Jaco Pastorius by Jaco Pastorius

Here's one of my favourite albums - I don't want to say of all time, because that feels a bit trite, but I've certainly loved this album since I first heard it, nearly 20 years ago - and nearly 20 years after it was released.

Jaco Pastorius' eponymous debut arrived in 1976. Bobby Colomby, the drummer for Blood, Sweat & Tears produced the album. That was the reason I picked it up. Colomby is one of my favourite players. Also, by this time (the mid-90s) I'd heard a lot about Pastorius too - I'd been reading guitar magazines long enough by that point to have heard the name; to be aware of his contributions to Joni Mitchell records and the band Weather Report.

I bought Jaco Pastorius (the album) for $2. That, in actual fact, is the reason I picked it up. A bargain that I had been searching for; a bonus that the album I wanted to hear/needed to have was just $2. I still have that two-dollar LP. Another bonus was that I recognised Colomby's name in connection with this album. The cover is falling apart, its corners blunted, softened. The old-cardboard smell is heavily pronounced. The record has no inner sleeve, it pops and cracks and whistles in places. But it plays. Oh man, it plays!

Every time I play it now I remember that first listen. Hearing Donna Lee - a Charlie Parker tune, but here was the bass as lead instrument, just bass and conga. It feels as though the bass and conga are ice-skating, a duet-dance. The correct sort of opener for a lead bassist's solo album...you know there is bass - and more bass to come. But you have no idea what could possibly be next.

And then wham - it's into Come On, Come Over. I play this song all the time - if I am playing a DJ-set then this tune is in there, usually. It's a floor-filler, it's killer. That bass-line stepping out proudly to lead the groove. And the reunited Sam & Dave nail the vocals. It's almost as if the song is part send-up and part celebration - it's almost as if the album follows that pattern (if indeed there's any pattern).

So many ideas, his head bursting with colourful musical thoughts...

An old bop tune reimagined as a conga/bass flirt and then funk, soul and disco taking the floor all at the once for the second track. Where to next? Well it's on to spacey jazz fusion with Continuum - somehow Jaco was predicting his own playing future, knowing where he would go - and though this piece might not be everyone's cup of tea it's crucial as part of the album. So many disparate pieces, but they're all part of the puzzle. They all make sense when you listen to them in sequence, follow the album. Follow the flow.

Kuru/Speak Like a Child had me thinking of when I discovered Jeff Beck's Blow by Blow - a similar album, I guess. Similar era, similar explosion of ideas, virtuosos applying themselves to funk-filled fusion - and it's my reminder now to mention that one reason to own this album is because Herbie Hancock's handprint is all over it. Again, the moan of Jaco's bass is one element - here we have his nods to fall back on after Hancock's trills make your head spin.

Portrait of Tracy (along with the version of Donna Lee) is the most influential piece here for bass players. A standard now, a warm-up exercise or graduation-cap - but I imagine that this piece was out on its own at the time. It was still a head-spin for me, hearing the album 20 years after it was released. It was a whole new sound to me. You hear Jaco's unique understanding of time - how it works, how it breathes, how space can be created and lend meaning to mood and mood to meaning. How leaning on emotion makes the right motion for a tune - this piece is left to hang, gorgeously so. It's one half of a dialogue. It's not a bass monologue. It's a question left to dangle; the fragility of his character shows a softening of the album, a reprieve from the funk-blasts and proud bass strut. There has been cockiness. Now we hear sadness.

And then Opus Pocus surprises with steel drums. Joining Hancock as one of the album's shining stars is Wayne Shorter on soprano sax. And Lenny White too, on drums. Jaco is picking and scratching beneath the steel drums and Lenny White's slinky groove. All the while I'm marvelling at the back cover, taking in all the names, working out where I know them from - from work with Miles Davis and Chick Corea, from legends of jazz. These players themselves are living legends by the time I'm hearing them. Jaco of course is already gone.

Where Opus Pocus showed interesting new colour, Okonkole Y Trompa shows Pastorius the arranger. It's bass, percussion and French horn. It feels like soundtrack music. To a movie I want to see.

You might laugh and think "jazz flute" - thanks to Anchorman - but (Used To Be A) Cha Cha gives Hubert Laws a forum, he sets up the theme for Pastorius to solo over, Hancock, White and the album's percussionist (the superb Don Alias) keep the groove turning, a subverted Latin-jazz, Laws offering water-colour splashes of sound in the spaces not treated by the well-oiled rhythm section.

Forgotten Love showcases Jaco Pastorius the composer - a string-section written by Jaco, working only with Hancock's piano. If Jaco had lived he could have made beautiful film music.

Each piece of music on this album is different from the tune preceding - it's as if each track shatters expectations and keeps you guessing for what might come.

I've never tired of rediscovering this album. Each time I play it - and it's one of my most listened-to albums - I almost feel as if I'm hearing it for the first time (again). There's familiarity but I'm still pleasantly surprised by the journey.

When I first heard this album I knew about Herbie Hancock, Lenny White and Wayne Shorter; had heard many of the great things they'd done with music, together and alone. But it was my first time actually hearing Jaco. I knew what he had gone on to do - I knew that he had made his mark working with Pat Metheny (and that they would go on to reconnect as part of Joni Mitchell's band). But his playing here is the revelation to me. Still. Not just his bass-playing, his musical thoughts. The ideas. So many brilliant ideas.

His work with Joni is staggering - in the context of pop music, of serving a song while popping up and prodding forward - just check out Talk to Me from Mitchell's album, Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. It's Pastorius reworking his version of Donna Lee and his Portrait of Tracy ideas to fit in around Mitchell's song. He is now the conga part in her song, as Alias was on Jaco's album.

And, well, I've told you already about my love for the Hejira album - and Jaco played a huge part (and some huge parts) on that record.

He would go on to work with Weather Report, with other groups, appearing on albums as a sideman and releasing other records as the leader - but that would all end, abruptly, in 1987. He was 35.

Every time I hear this album - I'm 35 now, I was 18 when I first heard it - I feel as though I'm somehow hearing everything he would go on to do, I'm hearing so much of the history that he had absorbed and then subverted. I'm hearing one of the greatest albums I ever discovered for myself, nobody else pointed me to this album. I made my own discovery. And I get to hear it almost as if for the first time every time.

It's also one of the great springboard albums in my collection. I would go on to hear Don Alias playing with Jaco and Metheny as part of Mitchell's band. I would go on to buy albums by so many of the players that feature on this record. It had me reconnecting with Blood, Sweat & Tears' music; I'd already decided Bobby Colomby was one of the stars of that group, a very musical drummer. I had grown up playing along to his parts on the BS&T records.

Clearly he had good ears - and that was shown with the risk he took here, the challenge of allowing Jaco Pastorius loose with his vision.

You can read in the links I've provided - and elsewhere - about Jaco Pastorius' mental health issues. And about his other work. About his tragic end. This album also did that for me; made me interested in the man behind the music.

But when I play the album I celebrate the music. This album makes me glad that I'm alive. It makes me feel so good that something as wonderful as music exists. It makes me happy. (And sad.) And in love with the connection that I have with music; there's a deep joy within this album. And I feel that every single time.

I just wanted to share that all with you.

So are you a fan of this album already? Or are you keen to give it a try? Have you heard it and it's not for you? Are you a Jaco Pastorius fan? And if you made it this far without any interest in Jaco and you're not curious to click on the links and try some of the music then feel free to share the album that you discovered by yourself, that fills you with joy every time you rediscover the music from that particular artist.

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