“In the Sixties and Seventies,” writes Mitchell, “you had this dead, distant bass sound.
This not only meant leaving the lower root notes, but also crafting a bright, round, lively tone that for those upper registers. One of those changes, from “Donna Lee” to the end of Pastorius’ tumultuous life and career in 1987 involved moving the electric bass into a melodic role it had not played before. Pastorius’ debut album certified him as a master musician he leapt from “anonymity to jazz stardom, earning admiration both from the average musically uneducated concert-goer to the hippest jazz cat,” and he gained a following among an “ever growing number of adept students that, still today, study his solos, licks, compositions and arrangements.” Pastorius’ solo on his version of the Charlie Parker tune “Donna Lee,” especially, helped redefine the instrument by, first, inventing the electric bass solo. How does one define a masterpiece? Is it personally subjective, or it is just another word we use for status symbols? In an essay on bass player Jaco Pastorius’ 1976 self-titled debut album, scholar Uri González offers an older definition: “in the old European guild system, the aspiring journeyman was expected to create a piece of handicraft of the highest quality in order to reach the status of ‘master.’ One was then officially allowed to join the guild and to take pupils under tutelage.”
