Jaco Pastorius
'I'm John Francis Pastorius III, the greatest bass player in the world.' — the greeting he is said to have first offered Joe Zawinul in the mid-1970s
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Collaborators ⏳🌊
- FamilyJack Pastorius
His father, a big-band drummer and singer — the drums, the first instrument the son ever took up, came from him.
- FriendshipPat Metheny
They met at the University of Miami, and he was a near-contemporary and colleague who shared Bright Size Life and Joni Mitchell's tour with him.
- PatronageBobby Colomby
The drummer of Blood, Sweat & Tears, who brought him to Epic Records and produced his debut album.
- ColleagueJoe Zawinul
Co-leader of Weather Report, who listened to the brash young man's tape and took him into the group.
- ColleagueWayne Shorter
The saxophonist who played with him from the debut album through Weather Report to Word of Mouth — an elder who cherished him.
- ColleagueJoni Mitchell
From “Hejira” to the live “Shadows and Light,” four albums made his bass a second voice in her songs.
I. The boy from Norristown · 1951–1966 (age 0–15)
(Birth) He was born in December 1951 in Norristown, Pennsylvania. His given name was John Francis Anthony Pastorius III. His father, Jack Pastorius, was a big-band drummer and singer whose work kept him on the road much of the time, and his mother, Stephanie, came from a family of Finnish descent. He was the eldest of three sons. (Florida) When he was about seven, the family moved to Oakland Park, near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. While his father was away, his mother ran the household and raised the children. Brought up Catholic, he served as an altar boy, and he was a sports fanatic who played baseball, basketball and football alike. The nickname “Jaco” is said to have come from his favorite baseball umpire, Jocko Conlan. His brothers and friends recalled that even then he plainly hated to lose and loved to be in the spotlight. (The wrist) The first instrument he took up was the drums, which he learned from his father. But at about thirteen he broke his wrist playing football, and he later recalled that it never fully healed, which made it hard to keep drumming. Just then the bass player of Las Olas Brass, the local band he drummed for, left, and he took over the spot. Around 1966, a fifteen-year-old boy had a bass in his hands. The feel for the beat he had learned on drums, the R&B and soul pouring out of the radio, and the music drifting across the sea from the Caribbean would later become the foundation of a bass that was at once a rhythm instrument and a singing one.
II. Nights on the South Florida stage · 1966–1975 (age 15–24)
(Clubs) From his late teens he played wherever there was work: in the clubs and hotel lounges of Fort Lauderdale and Miami, and in backing bands for touring shows. In the early 1970s he joined the C.C. Riders, led by soul singer Wayne Cochran, and played brass-heavy R&B night after night. He listened to the bassists of James Brown's band and of R&B sessions as if they were his teachers, and said he learned a great deal from Jerry Jemmott in particular. (Fretless) Around this time, he recalled, he pulled the frets (the metal bars that divide the neck into steps of pitch) out of a 1962 Fender Jazz Bass, filled the slots and coated the fingerboard with marine epoxy. Other accounts say he acquired it already fretless. Either way, the bass without frets slid between notes and trembled like a human voice. This instrument, which he later called the “Bass of Doom,” soon became his voice. (Family) For a young family man, club work was a living. Around 1973 he briefly taught bass at the University of Miami, where he met a teenage guitarist named Pat Metheny and began playing with him. In 1974 he appeared alongside Metheny on an album by pianist Paul Bley, and that same year he recorded demos of his own compositions at Criteria Studios in Miami. He was an unknown local player, but he already knew what he could do.
The first album as a leader by Pat Metheny, whom he had met at the University of Miami. Here the world first properly heard the voice of an unknown bassist from South Florida.
- Beneath Metheny's clear guitar, the fretless bass does not merely mark the bottom note of each chord (the root); it trades melodies with the guitar as an equal. It sounds like a texture in which two melodies move independently at once (counterpoint).
- Drummer Bob Moses sways the beat lightly rather than packing it densely, keeping alive the breath of a trio with plenty of open space among its three instruments.
- Produced by ECM's Manfred Eicher in December 1975 at a studio in Ludwigsburg, Germany. Thanks to the label's signature sound, long-ringing and transparent, even the bass's sliding notes come through clearly.
- Both men were in their early twenties when it was recorded. Listen for the passage in the opening track, “Bright Size Life,” where the bass supports the bright theme as if singing along.
III. The greatest bass player in the world · 1975–1976 (age 24–25)
(Colomby) After hearing him play, Bobby Colomby, the drummer of Blood, Sweat & Tears, brought him to Epic Records and took charge of producing his debut album. Recorded in 1975 and released the following year, “Jaco Pastorius” featured Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, the brothers Michael and Randy Brecker, David Sanborn, and even the soul duo Sam & Dave. It was a rare lineup for the first album of an unknown newcomer. (Donna Lee) The album opened with “Donna Lee,” the bebop tune known under Charlie Parker's name (some say Miles Davis wrote it). Playing that fast, angular melody, written for saxophone, with nothing but bass and congas became an event among bassists. In “Portrait of Tracy,” named for his first wife, he built an entire piece from bell-like harmonics drawn by touching the strings lightly. The affection and ambition of a young family man shared a single record. (Zawinul) Around the same time, the story goes, he sought out Joe Zawinul, the keyboardist of Weather Report, after a concert in Miami and introduced himself as the greatest bass player in the world. Zawinul recalled first laughing off the brashness, then changing his mind after hearing the tape. In 1976 he played on two tracks of “Black Market,” then succeeded Alphonso Johnson as a full member. A twenty-four-year-old from Florida now stood at the heart of the foremost fusion group of the day, led by Wayne Shorter and Zawinul.
The first track on his debut album. By playing bebop's most demanding melody on electric bass, this track made his name in a single stroke.
- Played with no chordal accompaniment, only bass and Don Alias's congas. As the bass plays the melody, it traces the flow of the harmony with those same notes.
- On a fretless fingerboard he lands every note of a fast, angular bebop line originally written for saxophone, without a single one out of place. The short, detached notes (staccato) sound like a horn player's tonguing.
- The form is a statement of the theme, then improvisation, then a return to the theme (head-solo-head). Even in the solo he spins long strands of notes like a bebop player.
- While the congas gently pull and push at the back of the beat, the bass runs squarely on it. That friction gives the whole piece its spring.
A solo bass piece named for his first wife. The lyricism of a young family man earning his living in clubs survives in the bell tones of its harmonics.
- Almost from beginning to end it is played in clear harmonics, produced by lightly touching the string rather than pressing it down. He even mixed in artificial harmonics, stopping the note with one hand and drawing out the overtone with a finger of the other.
- A single bass sounds two or three notes at once to form chords. Contrary to the notion of a low instrument, its high, transparent sound rings like bells or a xylophone.
- The tempo is slow and the space between notes wide. The patience of waiting until each harmonic fades creates the mood of the piece.
- Countless bassists have since studied this piece like a textbook. Critics and players widely count it among the performances that expanded what the instrument could do.
IV. The Weather Report years · 1976–1979 (age 25–28)
(Heavy Weather) Recorded in Los Angeles in 1976 and released the following year, “Heavy Weather” became Weather Report's greatest success. Zawinul's “Birdland” spread across the radio, and the album included his own compositions “Teen Town” and “Havona.” Onstage he ran around barefoot and held audiences spellbound with solos in which he stacked his sound in layers with a delay unit, building an ensemble all by himself. Wayne Shorter was a colleague who cherished him, and the three went on to make “Mr. Gone” (1978) and the live “8:30” (1979) together. (Mitchell) In the same period he recorded “Hejira” (1976), “Don Juan's Reckless Daughter” (1977) and “Mingus” (1979) with singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell. “Mingus” was a project Charles Mingus had conceived with Mitchell late in life, but he died in January 1979 without seeing it finished. In effect, a young electric bassist was answering the music left by a giant of the jazz double bass. On Mitchell's 1979 tour he played alongside Pat Metheny, and the recordings came out the next year as the live “Shadows and Light.” (The shadow) As his fame grew, so did his time away from home. Colleagues recalled that around this time the man who had steered clear of drink and drugs in his youth began reaching for a glass often.
His first collaboration with Joni Mitchell. Newly a member of Weather Report, he showed how much a bass could say alongside a song.
- Mitchell recalled meeting him while searching for a sound that would trade melodies with the voice, rather than a bass that only marked the bottom notes of the chords. Whenever the singing pauses, the bass comes in as if in reply.
- The song's narrator is a wanderer on the road, pouring out long thoughts like a soliloquy. The bass clings like a shadow to Mitchell's way of telling, which flows on without being bound to regular bars.
- In places the bass sounds in several layers. This is a texture stacked by recording over sound already on tape (overdubbing).
- The fretless's characteristic slides and trembling (vibrato) resemble a human voice, so the two sound as if singing a duet.
A composition of his own from “Heavy Weather.” It shows that, at the height of Weather Report, he was one of the group's pillars as a composer as well.
- The bass carries the main melody rather than the accompaniment, racing along in quick sixteenth notes. Where Zawinul's synthesizer plays the same line alongside it (in unison), the two sounds seem to become a single body.
- On this track he played the drums himself as well. A sense of the beat that befits a player who started out on drums runs evenly through both the bass and the drum parts.
- The structure repeats a single figure while the harmony climbs one step at a time, building tension. Within a short piece of just over three minutes, the energy of fusion is compressed.
- The opening of “Birdland” on the same album, where he plays in harmonics, is well worth hearing alongside it.
V. Word of Mouth · 1980–1982 (age 29–31)
(Warner) In 1980 he signed a solo contract with Warner Bros. The terms were said to be generous for the time. “Word of Mouth” (1981), which he produced himself, was an ambitious work embracing big band, strings and steel pan. It took on the Beatles' “Blackbird” and Bach's “Chromatic Fantasia,” and featured Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and the harmonica player Toots Thielemans. On “Crisis” he let the other musicians hear only his own prerecorded bass as each overdubbed a part, creating the tension of sounds that collide without ever having heard one another. Sales fell short of expectations. (Big band) In 1982, after “Weather Report,” he left the group to lead his own big band, Word of Mouth. That year's tour of Japan, with drummer Peter Erskine, trumpeter Randy Brecker, saxophonist Bob Mintzer and steel pan player Othello Molineaux, survives on the live recording “Twins I & II” (released internationally as “Invitation”). Yet during the tour he behaved erratically, shaving his head and painting his face, and there is a story that he threw his bass into the sea. (Diagnosis) That same year his twin sons were born. At the end of 1982, after the tour, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Family and colleagues recalled that he was reluctant to take his medication, saying it dulled his feel for playing. In the very year he climbed highest, the shadow of his downfall fell across him as well.
A piece written in his Weather Report days, rerecorded in an orchestral arrangement for “Word of Mouth.” It reveals him most clearly not as a bassist but as a composer and arranger.
- Over a waltz meter that counts each measure in three, the harmony slides by half steps into unfamiliar colors.
- Toots Thielemans's harmonica sings the melody while strings and winds enfold it broadly from behind. The bass does not step forward but supports the whole.
- Heard against the version on Weather Report's 1980 “Night Passage,” it shows how the same piece changes between a small group and an orchestra.
- He produced the album himself, recording it piecemeal across several studios. In the layered texture of the arrangements you can hear his ambition.
VI. The last years · 1983–1987 (age 32–36)
(New York) In the mid-1980s he lived mostly in New York, playing small clubs with guitarists such as Mike Stern and Hiram Bullock. But as alcohol, drugs and untreated illness piled up, he increasingly failed to show up for booked gigs or got into fights onstage, and the work dried up. When his money ran out, there were days he slept rough near the basketball courts in Washington Square Park. In the summer of 1986 he was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital, and that same year his longtime companion, the “Bass of Doom,” was stolen. (Europe) Even so, the playing went on. In 1985 he filmed an instructional video with Jerry Jemmott, whom he revered, and in Europe in 1986 he played with the young Gypsy jazz guitarist Biréli Lagrène, leaving behind the album “Stuttgart Aria.” At the end of that year he returned to Florida. (The end) On the night of September 11, 1987, after being thrown out while trying to get onstage at a Santana concert in Sunrise, he tried to enter a club in Wilton Manors and was beaten by a bouncer, suffering grave injuries. He lingered in a coma for ten days and died on September 21 in a Fort Lauderdale hospital, at thirty-five. The bouncer pleaded guilty to manslaughter, was sentenced to 22 months in prison and was released after a little over four months. The following year he was inducted into the DownBeat Readers Poll Hall of Fame. His twin sons, Felix and Julius, later went on to become a bassist and a drummer, respectively.
Lesser-known stories
(Demo) His musical world was already nearly complete before Weather Report. A demo recorded in 1974 at Criteria Studios in Miami held early versions of songs that would later appear on his debut album. The tape lay buried for nearly 40 years before it was finally released officially in 2014 under the title “Modern American Music… Period!” So for a long time his starting point was known only as the 1976 debut produced by Colomby. (Jemmott) In 1985 he filmed the instructional video “Modern Electric Bass,” and the person asking the questions was Jerry Jemmott, the R&B bassist he had listened to as a kind of teacher in his youth. It is one of the few records in which, amid the turmoil of his final years, he calmly explained his technique in his own words. Because of its format as an instructional video, it drew less attention than his albums. (The bass) The “Bass of Doom,” stolen in New York in 1986, turned up some twenty years later in a New York instrument shop, and after a dispute over ownership the matter is said to have been settled when Metallica's bassist Robert Trujillo bought it and now keeps it together with the family. Trujillo later went on to produce the documentary “Jaco” (2015). (The name) The biographer Bill Milkowski recorded that the spelling of the nickname, Jaco, took hold after the pianist Alex Darqui, with whom he played in his Florida days, wrote it that way on a note. He liked the spelling and used it for the rest of his life.
Notes on terms 📚🔎
Fretless bass
(Meaning of the word) A fret is one of the metal bars set crosswise into the fingerboard of a guitar or bass, and -less means “without.” So a fretless is an instrument without those bars. (In jazz) With frets, wherever the finger presses within a space, a fixed pitch sounds; without frets, the note sounds exactly where the finger lands. So the player can glide smoothly between notes and produce a sound that trembles like a human voice, but playing in tune is far harder. Think of stairs and a slide. A fretted bass is a staircase you climb one step at a time; a fretless is a slide you can stop anywhere on. Jaco Pastorius made this instrument the signature voice of the electric bass.
Harmonics (overtones)
(Meaning of the word) Harmonic comes from the Greek harmonia, meaning concord. It refers to the higher tones that ring in concord with the fundamental when a string vibrates. (In jazz) If, instead of pressing the string down to the fingerboard, you just lightly touch a point such as halfway or a third of the way along the string and pluck it, a clear, high, bell-like tone sounds. This is a natural harmonic. Stopping a note with one hand while drawing out the overtone with another finger is called an artificial harmonic. If you lightly touch the middle of a rubber band and pluck it, you get a higher, thinner sound than when you simply pluck it — it is the same principle. “Portrait of Tracy” is a piece built almost entirely from this sound.
Fusion
(Meaning of the word) Fusion comes from the Latin fundere, meaning to melt or pour. It means melting several things together into one. (In jazz) Music from around the 1970s that combined jazz improvisation with the strong rhythms of rock and funk and with electric instruments such as electric guitar and synthesizer. Weather Report was its leading group. Like fusion cuisine, which mixes kimchi and pasta into a new dish, it blended ingredients from different musics to create a new flavor. (Elsewhere) In physics, nuclear fusion — the joining of light atomic nuclei — is called fusion.
Bebop
(Meaning of the word) The name is often explained as coming from a vocal imitation of its quick, angular lines. (In jazz) A jazz style created in the 1940s by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others. It is marked by long improvised lines racing at great speed over complex harmonies, and it was less music for dancing than music for players to listen to closely. In jump-rope terms, it is not simple skipping but a feat of difficulty, stringing together fast double-unders and crossovers without a break. “Donna Lee” astonished listeners by playing just such a bebop line on the bass.
Funk
(In jazz) Black popular music of the 1960s and '70s, led by James Brown and others, whose core is a rhythm that makes the body move, as choppy, clipped guitar and bouncing bass interlock tightly. Pastorius brought the spring of funk bass into jazz. When a group jumps rope in a schoolyard and the beat of the turners and the jumpers locks perfectly into place, you get excited without even trying — that feeling is much like the pleasure of a funk rhythm. (Elsewhere) In Korean both are written the same way, peongkeu ('funk/punk'), but it is an entirely different word from punk, the rough, rebellious rock that arose in Britain and America in the 1970s.
Overdubbing
(Meaning of the word) Over means on top, and dubbing means adding a layer of sound. It is the act of laying new sound over an existing recording. (In jazz) A method in which, instead of musicians recording together at the same time, other instruments or the same instrument are recorded later on top while listening to what was recorded first. On “Crisis,” Pastorius let the other musicians hear only his own bass as they overdubbed separately. It is like drawing a picture on each of several sheets of transparent film and layering them to make a single image.
Groove
(Meaning of the word) Groove originally means a furrow or channel. The fine groove in which sound is cut into a record is also called a groove, and just as the needle glides smoothly along it, the word came to describe the feeling of music flowing through the body. (In jazz) The flow that arises when the repeating rhythm made by bass and drums locks perfectly into place, so that listeners nod their heads and tap their feet without thinking. It does not appear simply because the notes are accurate; it comes from the subtle push and pull between players. When you play a clapping game with classmates and your hands meet in perfect time and it gets more and more fun — that is the moment groove is born. (Elsewhere) In woodworking and machinery, a channel cut to fit a part into is called a groove.