Second-hand records are stories. Each one contains some trace of its previous owners in its grooves. It could be a first kiss, maybe even ‘their song’, or the time she realised she could lose herself completely in music, or when he learned to dance like no-one was watching, a hello, a goodbye, a birth, a death and everything in between. They will have soundtracked fighting and fucking, the highest highs and the lowest lows. And it’s all there in black wax, trussed up in yellowing paper sleeves and cardboard.
Some owners sign their names to them or gift them with a personal note and a year written in best in biro – with love John, Christmas, ’73; thanks for the summer, Lynne ’66. They have passed through hands, through lives, through time. The pops and clicks and crackle is the skin, sweat, smoke of all those who have gone before.
I’m all in. Let these special circles retain something of me, until I’m gone and they can spin on with someone new. I’ll be lurking in the static, grooving to the offbeat.
…
It’s pouring down with rain. I’m somewhere in Cheltenham – big houses, Cotswold stone, automatic gates, gravel driveway – I’m starting to regret the game of Google Maps record shop roulette I so often play. I’m chasing stars on a digital map, hoping to find gold in dusty racks. Today, I will.
Not in the record shop whose coordinates and crates I seek, but in a charity shop nearby. In amongst the dross, the histories not for me, I find a Tubby Hayes LP – Change Of Setting with The Paul Gonsalves All Stars. It’s one of those finds that gives the allusion of destiny, that heart-racing moment when you think – this was meant to be.
Much later, at home – no driveway, no gate, no Cotswold stone, but a record player and some speakers – I’m listening to Tubby. It’s good, solid stuff, tight bop and hard bop, but nothing so special until Don’t Fall Off That Bridge brings the album to a close, a Tubby tune where the pace quickens and the three tenor saxophones get to work. It’s electric. And that’s when I know the focus of my next mix.
This is how it happens, by the way, I discover a new track that impacts me and I try and make sense of it and celebrate it by building a mix around it. My Mixcloud is full of these attempts. I try to find threads that lead back to it or jump on from it, motifs and murmurations, rhythms and riddles.
Each of my monthly mixes in 2024 has started with a corresponding snippet from Birds of Britain – a BBC record that belonged to my nan. There’s that history again. She bought it, presumably played it, maybe using it to confirm the burst of birdsong she heard on a trip to Wales on her bicycle or that kept her company on sleepless nights. And now it’s my turn.
Next comes Jimmy Giuffre, a track off Trav’lin’ Light, for me his best and one of the greatest and strangest jazz albums. Otherworldly compositions, so perfectly conceived. And then there’s Tal Farlow, a track whose last 20 seconds when the refrain returns for one final frantic time is just sublime. This record came from a junk shop in Swanage run by a disparate troupe of strange folk – what happens when you surround yourself with objects and too many stories and the narratives start to blur. Then, there’s Tubby. You know the story there, mine at least. Now the tempo’s up, we can bring in the blistering soul jazz of Freddie Hubbard – another recent acquisition – straight into classic Sonny from the Alfie soundtrack. Then, we have one of those bridge songs – Don Ellis & His Orchestra – Pussy Wiggle Stomp – bringing in a Latin flavour to this big band jazz odyssey. Joe Bataan, Peregoyo Y Su Combo Vacana, Mongo follow but I’m heading funkwards now. I’ve got Eddie Henderson’s Inside You on my mind. Ramsey always reliable, gets me there, tight as you like. I was considering using the closing track by the Stylistics as a launch pad for other funk and soul tunes but it felt so perfect – the song itself and how it seemed to tie all the tracks together. I was happy to leave it there and share Pussy Wiggling on the Green Country Bridge with you.
