The first thing Jaco ever did with Weather Report:
Cannonball
Joe Zawinul:
"Cannonball Adderley died.... and I wrote a song, it's called "Cannonball"....
and when Jaco talked to me first, he told me how much he liked Cannonball's
music... and coming from Florida, I know what kind of love these people have
for one another... I said "I tell you something... you come to the studio,
and let's see... I've written this song for Cannonball... you take a shot."
Wayne Shorter:
"There was not even a chance to feel anything, because I knew right away...
soon as he hit the first note. There was no putting the heads together, and
"let's have a conference over this" and all that... we knew... we just looked
at each other, Joe and I... we looked at each other and said... "That's it!"
... "he's the guy!"
This track is such beautiful inspiring music...
Check out Shorter's six notes followed by Jaco playing the same six notes
(bar 61-62) I wonder if this was planned, or spontaneous - brilliant,
in any case.
As with a lot of Weather Report music, there's Zawinul synth bass textures
on this track, along with what Jaco is doing.
Havona
Cue point in "Havona": 2 min. 35 sec.
Lots of sharps here ... flats wouldn't have fit as well with the chord progression.
This solo is full of easy pentatonic patterns, but Jaco had the fluidity and
craftsmanship to apply these patterns into something wonderful.
Bar 5 and 6 contain a quote from Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" intro.
In bars 12 and 13 Jaco used a simple descending pentatonic pattern (scale
degrees: 5 3 2 1) in D, then C, then C#, then B.
Bar 25 has a cool "C lydian" pattern - scale degrees: 6 7 1 6 #4 5 9 7 8 3
7
Bar 29 in Gmaj7 - scale degrees: 1 6 5 3 7 6 5 3 2 5 3
Bar 32 uses a G#m7 pentatonic descending and a D#m7 arpeggio descending against
Emaj7-5.
Check out bars 37 and 38. Use an open G string along with moving fifths on
the G and D strings.
