5 Crazy Jaco Pastorius Facts Most Bass Players Don’t Know

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The greatest electric bass player who ever lived started out as a drummer.

Jaco Pastorius played drums first, like his dad. Around 13 he hurt his wrist playing football, badly enough that it eventually needed surgery, and drumming got a lot harder.

Then, in high school, the bass player in his band left, right when a more experienced drummer showed up. Jaco wasn’t a bass player. He took the empty spot anyway.

Here are five things about him most people don’t know.

The boast, the butter knife and the stolen bass

1. He introduced himself as the greatest bass player in the world.

After a Weather Report gig in 1974, he walked up to Joe Zawinul. Here’s what he said, as Zawinul later remembered it: “My name is John Francis Pastorius III. I’m the greatest bass player in the world.”

Zawinul didn’t bite. But later he heard an early mix of Jaco’s solo album, and in late 1975, when Weather Report needed a bass player, he called him.

2. He told the story of his famous bass more than one way.

His main bass was a 1962 Fender Jazz he reportedly bought used for under a hundred dollars. Most of the time he said he pulled the frets out himself with a butter knife and sealed the fingerboard with boat epoxy.

But in a 1984 interview for Guitar Player, he told Bill Milkowski something else: “When I got the bass, the cat who had it had taken the frets out himself, and he did a really bad job of it.” Jaco said he filled in the chunks with Plastic Wood.

Even his official biography says his recollections varied over the years. The butter knife is the version that became the legend.

3. That bass got stolen, and a Metallica bassist helped get it back.

It was stolen off a park bench in Manhattan in 1986. Twenty years later it turned up in a small guitar shop in New York, and the shop owner wouldn’t give it up. It turned into a long legal fight.

Robert Trujillo of Metallica, whose personal hero is Jaco, eventually stepped in and helped the Pastorius family recover it.

Joni Mitchell and the Donna Lee opener

4. Joni Mitchell said she dreamed him.

He played on four of her albums: Hejira, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, Mingus and Shadows and Light. Her words:

“In a way, I feel like I dreamed Jaco. I mean, he was exactly what I was waiting for, sonically.”

5. His debut opens with a horn line played on bass.

Track one of his 1976 album, Jaco Pastorius, is “Donna Lee,” the bebop tune. It’s just him on bass and Don Alias on congas: a horn melody, played on the bass, as the lead voice, in two and a half minutes.

Jaco’s break on Donna Lee is perhaps the most important recording in the history of electric bass, and definitely in the history of jazz electric bass. And it’s so simple. He’s literally just playing the A-flat major scale. I take it apart in my post on Jaco’s Donna Lee break.

Where to start with Jaco

He didn’t wait for permission for any of it. He saw an empty spot in the band and took it, and eight years later he was telling Joe Zawinul who the greatest bass player in the world was.

So don’t wait for permission to play the melody, either. Learn that Donna Lee break. If it’s too daunting, just play it down the octave. It works in any key, so once you have it, take it through all 12.