LATELY I’ve been listening a lot to electric bassist/singer extraordinaire Tal Wilkenfeld. In fact, I even wrote a column about her music and gift with the electric bass.
Moi is also into another bass player/singer, Esperanza Spalding, and will probably feature her music in another column.
These two artists have a lot in common. Both are female, young and good-looking. They play an instrument not traditionally associated with their gender (electric bass). And they are not only good – in fact, better – than most and are extremely innovative in their style of playing.
They have jazz as the common musical genre although Tal Wilkenfeld is leaning or more into progressive rock and blues while Esperanza Spalding is into straight ahead jazz and plays more often the acoustic or upright bass.
It would be silly to compare both artists. There is no comparison.
Both ladies are now the “face” of a new generation of extremely talented female musicians/singers who are into the bass guitar, both electric and acoustic.
But before them there was this innovative and extremely talented musician who brought the electric bass from the background into the forefront.
From that free online encyclopedia a.k.a. the internet:
John Francis Anthony “Jaco” Pastorius III was an American jazz bassist who was a member of Weather Report from 1976 to 1981. He worked with Pat Metheny and Joni Mitchell, and recorded albums as a solo artist and band leader. His bass playing employed funk, lyrical solos, bass chords, and innovative harmonics.
As of 2017, he is the only electric bassist of seven bassists inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame, and has been lauded as one of the best electric bassists of all time.
Pastorius suffered from drug addiction and mental health problems throughout his professional life and despite his widespread acclaim he had problems (over the latter part of his life) holding down jobs due to his unreliability. In frequent financial trouble, he was often homeless throughout the mid 1980s. In 1987, he got into a fight outside of a music club in South Florida and died as result of injuries sustained in the fight.
But even after his death, his work continued to influence musicians, being elected to the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1988.
For sure there were famous musicians who also played the electric bass i.e. Paul McCartney and Sting, but were mostly in the background. It was Jaco Pastorius who elevated the electric bass up front at par with the lead guitar. He was the “Jimi Hendrix” of the electric bass during his time.
Jaco Pastorius cut his teeth and made his name when he joined Weather Report and for the uninitiated:
Weather Report was an American jazz fusion band of the 1970s and early 1980s. The band was initially co-led by the Austrian-born keyboard player Joe Zawinul, the American saxophonist Wayne Shorter and Czech bassist Miroslav Vitouš. Other prominent members at various points in the band’s lifespan included bassists Alphonso Johnson, Jaco Pastorius and Victor Bailey; and drummers/percussionists Peter Erskine, Alex Acuña, Airto Moreira, and Chester Thompson. Throughout most of its existence, the band was a quintet of keyboards, saxophone, bass, drums and percussion.
The band began as an avant-garde jazz group; Zawinul increasingly took control and steered the band towards a more funk and R&B-oriented jazz sound incorporating elements of world music and the latest developments in synthesizer technology. During the mid-1970s Weather Report remained one of the defining acts within the jazz form, winning the DownBeat best album award five times in a row.
Alongside Miles Davis’ electric bands, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and the Headhunters, Weather Report is considered to be one of the pre-eminent early jazz fusion bands.
A song from that band’s repertoire that created an impression on Moi, simple melodies that stuck in your head, was Weather Report’s heartfelt valentine, A Remark You Made.
“This song stretches you emotionally. It’s both devastatingly sad while at the same time pulls you out of your boots,” said exploratory keyboardist Thollem McDonas. “About five minutes into the song there is suddenly all this activity in this otherwise languid piece. Zawinul’s arpeggios are wonderful without being disturbing or distracting. People might not notice it because it fits so well.”
From a Jan. 8, 2020 article on www.guitarworld.com/:
It’s arguable that the greatest bass player who has ever lived was the late Jaco Pastorius, whose breathtaking technique, coupled with searing innovation, inexhaustible creativity and a charismatic personality, has made him a bass legend like none other before or since.
And we end this piece on Jaco Pastorius with these lines still from the article:
The greatest bass player who ever lived? You decide. But as he expressed it himself, “I have no competition, because I’m not competing” – the epitaph of a wise man./PN
