Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 10:58 pm Post subject: Jaco has been gone for twenty years now... |
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All Things Considered, September 21, 2007 � Twenty years ago Friday, Jaco Pastorius died in a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., hospital as a result of injuries sustained during a fight in a local nightclub. He was 35.
Spun as a tragedy, his story is a familiar trope in the history of American music: A young prodigy falls victim to substance abuse far too early, his mercurial rise immortalized in canon and mythology. But another, more prescient fact deserves greater emphasis: Jaco Pastorius was a great musician.
Revolutionary, even: He pioneered a new standard of rapid-fire virtuosity on his instrument, the electric bass, and in the process was a prime mover in bridging jazz and the pop music of his day. Pastorius collaborated extensively with a variety of iconic artists spanning many genres, including Pat Metheny, Joni Mitchell, Herbie Hancock, fusion ensemble Weather Report and the group Blood, Sweat and Tears.
Pastorius was noted for performing on the fretless bass guitar, a homegrown innovation.
"I had an upright � it took me years and years to get enough bread to get it," he once said. "I'm from Florida, so one morning I woke up, go in the corner and the bass is in a hundred pieces, cause the humidity is so bad, I mean, the upright just blew up. I said forget it, man, I can't afford this any more. So I went out, got a knife and took all the frets out of my Fender. That was it."
In addition to his hyperkinetic bass work, he brought a complex sensibility for composition and arranging to his own projects. His 1976 self-titled debut LP is hailed as a tour-de-force, and he would later go on to command a big band of top-flight jazz musicians, a group called Word of Mouth.
All Things Considered spoke with several of his primary collaborators � bassist Marcus Miller, pianist Herbie Hancock and guitarist Pat Metheny � to put together this retrospective. |
All Things Considered |
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Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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| Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 11:56 pm Post subject: |
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Thank you for that, Gopher. I followed your link and from it I found a youtube link. Really enjoyed it, wicked stuff. I will look out for his name in future.
So sad that he died so young. Didn't even get to live as long as Mozart, though he got in a few more years than Hendrix I suppose. |
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