“Come here and take a look at this.” The request came from legendary engineer Ron Malo, whose recordings at Chess, Motown, Capitol and other labels ranged from Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones and Billy Joel. He was speaking to young engineer Brian Risner. On the other side of the glass, an equally youthful Jaco Pastorius had just plugged in for his Weather Report audition track: Cannonball, from the album Black Market.
As Risner relates, “Ron said, ‘All I have is maybe 3dB of peak limiting and almost no EQ, and it’s not even going into limiting. There’s only one other bass player I’ve ever worked with who got this great a sound from his hands, and that was James Jamerson.’”
