his new allegiance after the death of Zhang Zuolin in 1928. His successor, Zhang Xueliang, accepted the authority of the KMT leadership, and the Northern Expedition officially concluded.


title: Warlord Era

text: The politics of the Nanjing Decade of Kuomintang leadership over China were deeply shaped by the compromises with warlords that had allowed the victory of the Northern expedition. Most provincial leaders were military commanders who joined the party only during the expedition itself, when the warlords and their administrators were absorbed wholesale by Chiang. Although dictatorial, Chiang did not have absolute power as party rivals and local warlords posed a constant challenge.


title: Warlord Era

text: Despite the reunification, there were still ongoing conflicts across the country. Remaining regional warlords across China chose to cooperate with the Nationalist government, but disagreements with the Nationalist government and regional warlords soon broke out into the Central Plains War in 1930. Northwest China erupted into a series of wars in Xinjiang from 1931 to 1937. Following the Xi'an Incident in 1936, efforts began to shift toward preparation of war against the Japanese Empire.


title: Warlord Era

text: The warlords continued posing problems for the National Government up until the communist victory in 1949, when many turned on the KMT and defected to the CCP, such as Yunnanese warlord Lu Han, whose troops had earlier been responsible for receiving the surrender of the Japanese in Hanoi and had engaged in widespread looting.


title: Warlord Era

text: Although Chiang was generally not considered personally corrupt, his power was dependent on balancing between the various warlords. Although he understood and expressed hatred at the fact that KMT corruption was driving the public to the communists, he continued dealing with warlords, tolerating incompetence and corruption while undermining subordinates who became too strong so as to preserve unity. After the Japanese surrender, warlords turned against the KMT.


title: Weather Report

text: Weather Report was an American jazz fusion band active from 1970 to 1986. The band was founded in 1970 by Austrian virtuoso keyboardist Joe Zawinul, American saxophonist Wayne Shorter, Czech bassist Miroslav Vitouš, American drummer and vocalist Alphonse Mouzon as well as American percussionists Don Alias and Barbara Burton. The band was initially co-led by co-frontmen Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter but, subsequently as the 1970s progressed, Joe Zawinul largely became the sole musical leader of the group. Other prominent members at various points in the band's lifespan included Jaco Pastorius, Alphonso Johnson, Victor Bailey, Chester Thompson, Peter Erskine, Airto Moreira, and Alex Acuña. Throughout most of its existence, the band was a quintet consisting of Zawinul, Shorter, a bass guitarist, a drummer, and a percussionist.


title: Weather Report

text: The band started as a free improvising jazz group with avant-garde and experimental electronic leanings (pioneered by Zawinul); when Vitouš left Weather Report (due mostly to creative disagreements), Zawinul increasingly steered the band towards a funky, edgy sound incorporating elements of R&B and native musics from around the world. Zawinul used the latest developments in synthesizer technology, and he took advantage of a large variety of sounds and tone colors to make the band stand out. During the first half of their career, Weather Report were seen as one of the defining acts in modern jazz, winning the DownBeat "best album award" five times in a row.


title: Weather Report

text: Alongside bands such as Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters (all with members inspired by and partially responsible for the fusion-era work of Miles Davis), Weather Report is widely considered one of the defining bands of the jazz fusion genre.


title: Weather Report

text: Over their 16-year career, Weather Report explored various types of music, predominantly centered on jazz (initially the "free" variety), but also incorporating elements of art music, ethnic music, R&B, funk, and rock. While their work was categorized as "jazz fusion", the band members generally distanced themselves from that term.


title: Weather Report

text: From the start, Weather Report took the unusual approach of abandoning the traditional "soloist/accompaniment" demarcation of straight-ahead jazz and featured opportunities for continuous improvisation by every member of the band. That position remained consistent throughout the life of the band. From the point where Alphonso Johnson joined the band, individual solos became more prominent in concert, but were never allowed to overwhelm the collective approach. Initially, the band's music featured an improvisational method (similar to Miles Davis's "Bitches Brew"-period), but eventually that shifted to a more groove-oriented approach and catchier compositions (as epitomized by their 1977 hit single "Birdland").


title: Weather Report

text: Joe Zawinul's playing style was often dominated by quirky melodic improvisations (simultaneously bebop-, ethnic-, and pop-sounding) combined with sparse but rhythmic big-band chords or bass lines. Having originally made his name as a pioneering electric piano player, he went on to consistently develop the role of the synthesizer in jazz during his time with Weather Report. Working with companies such as ARP and Oberheim, Zawinul developed new ways of voicing and patching electronic tones for textures, ensemble roles (including emulations of traditional band instruments) and soloing. In Weather Report, he often employed a vocoder, as well as recorded sounds played (i.e., filtered and transposed) through a synthesizer, creating a very distinctive, often beautiful, synthesis of jazz harmonics and "noise" (which he referred to as "using all the sounds the world generates"). On some Weather Report tunes, however, Zawinul was criticized for allowing his synthesized arrangements to dominate the sound.


title: Weather Report

text: Wayne Shorter came to the group with a reputation as a dominant role as an instrumentalist, drawn from both his solo work and his contributions to Miles Davis' "second great quintet" during the 1960s. His choice not to follow the same approach with Weather Report led to some criticism of the group. During his time with Weather Report, Shorter was noted for generally playing saxophone with an economical, "listening" style. Rather than continually taking the lead, he generally added subtle harmonic, melodic, and/or rhythmic complexity by responding to other member's improvisations (although he could and did sometimes exercise a more frenetic style akin to that of John Coltrane or Michael Brecker). As a composer, he chose a more abstract, sometimes atonal and "free jazz" style of music, opposed to the sometimes flamboyant melodicism of the tunes written by Zawinul or Pastorius. Playing both tenor and soprano saxophones, Shorter continued to develop the role of the latter instrument in jazz, taking his cue from previous work by Coltrane, Sidney Bechet, Lucky Thompson, and Steve Lacy.


title: Weather Report

text: Weather Report maintained a consistent interest in a textured sound and developments in music technology and processing. Both Zawinul and original bassist Miroslav Vitouš experimented with electronic effects pedals (as generally used by rock guitarists) with Zawinul using them on electric piano and synthesizers and Vitouš on his upright bass (which he frequently bowed through distortion to create a second horn-like voice). The band's third bass player, Jaco Pastorius, popularized the use of fretless bass guitar, melodic bass soloing and extensive use of string harmonics, as well as consolidating the driving R&B pulse in the band's music (which had been brought in by his predecessor Alphonso Johnson).


title: Weather Report

text: With the exception of a brief quartet period between 1978 and 1979 (wherein other members could double on various percussion instruments), Weather Report's instrumentation always included both a drummer and a percussionist. For its first eight years of existence, the group had difficulty finding a permanent drummer, moving through about one drummer per year until Jaco Pastorius helped to recruit Peter Erskine in 1978. Erskine and Omar Hakim were the only drummers who played with Weather Report for more than two years.


title: Weather Report

text: Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter had first met and become friends in 1959 while they were playing in Maynard Ferguson's Big Band. Zawinul went on to play with Cannonball Adderley's group in the 1960s, while Shorter joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and then, in 1964, Miles Davis' second great quintet. During this decade, both men made names for themselves as being among the best composers in jazz.


title: Weather Report

text: Zawinul later joined Shorter in contributing to the initial fusion music recordings of Miles Davis, and both men were part of the studio groups that recorded the key Davis albums "In a Silent Way" (1969) and "Bitches Brew" (1970). Weather Report was initially formed to explore a more impressionistic and individualistic music (or, as Zawinul put it, "away from all that eight bars shit and then you go to the bridge...").


title: Weather Report

text: There's some dispute over how Weather Report initially formed. According to Zawinul, it began when he and Shorter recruited another Miles Davis associate, the classically trained Czech-born bass player Miroslav Vitouš, who had previously played with each of them separately (as well as with Herbie Mann, Bob Brookmeyer, Stan Getz, and Chick Corea). According to Vitouš himself, it was he and Shorter who actually founded Weather Report, with Shorter bringing in Zawinul afterwards. Whichever story is true, it was those three musicians – all composers – who formed the initial core of the project.


title: Weather Report

text: To complete the band, Zawinul, Shorter and Vitouš brought in former McCoy Tyner drummer Alphonse Mouzon and began recording their debut album while looking for a full-time auxiliary percussionist. The initial recruits were session percussion player Don Alias and symphony orchestra percussionist Barbara Burton. During recording, Alias quarreled with Zawinul (allegedly due to Zawinul being too dictatorial over the percussion approach) and the innovative Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira (yet another Davis alumnus) was brought in to complete the record. Guitarist John McLaughlin was also invited to join the group, but decided to pursue his solo career, instead.


title: Weather Report

text: Weather Report's debut album "Weather Report" featured a softer sound than would be the case in later years, predominantly using acoustic bass, with Shorter exclusively playing soprano saxophone. It built on the" avant-garde" experiments which Zawinul and Shorter had pioneered with Miles Davis on "Bitches Brew", including an avoidance of head-and-chorus composition in favor of continuous rhythm and movement. "DownBeat" magazine described the album as "music beyond category".


title: Weather Report

text: In 1972, Weather Report released its second album, "I Sing the Body Electric". The first side featured new studio recordings, while the second side was taken from live recordings of a concert in Tokyo, featuring the full-band lineup of Zawinul, Shorter, Vitouš, Gravatt, and Um Romão (and later available in full as the 1972 Japan-only double album "Live in Tokyo"). The studio side used extended versions of the band including various guest performers, suggesting that Weather Report was not necessarily an integral jazz band, but might possibly work as an expandable project set up to realise the music of its three composers. The album also featured Zawinul's first use of a synthesizer (an instrument with which he would become synonymous within jazz) and of sound effects.


title: Weather Report

text: "I Sing the Body Electric" also showed the first signs of a shift in the balance of control within the band, away from the more collective approach of the debut album. During the following year, this tendency would develop further.


title: Weather Report

text: 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 R&B influences and dense electric keyboard work while adding more structure to both the prewritten and the improvisational sections.


title: Weather Report

text: 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 as well as being "from the jazz side... my favorite of them all". With Gravatt gone and 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.


title: Weather Report

text: 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. When Shorter sided with Zawinul, the original three-man partnership broke down acrimoniously and Vitouš left Weather Report, moving on to an illustrious career leading his own band and winning respect as a composer. 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).


title: Weather Report

text: 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.


title: Weather Report

text: Vitouš' replacement was the Philadelphian electric bass guitarist Alphonso Johnson (formerly a sideman for the pop-fusion player Chuck Mangione). Recruited by Shorter, Johnson was a supple player more than capable of providing the funk element which Zawinul desired. He was also an early advocate of the Chapman Stick, which he can be heard playing on some of the live Weather Report recordings of the period.


title: Weather Report

text: According to Zawinul, Wilburn apparently "lost heart" on tour (despite performing well in the studio). To shore up the music, the band hired another drummer, Darryl Brown, to play alongside him. At the end of the tour, both Wilburn and Brown left the band (as did Dom Um Romão) and Weather Report was, once again, drummerless.


title: Weather Report

text: For the next set of studio sessions, Weather Report added a new Brazilian percussionist (Alyrio Lima) and a new drummer – Chuck Bazemore of The Delfonics.


title: Weather Report

text: The new album, "Tale Spinnin'", was released in 1975. It was the first Weather Report album to feature a consistent rhythm section (rather than a varied set of drummers, percussionists, and bass players) since their debut. The album also made further strides in using technological improvements in synthesizers, even making use of the gigantic studio-based TONTO array.


title: Weather Report

text: During the same year, Shorter also recorded "Native Dancer" under his own name (with the Brazilian composer and vocalist Milton Nascimento). "Tale Spinnin" won the "DownBeat" best album award for 1975 (the third Weather Report album to do so) and "Native Dancer" was the runner-up.


title: Weather Report

text: 1976's "Black Market" album was perhaps the most rock-oriented work which the group had produced to date. Weather Report's music had evolved further from open-ended funk jams into more melody-oriented, concise forms, which also offered a greater mass-market appeal. Zawinul further consolidated his use of keyboard synthesizers, while Shorter experimented with an early form of wind synthesizer, the Lyricon.


title: Weather Report

text: However, the album was recorded during yet another period of change for the group, with multiple personnel shuffles. Although Alyrio Lima played percussion on one track, he was replaced during the sessions by Don Alias (his first appearance with the group since the debut album debacle) and by Alex Acuña (a Peruvian drummer and conga player based in Las Vegas, who had played with Elvis Presley and Ike Turner, among others). Alphonso Johnson was also worn out from the strain put on the rhythm by the band's frequent changes of drummer. During a break in activity halfway through the recording of "Black Market", Johnson opted to leave Weather Report to play with the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band (which featured a young John Scofield on guitar).


title: Weather Report

text: Prior to his departure, Johnson played on all but two of the new album's tracks. His replacement was Jaco Pastorius, a virtuoso fretless bass guitarist from Florida, who had been in touch with Zawinul for several years and who came in to play on "Cannon Ball" and his own composition "Barbary Coast". Zawinul and Shorter had assumed that Chester Thompson would be departing alongside his friend Johnson and, for the second set of sessions, they replaced him (on Pastorius' recommendation) with the former Mahavishnu Orchestra drummer Narada Michael Walden. Although Walden played on several album tracks, he ultimately proved unsuitable. Thompson returned for the final "Black Market" sessions, but left again after failing to gel as a rhythm section with Pastorius (whose style was much busier than that of Johnson). Thompson subsequently joined Genesis as their touring drummer.


title: Weather Report

text: "Black Market" continued Weather Report's ongoing run of success, selling well and being the fourth of the band's albums to win the album of the year award from "DownBeat" magazine. For the subsequent tour, Alex Acuña moved from percussion to the drum kit, and Don Alias was replaced by the young Puerto Rican percussionist Manolo Badrena, who had previously played with various Latin rock bands and with Art Blakey. The band made a very well-received appearance in July at the Montreux Jazz Festival 1976, which was filmed for future release.


title: Weather Report

text: The recruitment of Jaco Pastorius helped to push Weather Report to the height of its popularity. Already a rising star in his own right, Pastorius brought a very musical, melodic quality to the bass. He could play muscular, lightning-fast groove lines influenced by R&B or funk, as well as demonstrating an extraordinary solo control of tone and string harmonics, often sounding more like a horn player. Pastorius was also a multi-instrumentalist (contributing drums, steel pan, and mandocello to the latest recording sessions), a gifted composer (eventually responsible for some signature Weather Report pieces such as "Teen Town" and "Three Views of a Secret"), and a useful production foil for Zawinul due to his knowledge of recording studios and techniques. Finally, Pastorius' stagecraft and aggressive showmanship helped the band to bring in a new audience.


title: Weather Report

text: The band's next album was 1977's acclaimed "Heavy Weather", which proved to be the band's most successful recording in terms of sales, while still retaining wide critical acclaim. It contained the band's biggest hit, the propulsive and danceable "Birdland" (highlighting Pastorius' singing bass lines and Zawinul's synthesized ensemble brass), which became a pop hit and later became a jazz standard. Weather Report appeared on the Burt Sugarman-produced series "The Midnight Special", performing both "Birdland" and "Teen Town". "Heavy Weather" dominated Weather Report's disc awards, including their last "DownBeat" Album of the Year award.


title: Weather Report

text: During this period, Pastorius' strong professional connection with Joni Mitchell (for whom he played bass throughout the latter half of the 1970s) led to another musical connection. Over the next few years, Mitchell hired the Weather Report line-up "en masse" (although without Zawinul in each case) to play on her studio albums "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" (1977) and "Mingus" (1979).


title: Weather Report

text: During August 1978 the band joined Maurice White's vanity label ARC at Columbia. At the time they were once again without either a full-time drummer and percussionist, with Alex Acuña having returned to Las Vegas for a career as a studio musician and Manolo Badrena having been fired for "non-musical reasons". Shorter had been focusing most of his attention and compositional ideas into his solo work, while Zawinul was sketching out ideas for a solo album of his own, which involved moving away from a raw group sound in favor of constructing a far more orchestrated and experimental studio-based recording with multiple overdubs. However, Weather Report's contract and work schedule required another album, so Zawinul's solo work was absorbed into what became Weather Report's eighth album, "Mr. Gone" (1978).


title: Weather Report

text: The studio sessions made use of a variety of drummers – Pastorius played the kit on two tracks and further contributions came from Tony Williams, Steve Gadd, and Peter Erskine (the latter an ex-Stan Kenton/Maynard Ferguson drummer recruited to the project by Pastorius). Erskine became a full member of the band for the next tour and remained with Weather Report until 1982. The album also featured guest appearances from Deniece Williams and Earth Wind and Fire leader Maurice White.


title: Weather Report

text: Notoriously, "Mr. Gone" (1978) received only a one-star review rating from "DownBeat" after a string of group releases which had all pulled a five-star rating. The group arranged for a rebuttal interview with the magazine to defend their efforts. Zawinul and Pastorius were defiant in their responses to the interviewer, Shorter more philosophical, and Erskine the most reticent of the four.


title: Weather Report

text: By the late '70s, Weather Report was a quartet of Zawinul, Shorter, Pastorius, and Erskine, and (for the first time) had dispensed with the auxiliary percussionist role, which had been integral since the band's inception. Instead, all four members doubled on percussion at various points in live performances. Zawinul commented that this sleeker, less crowded sound provided more listening range and made the music less chaotic now that the band were focusing more on melody and harmony.


title: Weather Report

text: The larger scale and multimedia staging of the band's tours (complete with stagehands, laser and film projections) began to take on the kind of rock-star proportions mostly unknown in jazz circles. The 1979 double live album "" (which won that year's Best Jazz Fusion Performance) was recorded on the "Mr. Gone" tour and captured the direct power and energy of this lineup of Weather Report. Zawinul later described this lineup as "one of the greatest bands of all time! That band was a "hummer"!"


title: Weather Report

text: Between March 2 and 4, 1979, Weather Report traveled to Havana, Cuba, to participate in the historic Havana Jam festival, a break in mutual Cuban/American political hostilities, which had American artists such as Stephen Stills, the CBS Jazz All-Stars, Bonnie Bramlett, Kris Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, and Billy Joel play alongside Cuban artists such as Irakere, Pacho Alonso, Tata Güines, and Orquesta Aragón. Another featured performance was by the Trio of Doom (a short-lived teaming of Pastorius with John McLaughlin and Tony Williams). Weather Report's performance featured in Havana Jam '79, Ernesto Juan Castellanos' documentary celebrating the event.


title: Weather Report

text: At the beginning of 1980, Pastorius recruited hand-drummer Robert Thomas Jr. (a fellow Floridan, with whom he had jammed previously) into the band. Thomas featured on the 1980 album "Night Passage". A tighter and more traditional recording than previous releases, the record featured a more prominent role for Shorter, a strong element of bebop, and a nod to jazz's golden age via a high-speed cover of Duke Ellington's "Rockin' in Rhythm" (showing off Zawinul's pioneering and ever-increasing ability to create synthetic big-band sounds on his synthesizers).


title: Weather Report

text: By now, Pastorius was displaying signs of the mental instability and substance abuse problems that ultimately wrecked his career; and the close relationship he'd previously shared with Zawinul was becoming strained as Zawinul grew tired of Pastorius' showmanship onstage (beginning to feel that it detracted from the music). Towards the end of the year, Pastorius began working on his long-delayed second solo album ("Word of Mouth") (1981) in New York, while Zawinul worked on new Weather Report material in California.


title: Weather Report

text: Weather Report's next album "Weather Report" (1982) – their second eponymous release following their 1971 debut – was recorded in 1981, although it was not released for another year. Zawinul's dominance as instrumentalist and composer (as well as group director) was even more pronounced on this album. Much of the band's music was increasingly written out rather than improvised. In the event, Pastorius spent more of his creative attention on the "Word of Mouth" project: his only writing for the Weather Report album being his contribution to a single, group-composed piece. Shorter (who only contributed one whole composition to the 1982 album beyond group-written work) was already taking a more philosophical approach. He later commented, "for a long time in Weather Report, I abstained. I elected not to do things."


title: Weather Report

text: Erskine's own commitment to "Word of Mouth" (and a subsequent summer commitment to "Steps Ahead") meant that he, too, had to be replaced, while Robert Thomas Jr., was simply dismissed. Reduced to a duo, and with tour commitments looming, Zawinul and Shorter were obliged to quickly assemble a new band.


title: Weather Report

text: On the recommendation of Michał Urbaniak, Zawinul and Shorter recruited 23-year-old drummer Omar Hakim, a talented session player and multi-instrumentalist, who had played with a variety of musicians including Mike Mainieri, David Bowie, and Carly Simon. Hakim was immediately entrusted with recruiting the rest of the new lineup. Having failed to secure Marcus Miller as bass guitarist, he selected Victor Bailey (a recent graduate from the Berklee College of Music, with whom Hakim had played while backing Miriam Makeba). Hakim also recruited percussion/concertina player José Rossy, with whom he had worked in Labelle.


title: Weather Report

text: The new Weather Report went straight onto tour. The music developed on tour was later recorded for the 1983 album "Procession", which showed the band beginning to make something of a return to the "world music" approach which it had pioneered in the mid-1970s and featured a cameo appearance from The Manhattan Transfer.


title: Weather Report

text: Continuing with the same lineup, Weather Report recorded the "Domino Theory" album in 1984, with Hakim stepping into Jaco Pastorius' old role as Zawinul's co-producer. The album was Weather Report's first album to employ drum machines and samplers (the Emulator), deepening the band's involvement with cutting-edge music technology, and also featured a guest vocal from Carl Anderson.


title: Weather Report

text: Percussionist and singer Mino Cinélu replaced Rossy in the spring of 1984 and appeared on the band's video release "Live in Japan" (reissued on DVD in 2007). The same lineup played on 1985's "Sportin' Life" album, which included a cover of Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" and appearances by singers Bobby McFerrin and Carl Anderson. In keeping with Zawinul's technological curiosity, the album heralded the arrival of MIDI, which allowed him to rapidly and inexpensively write, demonstrate, and record music via a set of synthesizers.


title: Weather Report

text: Both Zawinul and Shorter were beginning to realise that the refreshing nature of other projects was more satisfying than Weather Report work, and both generally felt that the band had run its course.


title: Weather Report

text: In February 1986, the "San Diego Union-Tribune" announced that Shorter had left the band to concentrate on solo work. Having reluctantly agreed with Shorter that he would no longer use the band name, Zawinul then ended Weather Report. The final album under the Weather Report name, "This is This!", was released in June 1986 and fulfilled the band's contract with Columbia Records. Two of its tracks featured guitar work from Carlos Santana, and it also marked the return of Peter Erskine on drums, with Hakim only appearing on one track.


title: Weather Report

text: Having split the band, Zawinul promptly attempted to reform it – after a fashion – as Weather Update. For this project, he reunited with recent Weather Report alumni Victor Bailey, Mino Cinélu, and Peter Erskine, but replaced Shorter with guitarist John Scofield. This lineup was short-lived, with Los Angeles session guitarist Steve Khan and former Weather Report percussionist Robert Thomas Jr. replacing Scofield and Cinélu prior to live appearances. Weather Update toured in 1986 and 1987 before Zawinul dissolved the band. From 1988 onwards, Zawinul went on to enjoy a successful nineteen-year career leading the world music/jazz ensemble The Zawinul Syndicate (which has continued, following Zawinul's death, as The Syndicate).


title: Weather Report

text: Rather than form another collective band, Wayne Shorter concentrated on his solo career and on work as a bandleader, which continues to the present day.


title: Weather Report

text: In spite of the band's enduring popularity, a Weather Report reunion never occurred. The nearest that the band ever came to reuniting was when Zawinul and Shorter both played live with Miles Davis on July 10, 1991, in Paris (the only time when Zawinul is known to have shared a live stage with Davis). A projected mid-'90s reunion CD for Verve never materialized; according to Zawinul, disappointing sales for Shorter's 1995 CD "High Life" may have played a part in ending the idea.


title: Weather Report

text: Five of the band's members have since died. Zawinul himself died on September 11, 2007, in Vienna from skin cancer (Merkel cell carcinoma). He was predeceased by mid-period bass player Jaco Pastorius, who died on September 21, 1987, following a fatal beating in his hometown of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Pastorius' successor on bass guitar, Victor Bailey, died on November 11, 2016 (apparently from complications from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Alphonse Mouzon, the first drummer, died on December 25, 2016 from cardiac arrest after neuroendocrine cancer. Dom Um Romão, the group's drummer from 1971 to 1974, died in 2005 aged 79.


title: Weather Report

text: A "post band" Weather Report double CD called "Live and Unreleased" was made available in 2002, featuring vintage live recordings made during the late 1970s/early 1980s with various personnel. In September 2006, Columbia/Legacy released a Weather Report boxed set, "". It includes three CDs of mostly previously released material (from 1970 to 1985, excluding "This is This!") and a DVD of the entire September 28, 1978, performance (with Erskine and Pastorius) in Offenbach, Germany, not previously available. A DVD video of the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival performance (featuring the Heavy Weather lineup of Pastorius, Acuna, and Badrena) has become available, as well. Columbia/Legacy have also re-released the 1984 "Live in Japan" concert on DVD.


title: Weather Report

text: In 2011, the Zawinul estate, in conjunction with an independent label, released a 40th-anniversary commemorative trilogy of previously unavailable Weather Report live shows: In March "Live in Berlin 1975" was released both on vinyl and as a CD/DVD set; in June the "Live in Offenbach 1978" DVD was re-released together with a previously unavailable double CD of the complete show; in October "Live in Cologne 1983" was released as both DVD and double CD.


title: Weather Report

text: The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States. Weather Report has won one Grammy from six nominations.


title: Casey Wilson

text: Cathryn Rose "Casey" Wilson (born October 24, 1980) is an American actress, comedienne, and screenwriter. She starred as Penny Hartz in the ABC comedy series "Happy Endings" for which she was twice nominated to the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, and has since starred in comedies such as Showtime's "Black Monday", Apple TV's "The Shrink Next Door", Hulu's "The Hotwives" and "Marry Me" on NBC. Other notable work includes supporting roles in films such as "Gone Girl", "Julie & Julia", and "The Meddler", recurring in the HBO series "Mrs. Fletcher", the Amazon comedy "One Mississippi", and the Netflix series "Atypical", and her 2013 Sundance film "Ass Backwards", which she co-wrote and starred in with her creative partner June Diane Raphael. Wilson co-hosts (alongside Danielle Schneider) the Earwolf podcast "Bitch Sesh".


title: Casey Wilson

text: Wilson made her first major television appearances with a two-season stint as a cast member on "Saturday Night Live" from 2008 to 2009.


title: Casey Wilson

text: Casey Wilson was born and raised in Alexandria, Virginia. She graduated from T. C. Williams High School in 1998 and studied theater at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, where she was a recipient of NYU's "Excellence in Acting" award when graduating in 2002.


title: Casey Wilson

text: She is of Irish and Italian heritage, and was raised Baptist. Her parents worked in politics, and she credits her politically opposed parents (her mother was a Democrat, her father a Republican) in shaping her sense of humor, having grown up in a "blue-state/red-state, forever-clashing political household", as she called it in an interview with "Washington Flyer". She also has a younger brother, Fletcher.