Jaco Report

[mtshark]

Today my jazz band rythem instructor assinged the section to do a short reprot on a jazz artist, and I wound up with Jaco Pastorius. Please dont kill me, but I am completely unfamilar with the legend and may need some help. I sadly dont have the time (and money) to go through dozens of songs to try to get a good view of his playing style. If you guys could point me towards some songs to listen to that would be great (around 5-15 would be fine). Thanks

[line6man]

I have many many favorite Jaco tunes, but just a couple of random good songs I really like:

The Chicken (Though he only covered the song, he didn't write it.)
Port of Entry
Havona
Donna Lee
Portrait of Tracy
Continuum
Teen Town
I Can Dig It Baby (With Little Beaver)
The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines (With Joni Mitchell)
4 AM (With Herbie Hancock)

[EAdanikDG]

Come On, Come Over. But that's like a full jazz orchestra playing.

[pacojas]

just go to youtube.com!!!

[JimK]

Originally Posted by mtshark

If you guys could point me towards some songs to listen to that would be great (around 5-15 would be fine). Thanks

"Three Views Of A Secret" & "Continuum" are a must for the "compositional"-side of JP.
Personally, I would look at tunes that feature the different facets of Jaco-

"Donna Lee"-
Jaco in Bebop mode.

"Barbary Coast"-
Funky Jaco

"Come On, Come Over"-
R&B Jaco

"(Used To Be A Cha-Cha"-
Latin Jaco

"The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines"-
Jaco playing a 12-bar Blues

"Punk Jazz"-
...begins with a 'free jam' between Jaco & Tony Williams. Settles into a composewd piece.

"Crisis"-
Experimetal/Out Jaco

"In France They Kiss On Main Street" or "Free Man In Paris"-
Jaco playing Pop

[eggfan]

For Jaco in a more traditional rhythm section context, you can't do better than to check out "Missouri Uncompromised" and "Round Trip/Broadway Blues" from Pat Metheny's "Bright Size Life" album. Shows Jaco swinging really hard, plus great interplay between Jaco, Pat, and drummer Bob Moses (with some of Jaco's trademarks, like double stops and harmonics). "Broadway Blues" has a pretty fierce Jaco solo as a bonus. Actually, the whole disc is worth checking out.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by mtshark

Today my jazz band rythem instructor assinged the section to do a short reprot on a jazz artist, and I wound up with Jaco Pastorius. Please dont kill me, but I am completely unfamilar with the legend and may need some help. I sadly dont have the time (and money) to go through dozens of songs to try to get a good view of his playing style. If you guys could point me towards some songs to listen to that would be great (around 5-15 would be fine). Thanks

You could go to the official website - but I would say that Jaco is most famous for the album "Heavy Weather" - this was a huge seller for a Jazz Album and started the band Weather Report on the road to "Rock Star" fame and tours!

The album starts with Jaco soloing on artificial harmonics followed by typical funky lines in Birdland - then you have typical singing fretless lines with mwah on "A Remark You Made" - fast and funky Latin playing in Palladium - finally there is a great Jaco composition in Havona -which has a fiendish 16th note tag and a great solo from Jaco !!

That sort of sums up everything about the best of his playing in one album! And I didn't even mention "Teen Town" - another Jaco composition and bass feature!




PS From Wiki :

"Featuring the jazz standard "Birdland", it is one of the best-sellers in the Columbia jazz catalog. Heavy Weather is considered a landmark album in the jazz-rock or fusion movement of the 1970s. Its opening track, "Birdland", was a significant commercial success, something not typical of instrumental music.
A striking feature of Birdland is Pastorius picking harmonics on his fretless bass, although recordings exist of live performance of the theme prior to Pastorius joining the band when it was purely a keyboard section."

[Mike Dimin]

"The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines" by Joni Mitchell also shows Jaco at his best as an arranger

Mike