Portrait of Tracy

"Portrait of Tracy" is a solo bass piece by Jaco Pastorius, the fifth track on his debut, 2:22 on the album page and 2:23 on the song's page, recorded in October 1975 and named for his first wife, Tracy. In 1978 he told Steve Rosen that the main melody is in C, that he had been monkeying around with it for years and that if he wanted more notes it was just common sense, and that he tuned the G string and the D string a little sharp when he recorded. He builds the harmony from a held C with harmonics on the other strings. Ethan Hein's 2025 analysis hears natural and artificial harmonics combined with fretted notes, with chords including Cmaj9 without the third, Gmaj9, Emaj7 and Eb7#9. Whether it was played on a fretted or fretless bass is contested.

Setlist.fm's earliest entry is Weather Report at the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 8, 1976. He played it at Jazz a Juan on July 23, 1976, and on November 6, 1976 at the Berlin Jazz Days in the Philharmonie with Albert Mangelsdorff and Alphonse Mouzon, a clip that matches our upload titled Live in Berlin 1976; the original MPS Trilogue LP lists five tracks without it. A 5:57 live version from the Majestic Theater in Grand Rapids on November 30, 1977 is on Live and Unreleased (2002), and a solo medley of "Dolores", "Portrait of Tracy" and "Third Stone from the Sun" at the Stadthalle in Offenbach on September 29, 1978 was professionally filmed. Dream Theater account for most of the song's setlist.fm plays, and Robert Glasper played it at NPR Music's 2017 anniversary concert.

Its harmonics were sampled by Ghetto Children, Amon Tobin, Cannibal Ox and Wagon Christ, and its melody is interpolated by SWV on "Rain" (1998), Master P, Chingy and PM Dawn. We hold two uploads; the second carries only the title and is most likely the studio version, which is unverified.