Those of you readers who know me even slightly above slightly will not be surprised to see that this subject has finally risen to the surface of my mind during one of my walks. It has been an important part of my life since I was ?11.
My parents, like the bulk of the population in those pre telly days, listened to the radio every evening, every weekend. Living together in our tiny house I was exposed to it constantly.
Of particular clarity is a Sunday lunchtime programme called Two Way Family Favourites. British troops were still stationed throughout the world in the fifties, Germany, Aden (Yemen), Far East. And the basis of the programme was the opportunity for UK listeners to write in with a request for Sgt. Fred serving in BFPO (British Forces Posted Overseas) 43, in Germany to hear Fingal’s Cave Overture by Mendelsohn with love from Mum, Dad and all the family, not forgetting Tibbles, the cat. Or Sgt Fred wrote in with ditto for all the family, including Tibbles and could they please send some Marmite!
Requests covered every type of music. You have to realise that these were the days before a hit parade. Singers and popular music generally dominated the news much less than now and crooners sold more than most, all fairly sedate stuff. What was the first ‘pop’ music, rock and roll, didn’t appear until 1956/7, by which time we had telly and radio was only listened to briefly at breakfast. So TWFF was a ballad followed by Air on the G string followed by a novelty record e.g. look up on YouTube. Life gets tedious, don’t it. So, I soon began to acquire a taste for what were light classics, bits of glorious stuff torn out of context and playing away whilst the Yorkshire pudding was being consumed.
And then! I heard Little Richard sing Tutti Frutti and rock was top of the menu. My Mum and Dad listened to light classical music. Dad liked operatic arias, particularly an Italian tenor called Gigli with voice of an angel. But neither they or any other member of the family would listen to a complete symphony or have pretensions to attend an orchestral concert. I had bought with money from a paper round a small portable radio, an item that had only recently become freely available at an affordable price, and I listened in my bedroom what popular music I could find and began to acquaint myself properly with the Classical Classics!
There was no Radio 1 or 2 in those days and popular music was sparse on the BBC, although they did start a Friday evening TV show, half an hour of UK singers (there were no ‘bands’ until Buddy Holly and the Crickets who I did see in Bristol on a bill with two other acts at a cost of what is now 52p!) called Six Five Special because it started at .... Looking back, it was pretty dire but it was all we had for a few years. But real pop fans tuned to 208 on the Medium Wave - Radio Luxembourg which played pop music nonstop. The only problem being that reception from Luxembourg was not nonstop, fading in and out, and sometimes ceasing for periods. But eventually I purchased a small record player, equipped to play vinyl 7-inch singles and extended plays at 45 rpm or 10 or 12 inch long playing discs (LPs) at 33 rpm that could accommodate more extended music, either the latest selection from a singer, e.g. Gene Vincent, another of my favourites, or complete classical works. I played ‘my’ music in another room, to the disapproval of parents who thought rock and roll was a travesty by people who couldn’t sing e.g. Jerry Lee Lewis and the early Elvis records, e.g. Blue Suede Shoes etc.
The standout classical piece that really started me listening was the Greig piano concerto. Mum took me to see a film called The Seventh Veil which concerned a lady played by actress (Sorry! Female actors are actresses for me and always will be!) Anne Todd who was practising piano works under the tutelage of a harsh teacher, played by actor James Mason, who even slammed his cane across her knuckles in rage at perceived mistakes. Looking at details now on Google, it transpires that there are several piano pieces in the soundtrack but the Greig is the one that stuck, with its lyrical opening.
Then, when I was, I guess, 14 my family welcomed a boy from Bordeaux for a week. Bristol and Bordeaux are twinned cities and these pupil exchanges took place and may well still do so. How I got my parents to agree and what the French lad made of our little home, and my mother’s cooking I don’t know but when he left he gave me a gift of a 10 inch LP containing a celebrated performance of Beethoven’ fifth symphony, thus starting a relationship with a German man dead for well over a hundred and fifty years who became and remains as close a friend as I have ever had.
But .... these are not the facts that engaged me on my walk. I continued to listen to pop music and even developed a now bemusing worship for an average guitar player called Duane Eddie whose claim to fame was playing his ‘twangy’ guitar i.e. predominantly the lower strings. Then, visiting a friend one day when I was 17, the older brother of said friend produced and played an LP called Time Out by the Dave Brubeck quartet. A revelation! An epiphany! I was swept away by this whole different way of playing music. Called Jazz.
At the time most record shops had booths, two or three tiny rooms, where you could stand and listen to a record before purchase. I and some friends had become regular shoppers at a store in the centre of town and had a good relationship with the manager. Who turned out to be an amateur jazz pianist. So, knowing of our limited funds, he was more than willing, after our change of heart from pop to jazz, to allow us, in the quieter sales periods, to stand in a booth and listen to jazz albums. There were already a couple of other amateur jazz performers who regularly attended the shop to chat to the owner and listen like us and I nervously engaged them in conversation. To find their opinion of the Brubeck band was fairly dismissive! Cocktail jazz! Listen to Miles Davis. Which I did, dear reader, even unto the extent of stealing a 45-rpm extended play disc of he and his current band which included a saxophone player called John Coltrane.
Within a week an album was issued under Miles Davis name which has become the most beloved and best-selling jazz album of all time, called Kind of Blue. We listened to it time and time again, singing the solos by each instrument, crammed into the little booth in our lunch breaks. And I listen to it still and can sing/hum each solo. Sixty one years later. The whole group is peerless but for me, John stood out and was to swiftly become one of the props of my life.
Born in 1926 into a family where both grandfathers were preachers and Negro church music formed all his early listening, Trane, as he was known, learned clarinet as a boy and graduated to saxophone, the instrument he played in US Navy bands during his military service. Gaining limited work opportunities as a jazz musician he became addicted to heroin. In 1957 he locked himself in his room, instructing his mother to not enter under any condition except at his request to supply limited food supplies and water and he faced his drug problem ‘cold turkey’, a feat requiring immense willpower. He also experienced a religious awakening, not specifically Christian but leading him to spend the rest of his life, as he saw it, glorifying God and hoping to do his will.
He was soon leading his own band and by late 1961 had formed what became ‘the Classic Quartet’ (saxophone, piano, bass, drums) and one of the most respected bands in jazz. I avidly purchased every album as it was issued. And there were many. One lunchtime I walked into ‘our’ record shop and the manager handed me a new album, not saying a word. It was called ‘A Love Supreme’ and the notes on the album’s sleeve made it clear it was a four-movement suite played by the quartet as an act of thanks and worship. It was/is superb and joined Kind of Blue in being in the collections of most modern jazz fans.
Jazz was going through a period of great changes and a whole movement, called ‘Free Jazz’ was based on improvising without reference to keys, pitch, rhythm and John decided to follow the same path. He had played and practiced for so long that his technical ability and inventiveness had, he felt, exhausted all he could do following ‘the rules’ and his music became increasing fierce, discordant …. free! And he became very controversial. And then, out of the blue, he died! Aged 40.
I had followed him all the way, even unto the boundaries he was reaching. I was bereft. Despite my atheism, his music took me somewhere I did/do not understand. No one else in my circle liked the later Coltrane and I had no one to turn to to share my grief. And then by chance, I found the latest edition of an American jazz magazine called ‘Downbeat’. It was full of letters from fans all over the world, fans like me who actually loved the guy. It was such a relief.
I have a total of 330 tracks by Coltrane on my ipod. I listen to him constantly, in between Beethoven (537 tracks) Schubert (255 tracks) Bach (442 tracks), Schumann (400 tracks). And Miles Davis (282 tracks. And lots of blues music, which I forgot to mention above. The old original blues music, sung by black men (and women), opening their hearts to the world. And Lou Reed (72 tracks). And Eminem (91 tracks). And all other sorts of stuff. But Trane and Ludwig (whose piano sonatas and string quartets are supreme) most of all.
And the reason I thought of this history of my musical life, and especially Coltrane, whilst walking around the park is down to the internet and the help of a friend. Like many people, Coltrane’s audiences included people who brought their own little recording devices. US and foreign radio stations broadcast gigs and the tapes were filed away. And these are suddenly appearing on the net. Trane died at 40 so comparatively little time to produce. So, every new recording is like gold dust. And I recently found some, recorded when he was at the peak of his career. But I could not convert these new tracks into a form in which they could be loaded to my iPod for repeated listening. But a tech savvy friend from Manchester called Ken solved my problem and so my walk was illuminated by 40 minutes of unbridled sax playing, mind boggling inventiveness. Most would dismiss is as a dreadful noise but for me it’s up there with the greatest of Beethoven’s music!! Keep listening folks! To paraphrase my idol, if music be the food of life, play on!