Jaco Pastorius

Jaco Pastorius is the next jazz bassist on my list of influential jazz bassists. He and Stanley Clarke were by far two of the jazz bassist in the 1970s. He was just as talented at composing, arranging and producing as he was playing.
Jaco was born in December of 1951 in Pennsylvania to a family already involved in music with the birth name of John Francis Pastorius III. His dad played drums in the band that he played in. At a young age he and his family moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida where he was raised. He was very skilled in football basketball and baseball. He took the name “Anthony” at his confirmation. He had a nickname that was influenced by baseball umpire Jocko Conlan and later when one of his pianists sent him a note and spelt it “Jaco” he liked it and changed the spelling.

As he grew up and played locally with bands, he became some sort of a well-known local legend. Soon after he started playing with Pat Metheny he was invited to join Weather Report where he became a third leading voice behind Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul. He played with them for several years and while playing with them he free-lanced on the side as a session man and a producer as he played Blood Sweat and Tears, Ira Sullivan albumns, Joni Mitchell, Paul Bley and many more. He recorded his album in his name in 1976.
The older he got the more mental health issues he had. He became very addicted to alcohol and some drugs that led to many instances where he was embarrassed in public. According to allmusic.com “…one was a violent crack-up on-stage at the Hollywood Bowl in mid-set at the 1984 Playboy Jazz Festival.”[1] He died in 1957 from a physical beating he took as he was trying to break into the Midnight Club in Fort Lauderdale. Many musicians and artists have written songs in his honor including Marcus Millers “Mr. Pastorius”.


http://grooveshark.com/s/Chicken/2g08km?src=5

Copy and paste the above link into your url.
(I used Groovesharks song because I liked the arrangement better. There are plenty of copies of this on youtube, some are of the band doing concerts so you can watch them play however the music quality is not there.)


The piece I picked for this weeks listening was a piece that Pastorius played called "Chicken". It appears to be in an AABA format. It is a funk chart. Jaco is laying down a funky beat on his bass and the guitar or keyboard is playing over him. Then we go into a guitar solo with the bass all funky in the background. We go from solo to solo and stay in this 4 beat per measure time. This is a good example of the type of music Pastorius is known for. Most of this peace is improvisation on top of the bass line with a swing feel on the set. Towards the middle of the song the bass into a solo at the same time the guitar is. He mixes it up quite a bit while keeping the tempo the same. These are some amazing solos! Towards the end of the song they take it back to the initial riff at the beginning of the song and end it with a typical quick hard ending.