Jaco clip causing some controversy

[Norwegian Bass]

I took it to mean the playing was technically expert, but did not serve the song. And I agreed.

Yeah, but you high-lighted the parts you agreed with, so no worries there. I'm talking about the original statement.

Things can be of high technical skill and not be brilliant, as things can be simple and still be brilliant; in art. That's my point: the original poster of the statement says one thing in the first half of the sentence and the complete opposite in the second. Is not good logic to me, is all.

 

[esa372]

Frankly he's doing nothing more than most upright players would do and is in fact a little more conservative than on the Mingus record.
I surrender. I think the current generation wants to don Hipster hats and thump roots on flatwound Fender Mustang basses whilst carefully posing and checking their strategic beard stubble.
Welcome to 1962!

+1

The clip in the OP's link doesn't seem to be the official S&L one, which is a little longer and mixed a little differently to my ear:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvBjj32pIyM

I believe that the clip in the OP's link is from the old VHS - this one is from the album, and sounds much better.

Joni knew what she was getting and dug it...

Absolutely:

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.

 

[Boom762]

I'm not a fan of Jaco P but I don't think he was out of place in this video. Hes just doing a jazzy walk line. Hes not playing a different song all together or anything. If I were to be upset by anyones performance it would be the singers..... uggh.

 

[fraublugher]

...:/

 

[Duckwater]

I think the current generation wants to don Hipster hats and thump roots on flatwound Fender Mustang basses whilst carefully posing and checking their strategic beard stubble.

HA, I sure hope not!

 

[Norwegian Bass]

Absolutely:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joni Mitchell
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.

Well, there it is! I agree with Joni.

 

[Herrick]

Hmm....well that Mitchell quote esa372 posted says it all.

 

[matthewbrown]

It might have been good to put Michael Brecker a bit more in front of the mix or turn Jaco a tad down. But I think this is excellent comping on Jaco's part.

Agreed -- the mix is a lot of the reason that the bass sounds over the top. Jaco is doing things here that he was KNOWN for; it's one of the reasons he was hired for the gig, I've read. If Joni had wanted players that would step BACK and leave more space, she would have hired them. I think the open harmonics he uses disrupt the flow of the groove at times. That's about the only criticism I'd make of his playing here, given the context.

 

[Lee Moses]

To me Jaco plays a different language to Brecker.
Brecker is a Jazz player whereas Jaco is very much rooted in those day's RnB. That comes over clearly here.
What the bass does is not to my taste in this clip and doesn't really fit with how I hear the music behind all that bass playing. I also think the bass is MUCH too loud and to my ear...overplays at times.
He plays well but to me Jaco is not playing the music the rest of the band is.
Let's ask Joni Mitchell.

That last sentence is the "rightest" of your post, and maybe that anyone has mentioned.

I was trying to find a certain sound on the bottom end, going against the vogue at the time. It's very difficult to buck a vogue. Bass players were playing with dead strings; you couldn't get them to change to get a round, full-bodied tone. I liked that old analog, jukebox, Fifties sound-up-right bass, boomier. In the Sixties and early Seventies you had this dead, distant bass sound. I didn't care for it. And the other thing was, I had started to think, "Why couldn't the bass leave the bottom sometimes and go up and play in the midrange and then return?" Why did it have to always play the root? On "The Jungle Line" I had played some kind of keyboard bass line, and when it came around to Max Bennett having to play it, he just hated it. Because sometimes it didn't root the chord, it went up into the middle. To him that was flat-out wrong. To some people it was eccentric. So when Jaco came in, John Guerin said to me, "God, you must love this guy; he almost never plays the root!"

There was a time when Jaco and I first worked together when there was nobody I'd rather hang with than him. There was an appreciation, a joie de vivre, a spontaneity. A lot of people couldn't take him. Maybe that's my peculiarity, but then, I also have a fondness for derelicts.

He had this wide, fat swath of a sound. There weren't a lot of gizmos you could put your instrument through then, and the night I got my Roland Jazz Chorus amp, it was sort of a prototype. Jaco and Bobbye Hall and I were playing a benefit up in San Francisco. I tried playing through this thing and Jaco flipped for it. So he stole it off me! He said, "Oh yeah, I'm playing through that tonight!" I said, "What are you talking about? This is my new amp!" He pointed to his rental amp and said, "I'm not playing through that piece of ****." So he took mine! We went out onstage that night and Jaco got this huge wonderful busy sound and I played through this peanut. He was formidable! You can hear it in the mixes back then. He was very dominating. But I put up with it; I even got a kick out of it. Because I was so thrilled about the way he played. It was exactly what I was waiting for.

He was an innovator. First of all, he was changing the bottom end of the time, and he knew it. With that went a certain amount of confidence, which at its worst was offensive to some people. It didn't offend me....

I know he stretched me. I stretched him some too, inadvertently, on things like "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter."

EDIT: I see that esa372 posted a very similar quote at the same time I was digging this one up. If he was giving the BL the kind of playing she wanted, I don't know why anyone else would get so upset with him over it.

 

[Carl Hillman]

"Jaco clip causing some controversy"

Nice to see that the shock of the new hasn't worn off after 30+ years.

Jaco's playing here is indeed outrageous...so was "The Rite of Spring".

 

[MrDOS]

Wow - "not serve the song"? It makes the song for me!

I'm so glad to have seen him with Joni during this tour - I'll never forget it, and I suspect I'll never stop getting emotional (in a GOOD way!) every time I hear his tone during this period.

 

[Norwegian Bass]

Hmm....well that Mitchell quote esa372 posted says it all.

Agreed! And it serves as a fine example to those who don't get it, the trolls and loosers on youtube, and tb to be fair, that spout off their ignorance, and try to make it valid or right by dressing it up in fancy language. They are still idiots; musically speaking of course

 

[peterpalmieri]

I happened to bump into this Jaco clip of Joni Mithell era which have stirred conversation about the way Jaco is playing behind soloists.

Some other folks referenced the Joni Mitchell interview.

The intent was never for Jaco to play "behind the solist" in fact at that time that's exactly what she was trying to get away from.

It's ground breaking in my opinion, some don't get it, don't want to get it or don't like it.

Criticism without real analysis is just fluff in my opinion.

 

[Milk]

To Salieri, Mozart was obnoxious.

while I love Amadeus (one of my favorite film) in reality Salieri was a fan of mozart. Though Mozart believed that in his early years in Vienna Salieri tried to prevent him from getting a foothold, so to speak but that might have been more born out of jealousy than fact because the emperor really valued Salieri above everyone else. Salieri a handful of times got jobs that Mozart was trying for, mainly teaching jobs, and there is possible evidence that among these was in fact a woman involved early on and that might have cause some animosity between the two. But professionally, later on evidence shows they esteemed each other and they even worked together. Also, Salieri is not exactly a hack composer like the film and play would like to make it appear. He's a footnote compared to Mozart, but then again who isn't? (Well, Beethoven, bach, chopin, schubert, etc...but for all these guys there's still hundreds of lesser knowns who were not by any means untalented)

I actually DO think the emperor has a point in Amadeus when he says there are "too many notes". Classical could get terribly wanky. But then again i'm the kind of person who values a repeating motif, recognizable pattern or "hook" over most things else. Notice most popular classical pieces have that....

As for the vid, to me it sounded like any other jazz, self indulgent and meant only for musicians who value the number of notes you can cram into a song. I think it's a **** bassline. But im not the targeted listener.... I would say it definitely does not serve the song. It distracts from it. And I like basslines that drive songs. This isn't it.

 

[Roy Vogt]

"Jaco clip causing some controversy"

Nice to see that the shock of the new hasn't worn off after 30+ years.

Jaco's playing here is indeed outrageous...so was "The Rite of Spring".

I guess that's what frustrated me. It's been 30+ years and people should be used to the bass being played any which way. What's shocking?
Interestingly, no one is logging on that clip and saying, "What's Mike Brecker doing playing outside the change and playing all those obnoxious 4ths? Now, Lester Young wouldn't do that and of course Lester Young is real Jazz Sax!"
FWIW, I do have a Hipster hat, a flatwound equipped 1973 Mustang and I do play lots of roots when required. There's just been a whole lot of bass played in all sorts of ways since even 1980 so why be afraid of any of it?
This is not that different than what Jaco is doing in that clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ftvARLrFK
or this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xJlV0Agi1w
It's just that it's played by Jaco on the Electric Bass, which of course should never be used for Real Jazz! Someone please hire a Medium and break the news to Monk Montgomery as well as Jaco....

 

[lfmn16]

I took it to mean the playing was technically expert, but did not serve the song. And I agreed.

Joni would disagree, but what does she know?

Originally Posted by Joni Mitchell
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.

 

[DougD]

If you hire Jaco, you get Jaco, same with Entwistle, Sheehan, Palladino, Wooten etc... You expect to hear those guys in the way you expect them to play, anything else would defeat the purpose of hiring them.

That is why they don't get the call as much as they would like. That was particularity true for Jaco before he passed. He had gotten the reputation of overshadowing the person he was supposed to be backing up. That doesn't play well with egos that big, and reputations on the line. Some liked it (Joni) but most didn't want to compete with the help. Has anyone seen his instructional video where he is begging for a gig?

 

[Roy Vogt]

That is why they don't get the call as much as they would like. That was particularity true for Jaco before he passed. He had gotten the reputation of overshadowing the person he was supposed to be backing up. That doesn't play well with egos that big, and reputations on the line. Some liked it (Joni) but most didn't want to compete with the help. Has anyone seen his instructional video where he is begging for a gig?

Actually, he was pretty much a train wreck when that video was shot due to bipolar disorder and drug abuse. They had rented him a room at the Gramercy to get his act together for about a week. Poor man was a for real Jazz Tragedy as much as Charlie Parker was, and just as brilliant in my book.
After he left Weather Report (mostly for very erratic behavior) he was just leading his own bands before his life fell apart. I would recommend Bill Milkowski's book to anyone who wants to understand more about him. Although not without controversy, I can attest to some of this since I was around him from time to time at that point.

 

[Boom762]

That is why they don't get the call as much as they would like. That was particularity true for Jaco before he passed. He had gotten the reputation of overshadowing the person he was supposed to be backing up. That doesn't play well with egos that big, and reputations on the line. Some liked it (Joni) but most didn't want to compete with the help. Has anyone seen his instructional video where he is begging for a gig?

I just watched a good bit of it on youtube. I guess he was out of work or darn near homeless because the black dude even made a comment about "from playing like that to being....where you are now"

 

[Lee Moses]

As for the vid, to me it sounded like any other jazz, self indulgent and meant only for musicians who value the number of notes you can cram into a song. I think it's a **** bassline. But im not the targeted listener.... I would say it definitely does not serve the song. It distracts from it. And I like basslines that drive songs. This isn't it.

Maybe then you'd be better served not to comment on genres in which you have no understanding?