i'm sure/would hope the first Jaco Pastorius album is as highly regarded as it should be, because I finally bought his first album today and am having trouble putting it down. I don't know a lot about jazz artists or know much about its music aside from how it can be structured and the like, but this is definitely a wonderful introduction.

Pastorius was a musical genius.

absolutely. he was absolutely brilliant. I'm really happy and excited to find out a musician like him existed

I've told this story here before, but towards the end of his life, Pastorius was in pretty bad shape. I was at this restaurant (my girlfriend's father was the accountant for the restaurant owner) and Pastorius was playing there for meals. He was just sort of fucking around on the bass and the flute, and even that was awesome. It wasn't long after that he died in a bar fight in Florida. Very sad.

i'm going to definitely look into him more. was he not well known until after his death? I know he played with Joni Mitchell when she was going on huge tours, but I guess most there weren't listening to the bass and percussion.

No, he was really well known. He played with Weather Report, among others. He just had serious substance abuse problems. By the time I saw him, he had pretty much alienated everyone. If I recall correctly, he pissed off the restaurant owner, went to Florida, and pissed off the wrong person there who killed him in a bar fight.

The wikipedia entry seems to correspond with what I've heard.

Yes, a lot of crazy and sad Jaco stories...

One of my best friends back in Phila., is a record producer and he was living in NY in the last days of Jaco and had some crazy stories. Jaco had to hock is bass for drug money....

That's the era of "fusion", what was called "fusion" back in the 70's which included:

Return to Forever
Weather Report
Mahavishnu Orchestra

and some others... The Crusaders were sort of borderline... There was a Philly group who's name escapes me at the moment -- I had some of their stuff on vinyl but traded them to a kid for some stuff I wanted.

I really wasn't that in to the "fusion" scene as I was coming of age on the 50s and 60's stuff and hard bop and even pre-bop. I was a student of the art-form. I went to Arts High in Phila. from 10th grade on and I had a jazz piano teacher who became like a mentor to me. Loaned me books and records and taught me the history...

To me, it was some of the younger generation of Jazz players wanting to capture some of the "rock glamour" -- instead of suits it was dashikis and they too were dropping acid and whatever...

A lot of these guys like Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter are true Jazz purist legends, some guys like Al Dimeola, Jaco were virtuosos but closer to a rock-funk-jazz meld, than pure Jazz. I did see Stanley Clark on upright bass about 8-10 years ago w McCoy Tyner and that was cool. But that's not what he's known for and he wouldn't have been my first choice player for that context. But he did a nice job that night.

re: Kieth Jarret

I was just explaining to a friend yesterday about how Kieth Jarret in the 70's was this new sound -- and that all the new age piano stuff like George Winston and many others grew out of a water-down take from Jarret.

Jarret has never been a compelling straight-ahead player. And his stuff is uneven. For his solo 70's piano stuff that made him famous, I'd recommend the Sun Bear Concerts. Better than the Koln Concerts.

http://blogs.phillymag.com/gphilly/2013/05/07/joey-harrison-groups-no-####s-jazz/

Jazz needs a bigger tent

Mingus can be heard calling Pastorius "Yo-kuh" on Joni Mitchell's Mingus album

I think Mingus was having a laugh with everyone involved with that recording

TomatoPie wrote:http://blogs.phillymag.com/gphilly/2013/05/07/joey-harrison-groups-no-####s-jazz/

Jazz needs a bigger tent

one with a fly, or not, I suppose

who is "Jelly Role Morton"?

Philly the Kid wrote:Okeh records

Payton's blog post is pretty good.

Kind of a big gap between Louis Armstrong and Bob James....

Sitars and more in Pakistan cover "Take Five"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GLF46JKkCNg

TPie "Paki'ing" heat - sweet

guitar, tabla, sitar knockouts - could have done without the strings, even though they were great

so it sez here in this article on the dean of US etymologists that

...Comments on Etymology has been the driving force for discovering the true origins of hot dog (late 19th century, joking about the use of dog meat), the Big Apple (New York City racetracks in the 1920s), jazz (baseball term from California a century ago ), and dude (from Yankee Doodle Dandy), with important assistance from the independent scholar Barry Popik....Jazz, the great American word of the 20th century, is one of his favorites. Since 2000 he has published four drafts of a comprehensive article on the origin of jazz, the most recent covering some 167 pages. It too will eventually be published as a monograph....With a circulation of under 100, Comments is not likely to be found on your nearest newsstand. But it is available to anyone interested in etymology, at $16 for an academic year’s subscription. “As for putting Comments on Etymology online, I have no plans to do so,” Cohen told me. “I’m in my comfort zone with the present low-key presentation of material.”

I did not know that

Charlie Parker, My Sister and Me

The cultural critic and writer Stanley Crouch has written a human portrait of Parker, the jazz great who died at 34 in 1955. The book, to be published in the fall, is full of novelistic touches....

Not a Crouch fan, but interested in this book

Newport this weekend. Birthday celebration for Wayne Shorter. Guy has a good working band (Brian Blade, Danilo Perez, John Patitucci) - at age 80!

Looking forward to it

drsmooth wrote:Newport this weekend. Birthday celebration for Wayne Shorter. Guy has a good working band (Brian Blade, Danilo Perez, John Patitucci) - at age 80!

Looking forward to it

Looking forward to getting a report Smooth?!!

I cannot believe Wayne Shorter is "80" , wow, how did that happen??!!! Geez. Just heard a track off of Ju-Ju last night...McCoy Tyner is 75. I remember when I saw him play as the headliner at Tommy Flanagan's 75th b-day honor gig. Tommy was refined. McCoy smoked it playing Lazy Bird at cut-cut time...McCoy is now the 75 yr old and can't play cut-cut time anymore...time marches on....

I'd really like to have enough free time to catch up on the top 25-30 jazz guys who have come on the scene in the last 10-12 years...ONLY. I'm a big out of things compared to a decade ago...

Never been to Newport...

Philly the Kid wrote:

drsmooth wrote:Newport this weekend. Birthday celebration for Wayne Shorter. Guy has a good working band (Brian Blade, Danilo Perez, John Patitucci) - at age 80!

Looking forward to it

Looking forward to getting a report Smooth?!!

I cannot believe Wayne Shorter is "80" , wow, how did that happen??!!! Geez. Just heard a track off of Ju-Ju last night...McCoy Tyner is 75. I remember when I saw him play as the headliner at Tommy Flanagan's 75th b-day honor gig. Tommy was refined. McCoy smoked it playing Lazy Bird at cut-cut time...McCoy is now the 75 yr old and can't play cut-cut time anymore...time marches on....

I'd really like to have enough free time to catch up on the top 25-30 jazz guys who have come on the scene in the last 10-12 years...ONLY. I'm a big out of things compared to a decade ago...

Never been to Newport...

A wonderful time was had by all, as far as I could tell. Weather was better on Sunday but I felt the music was better Saturday.

Newport's working its way back, diplomatically, from being a place where you could
a) see George Wein working the crowd (he was there Saturday, confined to a golf cart someone had signed as "the Wein Machine",
b) enjoy some sunny summer seaside weather in a quirky setting - a big old, old old fort, with stages outside and in the interior parade grounds
c) see famed - but tamed - jazz acts of yore

to a justified musical jumble of the new and old, the out there and the near-square

So we enjoyed both Iranian trumpet player Amir ElSaffar's Two Rivers ensemble and a set featuring Bill Charlap's working group plus Anat Cohen & Bob Wilbur; Berklee's Ali Amr big-ish band with guest alto sax Grace Kelly, whose scorching solo made their treatment of Autumn Leaves - yes, Autumn Leaves! - sound new; Robert Glasper with Herbie Hancock walking on; and Michel Camilo, in addition to Shorter.

It's a bit on the pricey side, but it seems to be on the upswing, even as G. Wein winds down. Gazing around at the crowd, he looked happy....

here's Ali Amr - Grace Kelly comes onstage at 21:40 or so. Intro lures you in, then goes conventional, then Kelly braces it up again; she doesn't play any one new note, but deftly traverses jazz history in her compliment to this chestnut (Not sure who the female vocalist is, part of Amr's group)

NPR's trove of pics from day 1 isn't too bad - catches the weather & physical environs