Word of Mouth
In 1981, while still with Weather Report, Jaco Pastorius amassed this unremitting, topnotch big band into which he threads anything that appealed to his vast jazz imagination--from the bell-clanging Caribbean to the burning soul of R&B; to the jaunty European boulevards. On board areHerbie Hancock,Wayne Shorter,Peter Erskine,Jack DeJohnette,Michael Brecker, Don Alias, and others. The result is skirmishing, scurrying, all-in slabs of sound that suddenly give way to fluid quietude with chorus and strings and, most wonderfully weirdly, to harmonica features fromToots Thielemans. Pastorius is always close to the front, a fretless-bass phenom who out-guitared most guitarists. He also wrote and arranged well, taking care not to let vim and pepper do all the talking.--Peter Monaghan