William Earl "Bootsy" Collins is an American bass guitarist, singer-songwriter, and record producer.
John Francis "Jaco" Pastorius III was an American jazz bassist, composer, and producer. Widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential bassists of all time, Pastorius recorded albums as a solo artist, band leader, and as a member of the jazz fusion group Weather Report from 1976 to 1981. He also collaborated with numerous artists, including Pat Metheny and Joni Mitchell.
Weather Report was an American jazz fusion band active from 1970 to 1986. The band was founded in 1970 by Austrian keyboardist Joe Zawinul, American saxophonist Wayne Shorter, Czech bassist Miroslav Vitouš, American drummer Alphonse Mouzon as well as American percussionists Don Alias and Barbara Burton. The band was initially co-led by co-frontmen Zawinul and Shorter but, subsequently as the 1970s progressed, Zawinul largely became the sole musical leader of the group. Other prominent members at various points in the band's lifespan included Jaco Pastorius, Alphonso Johnson, Victor Bailey, Chester Thompson, Peter Erskine, Airto Moreira, and Alex Acuña. Throughout most of its existence, the band was a quintet consisting of Zawinul, Shorter, a bass guitarist, a drummer, and a percussionist.
Peter Clark Erskine is an American jazz drummer who was a member of the jazz fusion groups Weather Report and Steps Ahead.
Francis Rocco Prestia Jr. was an American bassist, best known for his work with the funk band Tower of Power.
Victor Lemonte Wooten is an American bassist, songwriter, and record producer. He has been the bassist for Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since the group's formation in 1988 and a member of the band SMV with two other bassists, Stanley Clarke and Marcus Miller. From 2017 to 2019 he recorded as the bassist for the metal band Nitro.
Roberto Agustín Miguel Santiago Samuel Trujillo Veracruz is an American musician who has been the bassist for heavy metal band Metallica since 2003. He first rose to prominence as the bassist of crossover thrash band Suicidal Tendencies from 1989 to 1995, while also collaborating with Suicidal Tendencies frontman Mike Muir for funk metal supergroup Infectious Grooves. After leaving Suicidal Tendencies, he performed with Ozzy Osbourne, Jerry Cantrell, and heavy metal band Black Label Society. Trujillo joined Metallica in 2003 and is the band's longest-serving bassist. He was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Metallica in 2009.
Heavy Weather is the seventh album by Weather Report, released in 1977 through Columbia Records. The release sold about 500,000 copies; it would prove to be the band's most commercially successful album and one of the best sellers in the Columbia jazz catalog. DownBeat magazine gave Heavy Weather a 5-star review, and later its readers voted it jazz album of the year.
Michael Leonard Brecker was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. He was awarded 15 Grammy Awards as a performer and composer, received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music in 2004, and was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 2007.
James Lee Jamerson was an American bass player. He was the uncredited bassist on most of the Motown Records hits in the 1960s and early 1970s, and is now regarded as one of the most influential bass players in modern music history. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. As a session musician he played on twenty-three Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits, as well as fifty-six R&B number-one hits.
John Patitucci is an American jazz bassist and composer.
Mike Stern is an American jazz guitarist. After playing with Blood, Sweat & Tears, he worked with drummer Billy Cobham, then with trumpeter Miles Davis from 1981 to 1983 and again in 1985. He then began a solo career, releasing more than a dozen albums.
A fretless bass is an electric bass guitar whose neck is smooth like traditional string instruments, and like the acoustic upright double bass. As a guitar-like amplified alternative to this instrument, the Fender Precision Bass was introduced in 1951, with frets to help guitarists who are used to them, to provide precision, and to offer a different sound. This concept has since become the standard, as other companies followed with similar electric fretted basses, like the Höfner 500/1 of Beatle Paul McCartney, which looked like a viol but with frets.
Black Market is the sixth studio album by American jazz fusion band Weather Report. Released in 1976, it was produced by Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter. It was recorded between December 1975 and January 1976 and released in March 1976 through Columbia Records. Columbia released it again as a digitally remastered CD in 1991.
Gerald Stenhouse Jemmott is an American bass guitarist. Jemmott was one of the chief session bassists of the late 1960s and early 1970s, working with many of the period's well-known soul, blues, and jazz artists. He has won two Grammy Awards.
Joey Vera is an American bassist who is known as a member of the heavy metal band Armored Saint and progressive metal band Fates Warning. During 2004 and early 2005, he toured with Anthrax as a fill-in for Frank Bello, who had taken a break from the band. He was also a member of Engine, recorded with Tribe After Tribe, and appears on the OSI album Free. His first solo album, A Thousand Faces, was released in 1994. His current solo project, A Chinese Firedrill, released an album titled Circles in 2007. On August 1, 2019, Vera was announced as the touring bassist for a newly reunited Mercyful Fate filling in for Timi Hansen. He remained with the band until 2024.
Jaco is a 2014 American documentary that depicts the life and death of jazz musician Jaco Pastorius. The film was directed by Paul Marchand and Stephen Kijak and produced by Robert Trujillo of Metallica and John Battsek of Passion Pictures.
David Pastorius is an American bass guitarist born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, residing in Melbourne, Florida. He is the nephew of late jazz virtuoso bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius.
Heavy metal bass is the use of the bass guitar in the rock music genres of heavy metal and hard rock. The bassist is part of the rhythm section in a heavy metal band, along with the drummer, rhythm guitarist and, in some bands, a keyboard player. The prominent role of the bass is key to the metal sound, and the interplay of bass and distorted electric guitar is a central element of metal. The bass guitar provides the low-end sound crucial to making the music "heavy". The bass plays a crucial role in heavy metal and a more important role than in traditional rock."
Bill Milkowski is an American jazz critic, journalist, and biographer. Since the 1970s he has written thousands of articles for magazines and album liner notes. He has written for DownBeat, JazzTimes, Jazziz, The Absolute Sound, Paste, Jazzthing and Guitar Club. He is the author of a biography of bassist Jaco Pastorius, a biography of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, an annotated history of jive music, a collection of interviews., and a biography of saxophonist-composer Michael Brecker.
