Bio

Jaco Pastorius was born in 1951 in Norristown, Pennsylvania. His Family relocated to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida when he was eight years old. He first started playing music with the drum kit, but an injury from football left him unable to play. He soon switched to electric bass, and played that instrument for the rest of his career. He briefly dabbled in playing upright bass, but the Florida humidity damaged the wooden instrument, and he devoted himself to learning how to reproduce the upright tone on the fretless electric bass. His playing also employed the use of harmonics, he went further than anyone had gone with harmonics and even composed full songs with them such as ‘Portrait of Tracy.’ Jaco is one of the pioneers of jazz fusion, a musical genre which fuses Rock and Jazz, and throughout the 70’s and 80’s he played with some of the finest musicians alive including Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Joni Mitchell, Michael Brecker, Tom Scott, Joe Zawinul, and Wayne Shorter. He was an instrumental part in the success of the group Weather Report with keyboardist Joe Zawinul.