Earl Collection 00002
This album is very important to me because it the very album that turned me onto jazz in a big way. I had listened to jazz before, Weather Report and Miles Davis mostly, that I had appreciated rather than loved. I found it difficult to connect with, its alienness kept me apart from its vibrant, soulful inner core. Please Send Me Someone to Love was part of the cache of albums given to me by my brother Gordon in the mid nineties. A few years after that one night wrapped up in wine and hanging with my Rasta friend I spied it in a vinyl stack and something inspired me to pull it out. I listened to it multiple times that night, entranced by its rhythms and grace. Suddenly, during one night and with one album, I was ready for jazz. After that for pretty much an entire year all I bought was jazz and almost everything I listened to was jazz. The only rock music I listened to was The Stooges (almost as obsessively).
Phineas Newborn Jr is an obscure character, almost a footnote in jazz history now. His was a tragic tale, with a career that stuttered rather than flowed mostly due to a mental illness that stopped him from recording and touring consistently. That he was once considered a fine jazz pianist is strongly in evidence when you listen to this album, that and the fact that Elvin Jones preformed on the album, who by then had left John Coltrane’s Classic Quintet. If you are holding this album and are not a fan of jazz, just play it / buy it anyway and it could be the beginning of one of your greatest musical adventures. Basically jazz is an endless godhead of amazing music just waiting there for you to discover.
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