In 1974, a skinny barefoot kid from South Florida walked up to Weather Report’s Joe Zawinul and announced that he was the greatest bass player in the world. The wildest part is that he was not lying. This episode explores the life of Jaco Pastorius, who dragged the electric bass out of the background and into the lead voice, and whose refusal to accept boundaries both made his music revolutionary and left his personal life unsurvivable.

We follow a hyperactive kid nicknamed Mowgli by his brother, a football injury at 13 that ended his drumming, and the Florida humidity that cracked his upright bass and sent him to a 1962 Fender Jazz Bass. The conversation breaks down how he pried out the frets with a butter knife, filled the gaps with marine epoxy, and created the singing fretless tone of the Bass of Doom, along with his artificial harmonics and floating-thumb funk technique. We then cover Heavy Weather and Birdland, collaborations with Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, and Joni Mitchell, his Word of Mouth big band, the 1982 Japan tour and bipolar diagnosis, his descent into homelessness, and the beating outside a Wilton Manors club that led to his death in September 1987 at age 35.

• Why removing frets turned the neck into a ramp that unlocked microtones and a voice-like sustain
• How talcum powder, splits, flips, and shirtless performances brought rock showmanship into jazz clubs
• The audition cassette that got him into Weather Report in 1976 and his rise to co-lead alongside Zawinul and Wayne Shorter
• How an industry that romanticized erratic behavior ignored years of warning signs
• The Bass of Doom’s journey from Hiroshima Bay to theft to recovery, and Metallica’s Robert Trujillo stepping in to secure it for the family