3. Pharaoh SandersWisdom Through Music
Back in the day in Sheffield, there used to be a thing called Jazz For Lunch at the Leadmill, which was on a Sunday afternoon. It was a friend of ours, Alan Gregory, who got me into the whole jazz thing because he was going down to London, where he was seeing the very, very early days of Giles Peterson when he was about 17-years-old. ‘Jazz Alan’, they called him, and he got me into it. I was like, ‘Yeah, I like it’, but house music was my thing at that point.
I think that most jazz is awful. I can’t stand it. Now, ‘white jazz’ or whatever you want to call it, is where they kind of ruined the original sound and turned it into this sort of, you know, muzak for hotels. You know, awful. However, hearing people like Colin Curtis in Manchester – and that was more of a fusion of the jazz funk sound – and I got more and more into it. And listening to jazz albums, too, and Wisdom Through Music was one of those albums that I was listening to. It’s such a beautiful, beautiful album; my favourite ever album. ‘Love Is Everywhere’, obviously, is the quintessential track on it, and there’s another version somewhere else where it goes on for about 18 minutes. The shorter version is what I play, and it’s just such a stunning record. It’s got a groove to it.
I’m not into the free jazz thing. I can listen to a fucking washing machine on acid and probably enjoy it more. I need a groove. It’s got to have a groove for me. And Pharoah Sanders and certainly Alice Coltrane were teetering on the edge of that free jazz thing, but they had a groove and the sound had a warmth to it. And that track is just such a spine tingling sound and so, for the last 30 years, I’ve been buying those sorts of records. But I’m not a record collector. And this is the thing, I don’t collect. I’m not a completist. I’m not bothered about owning every Pharaoh Sanders record ever. I’m just very serendipitous with it all and if I find something then I like it and I buy it. Wisdom Through Music is a beautiful album, and it’s an album I’ll play to someone who doesn’t like jazz.
