Jaco Pics

Tabs

My Collection

:: jaco compositions ::

Ballon Son
Barbary Coast
Birth of Island
Blowfish Blues
City of Angels
Come On, Come Over
Continuum
Crisis
Dania
Domingo
Forgotton Love
Good Morning Anya
Havona
Hone
John And Mary
Kuru/Speak Like A Child
Las Olas....Flora Purim
Onkole Y Trompa
Opus Pocus
Portrait of Tracy
Punk Jazz
Reza
River People
Soul Intro
Teen Town
Teresa
Three Views of A Secret
Three Woman
Twins
(Used To Be A ) Cha-Cha
Word Of Mouth
Amelia
City of Angels 

:: chronology of Jaco Pastorius ::

December 1, 1951: John Francis III born in Norristown, PA, to Jack and Stephanie Pastorius.

September 1959: Family moves to Fort Lauderdale, FL.

September 1963: Begins playing drums with the Sonics, a local Combo.

Summer 1966: Joins Las Olas Brass as a drummer.

Summer 1967: Switches to bass guitar.

January 1972: Joins Wayne Cochran & the C. C. Riders

Spring 1973: Begins teaching part-time at the University of Miami. Students include Mark Egan, Frank Gravas, and Hiram Bullock.

Summer 1974: Records a blues album, Party Down, with Little Beaver, and a jazz album with pianist Paul Bley, guitarist Pat Metheny and drummer Bruce Ditimas.

1975: Records Jaco Pastorius, plays Pat Metheny's Bright Size Life and two cuts of Weather Report's Black Market.

1976: Joins Weather Report, plays and co-produces on Heavy Weather. Also appears on Joni Mitchell's Hejira.

1980: Records Word of Mouth in Fort Lauderdale.

1982: Leaves Weather Report and tours with his Word of Mouth big band.

1983: Warner Bros. releases Invitation, a selection of live tracks from '82 concerts in Japan. Tours with a sextet that includes guitarist Mike Stern.

1984 :Forms trio with guitarist Hiram Bullock and drummer Kenwwod Dennard.

September 1985: Arrested in Philadelphia for trying to break into his father's house. Voluntarily enters rehabilitation center.

March 1986: Tours with guitarist Bireli Lagrene. Live album, Stuttgart Aria, is released on a German label, Jazzpoint.

July 1986: Commited to psychiatric ward at New York's Bellevue Hospital, where he is diagnosed as manic depressive and placed on medication.

October 1986: Leaves Bellevue and flies to San Francisco, where he stays with drummer Brian Melvin and records several tracks.

December 1986: Returns to Florida. Begins an excercise program and plays with guitarist Randy Bernsen.

February 1987: Starts to self-destruct, drinking heavily and sleeping in parks. Crashes gigs and demands to sit in.

Summer 1987: Bizarre behavior continues. Arrested for various charges, including drunk and disorderly, driving without a license, and shoplifting. After hearing of the deaths of two childhood friends, goes into deep depression and stops taking his medication.

September 11, 1987: Jumps onstage during a Santana concert in Fort Lauderdale and is ushered off by stagehands that don't recognize him.

September 12, 1987: Early in the morning, he tries to crash an after-hours club and is beaten senseless. Rushed to Broward County Medical Center, where he lies in a coma.

September 21, 1987: Pronounced dead at 10:00pm.

Jaco Pastorius was a meteor who blazed onto the scene in the 1970s, only to flame out tragically in the 1980s. With a brilliantly fleet technique and fertile melodic imagination, Pastorius made his fretless electric bass leap out from the depths of the rhythm section into the front line with fluid machine-gun-like passages that demanded attention. He also sported a strutting, dancing, flamboyant performing style and posed a further triple-threat as a talented composer, arranger and producer. He and Stanley Clarke were the towering influences on their instrument in the 1970s. 
Though born in Pennsylvania, Pastorius grew up in Fort Lauderdale, where he played with visiting R&B and pop acts while still a teenager and built a reputation as a local legend. Everything started to come together for him quickly once he started playing with another rookie fusionmeister, Pat Metheny, around 1974. By 1976, he had been invited to join Weather Report, where he remained until 1981, gradually becoming a third lead voice along with Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter. Outside Weather Report, he found himself in constant demand as a sessionman and producer, playing on Joni Mitchell, Blood Sweat and Tears, Paul Bley, Bireli Lagrene and Ira Sullivan albums - and his first eponymous solo album for Epic in 1976 was hailed as a tour de force. From 1980 to 1984, he toured and recorded with his own band, the innovative Word Of Mouth that fluctuated in size from a large combo to a big band. 

Alas, Pastorius became overwhelmed by mental problems, exacerbated by drugs and alcohol, in the mid-`80s, leading to several embarrassing public incidents (one was a violent crackup onstage at Hollywood Bowl in mid-set at the 1984 Playboy Jazz Festival). Such episodes made him a pariah in the music business and toward the end of his life, he had become a street person, reportedly sighted in drug-infested inner-city hangouts. He died in 1987 from a physical beating sustained while trying to break into the Midnight Club in Fort Lauderdale. Though almost totally forgotten at the time of his death, Pastorius was immediately canonized afterwards (Miles Davis even wrote a tune "Mr. Pastorius" in his honor) - too late for him to have received therapy or help.