Date - 1976

The first time I ever heard Jaco's music, I was driving on Sunrise Blvd. with a friend in my old 1971 tan V W bug.  It was 1976 and the only R&B station on FM was WCKO ("Soul CKO - 102.7 FM").  Jaco was live in the studio doing PR for his first solo album.  The DJ was hyping him pretty good that he was a home town guy and he wanted to know how he hooked up with all those big name artists on his first album.  He said that Bobby Colomby hooked him up with Herbie Hancock and once Herbie signed on he got a lot of the others to come in on it.  

I was really impressed with how confident he sounded -- not extravagant or bragging, just really sure of himself.  His voice was a lot clearer than the gravely rasp you hear on those bootlegs from the mid 80s, he sounded laid back and more matter of fact.  Then they played "Used To Be A Cha-Cha" and I was hooked.  The DJ asked him what KURU was and he said it's an awful disease found in Africa -- that after an earlier take it sounded so awful they gave it the name as a joke and later decided to keep it. (Kuru = A neurodegenerative disease cause by a "slow virus" and transmitted human-to-human)

We ended up going to Peaches and getting the Jaco album.  Peaches was the biggest record store in Ft Lauderdale at that time, located on Sunrise Blvd., East of Federal Hwy. Around 1978, Peaches had Jaco sign his name and put his hand prints in cement -- I don't know if they're still there.