Bass Player, October 2003

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The following is a review of Portrait by Chris Jisi of Bass Player magazine...

Finally! It took a while, but producer Bob Bobbing's timing couldn't have been better. The recent Jaco Pastorius tribute CD Word of Mouth Revisited confirmed just how much the innovative bassist's contributions have permeated the collective psyche and digits of contemporary bassists worldwide, and Bobbing's much-anticipated two-CD set Portrait of Jaco fills in the Pastorian puzzle's blanks. Bobbing - a fellow Florida bassist who befriended Jaco as they hit their midteens and had the foresight to follow him around with a reel-to-reel recorder -- has put together a complete package that is as valuable in its visual and verbal content as it is musically. The accompanying 78-page booklet is filled with revealing photos, personal memories (including a memorable passage from Jaco's daughter Mary), and a keen overview by Bass Player founding editor Jim Roberts. The 38 tracks are interspersed with a wealth of spoken material, resulting in more of an audio documentary than an anthology, but that's what makes this portrait so vivid.

Disc 1 begins with Jaco fondly recalling his roots, taken from his last known recording in the summer of '87. It goes on to cover the early years via enlightening comments by Jaco's dad Jack, his first wife Tracy, his brother Gregory, Bobbing, and others. Musically, an early home recording of "The Chicken," Jaco's 1972 composition "Amelia" performed by Wayne Cochran & The C.C. Riders, and the Little Beaver R&B side "I Can Dig It Baby" are all eye-opening, though they all were included in the Warner Bros./Rhino anthology Punk Jazz, released earlier this year. More intriguing are "Suzanne," Jaco's first record appearance in 1968, in which he displays his Jamerson-Jemmot-Rainey-Jim Fiedler bag of influences, and "Higher Solo," a live 1971 cover of a Sly Stone hit by Tommy Strand & the Upper Hand, notable for Jaco's Rocco-like groove and long, bluesy solo sprinkled with bebop seedings. Rounding out Disc 1's revelations are Jaco's intense bebop blowing on his custom fretless 5-string acoustic bass guitar (with a hihg C string), circa 1974; "Long Long Day," a Cochran ballad that finds Jaco foreshadowing his singular support of Joni Mitchell; and "Rice Pudding," during which the composer Charlie Brent tells the full story of why and how Jaco went fretless.

Disc 2 is an equally potent verbal and music mix, Joe Zawinul, Pat Metheny, Joni Mitchell, and Herbie Hancock offer insightful and intimate comments set to their well-known tracks with Jaco. Notably, Zawinul's talks about his infamous initial meeting with the bassist, and both Mitchell and Jaco detail their perfect pairing, in which Jaco first multi-tracked his bass and used false harmonics. Other spoken gems include Jaco explaining and demonstrating his harmonics approach to Bobbing, and Epic A&R head Steve Popovich relating the 1975 Manhattan meeting where Jaco auditioned and was signed to his solo deal. (Interestingly, one of the execs present was James Tyrell, a fine bassist who had played with King Curtis and James Brown.) Musically fascinating is "Between Races" and "Balloon Song." The former is Jaco's 1974 adaptation of a Chuck Mangione chart for the Peter Graves Orchestra, during which we can hear how closely his walking, samba and funk grooves were interrelated. The latter is a demo of a straightahead original with Jaco and band stretching and talking it out.

By package end, it's apparent that while Pastorius was quick to credit his many fine musical influences and mentors ("I know where I stole every note," he stated), in truth they were all just wrapping on his gift, Jaco was on a personal mission to take the bass to a new place. In the process he became, as trumpeter Ira Sullivan says on Disc 1, "The shot heard 'round the world."

-- Chris Jisi