Truth, Liberty & Soul - Live in NYC: The Complete 1982 NPR Jazz Alive! Recording

Jaco Pastorius: Truth, Liberty & Soul Live in NYC: The Complete 1982 NPR Jazz Alive! Recording , a first-time release comprising more than 130 minutes of extraordinary, high-fidelity, ground-breaking music presented from beginning to end exactly as it happened at Avery Fisher Hall on June 27, 1982. This is the second historical release from NPR's Jazz Alive! radio program, following 2016's acclaimed Sarah Vaughan Live at Rosy's, which captured "the Divine One" in New Orleans on May 31, 1978.

The brightest star in the electric bass firmament, Jaco Pastorius burst onto the national scene in 1976 with his audacious self-titled album on Columbia Records, featuring a lineup of top jazz musicians. With his extraordinary fretless electric bass playing as the centerpiece, Jaco Pastorius created an immediate sensation with the public and the media. Jaco was a revelation; no one in jazz had ever played electric bass that way before.

In Jaco's work with Weather Report and beyond, the self-described "greatest bass player in the world" (an assessment shared with virtually the entire music world) established a new identity and role for his instrument and became the torchbearer for a new way of playing both technically and conceptually. But behind it all was an ever-present R&B and Latin-influenced groove and a screaming rock-'n'-roll attitude that he refined and incorporated into sophisticated jazz harmonic structures.

His legacy as a bass innovator continues to this day, nearly thirty years after his death in 1987. In addition to his extraordinary virtuosity, Jaco was also developing into an accomplished and sophisticated composer and arranger and those talents that are gloriously on display on this album.

WORD OF MOUTH BIG BAND
Jaco Pastorius - bass, vocals
Bob Mintzer - tenor and soprano saxophones, bass clarinet
Randy Brecker - trumpet
Othello Molineaux - steel drums
Don Alias - percussion
Peter Erskine - drums

SAXOPHONES
Bob Stein - alto saxophone
Lou Marini - tenor saxophone
Frank Wess - tenor saxophone
Howard Johnson - baritone saxophone
Randy Emerick - baritone saxophone

TRUMPETS
Alan Rubin
Lou Soloff
Jon Faddis
Ron Tooley
Kenny Faulk

TROMBONES
David Taylor
Jim Pugh
Wayne Andre

FRENCH HORNS
John Clark
Peter Gordon

TUBA
David Bargeron

Special Guest:
Toots Thielemans
(harmonica on "Three Views of a Secret," "Liberty City," "Sophisticated Lady,""Bluesette," "I Shot the Sheriff," "Mr. Fonebone" and "Fannie Mae")