Music is magic......Music is emotion #7 Basplaying Jaco Pastorius

I started my "Muscial career" playing the guitar. I still remember y first accoustical guitar. I bought a classical with nylon strings from the sister of a family friend. A nice guitar, nothing fancy...But hey, I had a guitar :).

I took some lessons at a local teacher who was also a famous (local) musician. His name was Bram Laan, unfortunatly I got the messages that he passed away some months ago, caused by the terrible disease cancer. I wasn't a great player although I managed myself playing along with some familiar songs :). In Zutphen (my hometown) you had a bar called "De Overkant" which means something like "The other side", every month there was a big jam session where all the local musicians came and jammed together. I've learned a lot at those sessions and it was great to see so many talented people.

As time goes by my wife told me that I would be fun for her to play the bass-guitar. She liked the slapping-sound of artists like Mark King (Level 42) and Marcus Miller, she wanted to do that to. So I told her that she must get herself a bass-guitar and start to take lessons. Then she backed out a little by saying, "But what if I don't like it, than we have bought it for nothing". I replied whith 'If you don't try it, you won't know'. So I made the decision for her and bought her a bass-guitar;). I arranged a few lessons from my veryg good friend Danny Samar (check him out if you would like, he is a very talented bassplayer and plays mostly in Germany at this moment with the band MonoPunk).

After some lessons my wife starting to doubt if she'd really liked playing the bass, it was much harder than she imagined. She thought that she instantly could slap like Mark King hahahaha.... So she quit the lessons and we indeed had a unemployed bass-guitar at our home.

After a half year or so my brother told me that his brother in law played in a band and they were in need of a bass-player. He asked me if I was interested. First I was a bit uncertain cause I never played bass in that way, only guitar. But I decided to give it a try. First I met the band and asked their intensions, they just wanted to make fun and music to play at local party's and fair's. I seems like fun to me and the members of the band where quiet relaxed so I decided to give it a try. I arranged some basic lessons with Danny to get me going and studied my ass of with the first set of songs. The songs where everything from metalica to local dutch songs and anything between. It was reallt fun.

As I got more and more familiar on the instrument and the lessons started to pay of, I got more interested in bass-players in general. Often when I had bass-practice at Danny's house we had a half an hour practice and we talked for another hour about music and musicians. One in particular was Jaco Pastorius, before I had lessons from Danny I never heard of him, but I soon found out that he was the founder of modern bassplaying. If you ask every single bassplayer at this moment, they are all influenced in some way by Jaco. Danny and I often listened to his music, his work at weather report, his performance with Joni Mitchell....

Even his instructional video tape was awesome. The story goes that they had to keep him sober for some days to even shoot the video.... a pitty for such a great musician,.

His way of playing the fretless bass is inimitable, the harmonics he plays are one of a kind. He has a great timing and a natural vibrato in his fingerposition on the bass.

I started to collect all albums on which he had played and was suprised by the diversity of his playing. For example the way he playes Sophisticated Lady together with Toots Thielemans breathtaking. The way he let’s his bass sing, he talks through his instrument… Only a few musicians can really pass that feeling accross.

It was january 2002, Danny (my bassteacher) told me there was going to be a Jaco Pastorius tribute in the Melkweg venue in Holland. This was something we had to be a part of so we went to the event. It was very special evening where both sons of Jaco (Felix and Julius) were present and Ingrid Pastorius (Jaco’s ex wife) had a live connection to the venue. There were a lot of musicians like Victor Bailey (RIP), Michel Hatzigeorgiou. I was impressed by the movement of people by Jaco. On very special moment was when 50 bassplayers played ‘Portrait of tracey’simultanously. It was a night I would never forget. The Pastorius brothers gave a little jam together, Julius isn’t very busy anymore whitin the music, but Felix is following his father and is a great bassplayer himself… Inheret the gift of his father.

In the next clip you see a compilation of the evening.. something to cherrish. All Jaco lovin people paying a tribute to him as a person and as a musician.

some pictures of that special evening:

After the tribute I got in touch with Jaco’s daughter Mary. She posted a little article about the tibute concert on her webpage. I sended her a message that it was an evening to remember and that her father was honourd for his tribute to music.

Mary asked me if I could send some photo’s for her to view and i fit was all right if she posted them on the official jacopastorius.net website, which she runned. I was honoured and thrilled, so ofcourse she could use them.

We started a conversation by mail and she was honest and open about a lot of things. Jaco suffered of manic depression, and she told me that she inherited this from him. She had quiet a struggle wit hit. She also got out of the attention around Jaco and lived her life together with her husband. They played in a band together. Mary still makes music, she has her own album and as far as I know for now she is doing good.

Jaco tragically died after been beaten, to young and for a unnecessary reason.
(http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/23/obituaries/jaco-pastorius-jazz-bassist-dies-of-injuries-in-a-beating.html)

Jaco is almost a religion for some, for me he is Jaco. A great bassplayer who left this world to soon but leaving the world with a great piece of his legacy…