Quoting Joni on Jaco Pastorius on page 46 of JazzTimes (April 2002) "The way my musical ear developed was kind of odd. I was attracted first to the high end of music and last the bottom. But by the time I got to the bottom end of music I began to have very strong opinions about what the bass should do and they were in conflict with what the bass was doing. I didn't understand why the high end could have so much freedom and the low end was so locked in. And I would make suggestions to bass players - couldn't they, you know, leave some holes, more like classical music, and go sailing up into the high end and be more expressive. And I would sing the parts to the bass players and ask them to play it and they would refuse. At that particular time there weren't a lot of women in music instructing players, and sometimes bass players would, frankly, get annoyed. I forget who it was now but I was working with a bass player and giving him some instruction and he finally said to me, "Look, Joni, there's this weird bass player in Florida who plays with Phyllis Diller and Bob Hope. You'd probably like him." In other words, he thought what I was telling him was crazy and he thought Jaco's playing was crazy. It's not that he was admiring it but that it was weird. I was weird and Jaco was weird and we would probably get along just fine [laughs]. I didn't want to go back to playing alone: I took a long shot; I sent for Jaco.
The bass players that I worked with before just kind of played through it like four beats to the bar, you know, polka-dotting along. And they couldn't see the shapes of the music or where the pressure points were. They couldn't grasp it. So you had to wait for somebody like Jaco to come along who had one foot in rock 'n' roll and one foot in jazz. And when Jaco came in on the dates, he was doing what I wanted, which was a more classical counterpoint to my melodies - and leaving space - and then going into a figure and then leaving another hole and then slurping along and sliding along. He had some interrelationship to the music. There was humor in the right places - so there was a personality there. It was no longer a team player, a good supportive player; it was personality that deserved to be in the foreground. We were conceptually kindred. And to my amazement, not only was he doing some of things I was asking people to do but he was playing Stravinsky figures in the upper middle register and fitting them in all the right places. And his choice of notes and his approach was very similar to what I was trying to get at. So it was as if I dreamed him because I didn't have to give him any instruction. I could just kind of cut him loose and stand back and celebrate his choices." ******************************************************************************* Joni Mentions................ Page 15 inside Jaco Pastorius By Bill Milkowski Jaco was the world's greatest bass player - according to Jaco - before the world even heard one note. But when did his amazing skills first become apparent to those around him, before the world got a piece of him? A new collection, Portrait of Jaco: The Early Years, sheds light on the first moments of Pastorius' evolution from R&B nobody to the world's greatest bassist. Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny, Ira Sullivan and others testify to his enduring greatness. ************************************************************************ Pg 43... Today, more than 14 years after his tragic death on 9/21/87, at the hands of a bouncer outside a Florida nightclub, we still marvel at what Jaco accomplished in his relatively short span as a creative force on the planet. Not only did he revolutionize the role of his chosen instrument, the fretless electric bass guitar, but he helped change the course of music itself through his innovations. and the proof is right there on the recordings - his stunning 1976 solo debut, Jaco Pastorius, and ambitious follow-up projects, Word of Mouth and Invitation: his brilliant collaborations with Joni Mitchell (notably 1976's masterpiece, Hejira); and a string of six groundbreaking albums with Weather Report (from 1976's Black Market to the landmark Heavy Weather and Grammy-Winning 8:30 to his swan song with the group, 1982's self titled Weather Report). Pg 50... And part of the reason that Portrait of Jaco: The Early Years has taken this long to come to fruition is that Bobbing, the ultimate Jaco fan, needed that much time to do it right. Not only has he drawn from his own personal collection of tapes documenting those R&B bands Pastorious gigged with, but he's gone the extra mile to acquire additional music documenting Jaco's sideman stints with Ira Sullivan, the Peter Graves Orchestra, Pat Metheny, Florida soul man Little Beaver, Weather Report and Joni Mitchell.................. In telling the tale of Jaco Pastorius, Bobbing draws the listener in through word and music, one serving to illustrate or underscore the other. In the end, after hearing several musical discoveries along the way and bearing witness to the eloquent testimony of Wayne Cochran, Joni Mitchell, Joe Zawinul, Pat Metheny and Jaco's die-hard jazzbo father, Jack, we come away with the most complete picture ever assembled of the mythic bass player's rise to glory. Pg 48 Quote from Pat Metheny... .....If you just took Hejira and Heavy Weather and Bright Size Life and his first couple of records - just that little body of work right there sort of significantly changed the course of music in the last quarter of the 20th century, certainly in terms of the role of the bass, bass playing in general and without question the electric bass itself. Looks like a good read! Laura
