It was a little late in coming, but the Down Beat Critics Poll elected Joe to the magazine’s hall of fame by a nearly two-to-one margin over runner-up Hank Jones. He joins Weather Report co-founder Wayne Shorter, as well as collaborators Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius and Cannonball Adderley, all of whom have also been so honored.

The results of the poll were announced in the August issue of the magazine, which included a two-page article about Joe. The article indicated that keyboardist Scott Kinsey “inherited the task of archiving Zawinul’s sprawling collection of unreleased recordings.” That’s not exactly right. Joe’s estate, which is being administered by his eldest son, Anthony, is in the process of archiving the thousands of recordings that Joe created over the years, converting them to digital form. It’s certainly possible that we’ll hear some of these recordings at some point–and that Scott will be involved musically–but I suspect it will take quite a while just to get the material organized and properly archived.