The night I shook Jaco's hand...

The night I shook Jaco's hand is not as distinct a memory as it should be. Of course, at the time the Herb Superb played a much larger role in my life than it does now.
Our Daughter and Son In Law and Grand daughter were home from Australia for Thanksgiving! That led, naturally enough, to looking through old photo albums...and that is where I found these three old snapshots. They had lay hidden...almost utterly forgotten...in one of those old albums for better than the last 30 years. I thought it important that I share them with you.
If you look at the other pictures on adjacent pages, you'll find our children ages 3, and 2. That would put us in 1982 or '83. Of course, that's no guarantee that these pictures of Jaco are from those years...given my organizational skills!
I'm betting that there is a Jaco apostle out there who can clear up some of the mysteries (in my own head) about them.
I remember it being a small room...only 60 or 80 people...up a long, narrow flight of stairs. My wife and I had ridden train and bus into Manhattan from my Aunt's home in The Bronx. I believe I remember the venue being in the area of The Bowery. I remember Jaco having a limousine double-parked at the foot of the stairs the whole night. It being a three-set night, he jumped down off the low stage twice and beat a path down the stairs to the back seat of the limo and emerged several minutes later LIT UP...EYES ABLAZE...'coked to the gills' was my assumption at the time; and it remains so.
As he climbed the stairs, two by two, before the 3rd set I emerged from the men's' room directly across the room from the top of the stairs. He started walking toward the men's' room, our eyes met and he stopped as I offered him my hand and a kind word about the set and the band. I told him it was an honor to shake his hand and he replied with something innocuous, but warm enough to have that moment stick in my mind for better than 3 decades. I have big, ol, 'bass player' hands, but his hand engulfed mine. He had a child-like smile on his face as the moment evaporated, and he went back to work and I probably lit up a joint.
I am betting that someone out here will recognize the drummer in picture #3...or maybe the shirt he's wearing...or maybe his haircut?!

These pictures have been hidden in the bottom of a deep drawer for better than 30 years! Now they belong to you.

 

Thanks, I'll look him up. TKK

 

I do believe that Ricky Sebastian is that man! And what an incredible workout...and I feel humbled when I see musicians playing at that level, and how they make it look...not 'easy'...but 'all in a day's work'.
Thanks for sharing!