It’s a blending of two very different artists’ styles into a genuine hybrid of musical cultures.
Coyote, for instance, is so different from her prior recordings – Jaco’s propulsive dance rhythms fit smoothly alongside Joni’s acoustic strumming and half-spoken verses. Jaco came recommended off-hand as some weird bass player in Florida, and his appearance transformed the four Hejira tracks that he worked on. Joni’s previous bassists tended to play by-the-book styles. And I would make suggestions to bass players-couldn’t they, you know, leave some holes, more like classical music, and go sailing up into the high end and be more expressive.” She said “I didn’t understand why the high end could have so much freedom and the low end was so locked in. She’d developed strong opinions about what the bottom end of the musical spectrum should do, yet rarely met a bassist who could go in the directions that she wanted. The solution to her musical dilemma came in the form of a new approach to bass playing. It dealt with leaving a relationship, but without the sense of failure that accompanied the break-up of my previous relationships. “Hejira was an obscure word, but it said exactly what I wanted. The word Hejira was arabic, and summed up her mood at the time. Two friends were about to drive across the United States and in impulse she decided to join them, then drove back to the west coast alone, writing songs along the way that eventually became Hejira. Joni Mitchell had broken her relationship with jazz drummer John Guerin and was looking to make a change to her music. Weather Report you’ll likely know about, but he worked with Herbie Hancock, Return to Forever’s Al Di Meola, PatMetheny and Ian Hunter and a host of others. It was as a sideman and collaborator that he truly shined. There’s Jaco the jazz man with versions of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, and Jaco the band leader – his Word of Mouth band had a successful tour and record and featured up to 20 different musicians.Īs a soloist Jaco changed the game for electric bassists everywhere.As players they were long used to pounding the beat and rooting the chords, bassists discovered melodies and harmonics, and began to stretch their muscles. There’s Jaco the road hog, showboating at the front of Weather Report stage with his virtuoso solos and feedback leaden tributes to Hendrix. Jaco Pastorius, the Florida kid who grew up to be the greatest bassist of the modern era, had many different sides to him musically.
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