It never occurred to me what a great name for a band “Weather Report” is until last year, when Sony issued a boxed-set retrospective of the group. At first, I thought the title, “Forecast: Tomorrow,” was somewhat presumptuous. In 1959, when Atlantic Records called Ornette Coleman’s first album for the label “The Shape of Jazz to Come,” it was hardly being modest, but it was, in fact, correct, since so much jazz of the last 50 years has spun forth from Coleman’s early breakthroughs. Calling the Weather Report anthology “Forecast: Tomorrow” made less sense, because very little significant jazz of the last 20 years sounds anything like what Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, and Jaco Pastorius were doing in the 1970s.

Yet now it becomes clear that Weather Report was never trying to predict the future, at least not in the long-term sense of the idea. It was simply indicating the way the wind was blowing at the time and, like any good meteorologist, correctly anticipated the short-term future. For a dozen or so years, a lot of bands tried to sound like Weather Report, proving that Messrs. Zawinul and Shorter had deftly forecasted tomorrow.

Jazz-rock fusion, as Weather Report and company defined it, flowered for a decade or so, and was dominated by players who had been part of Miles Davis’s electric bands. Describing a musician as a “first-generation fusion player” is somewhat redundant, since there was never really a second generation; in fact, the entire movement yielded only one superstar who remained completely within the fusion genre, with no career either ahead of him or behind him in acoustic jazz. It was the remarkable electric bassist Jaco Pastorius (1951–87). One of few members of the movement who never played with Miles Davis, Pastorius was a remarkable soloist and a brilliant composer and bandleader; he was the major fusioner, defining and transcending the genre.

The 20th anniversary of Pastorius’s untimely death has brought with it a new flood of releases, beginning last year with a vastly expanded and improved edition of what was already the definitive biography, Bill Milkowski’s essential “Jaco” (Backbeat Books). There already have been two excellent retrospectives of Pastorius’s music (both double-disc sets) released five years ago, “Punk Jazz: The Jaco Pastorius Anthology” (Rhino), and an “audio biography” called “A Portrait of Jaco: The Early Years.”

Now, there is a third two-CD anthology, “The Essential Jaco Pastorius” (Sony Legacy), as well as a second album of his compositions as played by the Jaco Pastorius Big Band, “The Word Is Out” (Heads Up).

Most important is a new release by perhaps the shortest-lived of all the short-lived bassist’s bands and collaborations, “Trio of Doom” (Sony Legacy). In 1979, Weather Report was playing Havana Jam, one of the first major American pop and jazz events in Castro’s Cuba. As a side project, Pastorius joined with two Miles Davis vets, the guitarist John McLaughlin and the drummer Tony Williams, in a unit that he christened “Trio of Doom.” The three tunes recorded in Havana were long thought to be the only record of this band. But years later, Mr. McLaughlin said that during the Havana Jams show, Pastorius was already showing signs of the mental disorder that hastened his downfall, and Mr. McLaughlin refused to allow the Havana tapes to be issued at the time. Instead, the Trio of Doom reconvened a few days later and re-recorded the three selections. These were then tricked up to sound as though they were recorded live (with overdubbed applause) and included in Columbia’s “Havana Jam” albums.

The new release, a scant 39-minutes long, contains all the recordings made by the trio — essentially the same three tunes played in different versions live in Havana and in the studio in New York. In his own albums as a leader, Pastorius either leaned toward soul music — with its deep funky, bass grooves — or toward more traditional pop and bigband music. But here Pastorius takes a secondary roll to the guitarist and the drummer; of all the music he recorded in his brief but prolific career, this is the most oriented toward hard rock and, at times, free jazz. (Too much of this would drive anyone nuts.) There’s one tune each by the three players, including Mr. Williams’s “Para Oriente” and Mr. McLaughlin’s “Dark Prince,” which are essentially open-ended, riff-based jam-session vehicles.

The only one of the three with anything resembling a memorable melody is Pastorius’s “Continuum.” In all, despite Pastorius’s undeniable presence, “Trio of Doom” is much more of a McLaughlin project than a Jaco project; Pastorius seems much too accommodating in letting the flamboyant guitarist dominate.

Based in Jaco’s native Florida, the Jaco Pastorius Big Band does for Pastorius what the Mingus Big Band does for that bassist, giving his music the expanded canvas it deserves but which neither man was able to hold together while they were alive. For all of his association with the cutting edge, Pastorius had an astoundingly lyrical side, and spent years trying to get his own comparatively traditional jazz orchestra, Word of Mouth, off the ground; he featured the band, with saxes and trumpets and no other electronics besides his bass, in two of the only three albums he made as a leader. The Big Band’s “The Word Is Out” extends that legacy in a wholly satisfying and beautifully realized way. There are representative odd-meter funk grooves, like “Beaver Patrol” in 11/8 (try counting that!), but inevitably the pretty tunes stand out, including his originals as well as adaptations of Herbie Hancock’s “Speak Like a Child” and the Beatles’s “Blackbird,” both of which are combined with Jaco originals.

Produced and conducted by one of Pastorius’s early collaborators, Peter Graves, “The Word Is Out” is an optimistic vision of the music Pastorius might have made had he lived longer. He would, in fact, be only 56 today.

wfriedwald@nysun.com