Date - Late 60's

South Florida

I lived in South Florida from 1964 until 1983.  I am a musician (I play bass) and I was active in bands in Florida until the end of 1972 when I left music to raise my family (I began playing again in 1989 here in Virginia and still play).

Although I was not close with Jaco, we did know each other.  Just when he was starting to play bass he used to come to a place I used to play in Pompano Beach.  It was called Pompano Teen Town.  A local church near the intra-coastal waterway sponsored the dances in their recreation room to give kids something to do to keep them out of trouble. 

Anyhow, Jaco used to stand at the corner of the stage where the bass players were and study us.  I always tell people he learned all the things not to do by watching me.  I had only been playing a year or so and I wasn't all that great. 

Later, after he really started developing as a bass player, he got to be know as a incredibly talented player and we used to kiddingly call him "Stinko" Pastorius. 
The band I was in used to practice in one of those self-storage warehouse and his band, October Road, had a space in the row behind ours.  One night after our rehearsal we heard this monster keyboard sound coming from their space.  We walked over and there was Jaco just all by himself wailing on the Hammond B-3.  He blew us away! That guy could play anything!

When I got out of music at the end of '72 I put my Acoustic 360 amp on consignment at Modern Music, the store where I bought it.  A few weeks later, John, the owner called me up all excited and said, "Craig, guess who bought your amp?"   I said "I give up, who bought it?"   He told me that Jaco had bought it. I had just recently replaced the 18" speaker in it, which had blown and it was working like new.

I loved that amp and absolutely hated to part with it, but I needed the money.

Since those days I have kept in touch with a drummer from a couple of bands I was in back then.  He works as a DJ now, and he told me Jaco would sometimes come into the clubs where he was DJing and sit back in the  DJ booth with him and talk about the "Old Day".  He would ask about me and the other guys in the band - wanting to know where we were and what we were doing now. 

When I knew him, he always struck me as a really nice kid, intense and serious, but nice.  He seemed kind of quiet then but there was something about having someone standing there staring at my hands when I was playing that I found rather unnerving.  Maybe it was the intensity he had. 

A while after I got out of music (this would have been shortly after the release of his debut solo album) I saw him in Modern Music and we talked briefly.  He was very friendly and interested in what I was up to.  That was the last time I ever saw him.  To my great regret, I never got to see him play after he got really big.  I can only listen to him on CDs and on the vinyl of his debut album which I bought back then. 

He was truly the all-time greatest bass player in history and I was blessed to have been acquainted with him.