I'm siding with the "he's probably old, embittered, and was pretty drunk at the time of the posting" crowd.
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You guys need to know where you came from
- Thread starter pmgleenis
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Ric5
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- Jan 29, 2008
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- I like 5, 8, 10, and 12 string basses
Jaco is the Hendrix of bass???
ya right ...
how many non-jazz-musicians have ever heard of Jaco? Everybody has heard of Hendrix. Radio stations still play his music. But to hear Jaco you have to find an obscure jazz station.
ya right ...
how many non-jazz-musicians have ever heard of Jaco? Everybody has heard of Hendrix. Radio stations still play his music. But to hear Jaco you have to find an obscure jazz station.
Re: the Hendrix Jaco comparison, I don't think it has been made because of the general public's recognition of either -- clearly, non-musicians for the most part don't know Jaco. However, with respect to the way he changed the way bass players (and other musicians) thought about and tried to play bass, Jaco was indeed revolutionary and influential in a similar fashion to Hendrix.
Lets just be honest here. If you don't play jazz you don't understand what a big influence Jaco was to that scene. So if don't understand jazz its like knowing the end of the joke and not the beginning. I personally have been influenced greatly by Jaco but if your just a rocker then he may mean nothing to you. This will probably piss someone off but its true. I could care less about John Entwistle and Geezer Butler . To me it sounds like there real talent is in distortion. Either way its apples and oranges.
That doesn't mean you have to be a jazz musician to know who he is.
I like Jaco. Own quite a bit of his stuff. But listening to it now, 20 to 30 years after its release, the magic simply isn't there anymore, imho. In the context of that time period, I can see how Jaco was so important. But now? So many people have been inflluenced by Jaco in the intervening years; and devleoped his ideas and techniques to areas he himself never reached, that the original just seems a bit dull and uninteresting.
Jaco was good for making jazz "cool," and for showing people, especially on the jazz scene (we all know there's no snobbery in jazz, right?
) that the electric bass was a serious instrument, not just dumbed-down upright bass; and that the bass could take the lead in a song, both rhythmically and melodically, and not just sit in the background.
Technically, Entwistle died of a combination of cocaine use, being an old, fat smoker, and have been laid the previous night. Not a bad way to go IMHO.
I love a post like this because it brings up the reality that while we can bicker back and forth on our favorite bass players - none of whom know who we are and could care less anyway - the fact is, it doesn't really matter.
This is the internet, afterall.
Yeah right!
Hendrix's influence can be heard in most if not all rock guitarist still to this day and he died 9/27/70, Can't say the same for Jaco! When Hendrix died the music world mourned the loss, When Jaco died it was like no one noticed! They made a movie about Hendrix soon after his death, Jaco has been dead 20 years but has anyone even thought about making a movie about him being he was so great and all? And yes they BOTH were druggies so that can't be the reason for the snub on Jaco.
Yeah right!
I don't hear Hendrix too much in jazz, classical, country, or traditional blues. He influenced rock guitarists, and he was a pop culture figure. They also made a movie about Rick Springfield, btw...
That doesn't mean you have to be a jazz musician to know who he is.
I like Jaco. Own quite a bit of his stuff. But listening to it now, 20 to 30 years after its release, the magic simply isn't there anymore, imho. In the context of that time period, I can see how Jaco was so important. But now? So many people have been inflluenced by Jaco in the intervening years; and devleoped his ideas and techniques to areas he himself never reached, that the original just seems a bit dull and uninteresting.
Jaco was good for making jazz "cool," and for showing people, especially on the jazz scene (we all know there's no snobbery in jazz, right?
I agree with what you wrote, but in retrospect, I think we attribute a lot of the innovation factor to Jaco because he was such a mythic figure, a monster and a short-lived one at that. Jaco did what Jaco did. He didn't revolutionize anything solely by himself: I don't think any musician can lay claim to that.
When Jaco released his solo album and later joined Weather Report, electeric bass sure wasn't in a dark age, even in the jazz circles. I have this here record, not very well known, maybe you have it too, it's called "Head Hunters" and it's by some no-name Herbie Hancock
It predates Jaco by a good three years if memory serves and it's all electric. Chick was also electric at this time. Sure it wasn't straight bepop, but the name of the game was funk/latin/rock inspired jazz. Weather Report isn't well-known for playing Coltrane either. There will always be the jazz standards crowd that don't really take a liking to a rendition of Giant Steps on electric bass (I tend to somewhat agree), but even in those times, I doubt they formed the majority of the jazz scene. And even if they did, they did not compose the maority of the front-runners, the avant-guarde, and they still exist today. What Jaco brought was a sensibility to electric bass that wasn't there or was buried in the "one chord vamp", groove oriented bass playing. That, plus a bunchload of great riffs and moving ideas that went beyond the role of the bass player (but who in the big leagues doesn't already do that to some extent?).
But listening to people, you get the idea that before Jaco, everybody still played quarter notes walks everywhere (and that fretless didn't exist), wich is clearly not true. Electric bass was already hip, he just made it very much hipper that the old guard couldn't just brush it aside and call it merely "experimentation" or a "fad". There's the reason he's the only electric guy in the jazz hall of fame
Interestingly, would the OP say to John Paul Jones, Jack Bruce or indeed Paul McCartney they're not proper musicians because of their lack of Jaco influence in their playing, even though these players have shaped and forged popular music for the past 50 years! Jaco is one small part of bass playing history, while important, his influence is only directly proportional to those that care to listen and take notice. There are a myriad of other players out there that have influenced the bass playing community more than Jaco ever could. As much as I love Jaco's playing, that's the simple truth.
Not for nothing but the OP stated if you didn't do what ever with Jaco's music you would never work as a musician! I don't care what anyone plays it's up to the individual, and as far as i'm concerned those same "rockers" you talk about have been getting paid the last 40 years!!! A whole lot of jazz musicians are starving!!!
This.
Stanley Clarke was just as "revolutionary" to bass playing as Jaco, but you don't see a big debate over him the way that you do with Jaco.
Why?
Stanley ain't dead!
- Feb 24, 2004
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I see your point, and think it's a valid one. Jaco means less in the rock and pop world, while his influence on the jazz of the time was revolutionary. His enormous funk/groove chops and his complete harmonic command of the fretless electric bass were an unprecedented combination. Many of his compositions are now jazz standards, but they may not mean that much to rock/metal players who don't deal in complicated chordings.
I think all who posted would agree that the thread title is presumptuous and aggressive. Music is never about one person. But there will be innovators, and Jaco and Jimi were surely two of them.
- Feb 24, 2004
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I don't hear any musical expertise in Fieldy's playing either but he's a millionaire!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ask him if he listens to Jaco!
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