Basslines: A Remark You Made

Weather Report: A Remark You Made

[purchase]

Usually, a bass line is part of the rhythm of a song. This is normally true in jazz, rock, bluegrass, you name it. And I will have some examples of that later this week. But here, the bass plays a melodic line. One could even argue that the bass has the main melody, with a counter melody in the saxophone. And I have always wished that someone would take the bass line here and write words for it. and record it. The first words would be, “A remark you made...”.

To make this work, Weather Report had to have Jaco Pastorius on bass. Pastorius, as you can hear, had an amazing tone; his bass sang. In addition to Weather Report, Pastorius leant his talents, in his too brief lifetime, to the Pat Metheny Group, and to Joni Mitchell during her jazz period. All these years later, he is still sorely missed.