Song For My Lady: McCoy Tyner - 1973

 

USA Pressing, 1973

Earl Collection 00011

I bought this album only recently for $20 from Moogy’s Mobile Record Store. Moogy is Kim Williams, who co-wrote The Scientist’s song Swampland with Kim Salmon, among other claims to fame. McCoy Tyner is my favourite jazz pianist and as everyone should know prior to his solo career he played in John Coltrane’s great mid sixties band. Basically Tyner’s solo career was one amazing album after another and Song For My Lady is a perfect example of his vibrant, fluid style of playing. His compositions are superb too.

The amazing thing about this album is that when I got it home I realised that it was still sealed in shrink-wrap! Whomever owned it had never played it and therefore I assume that I’m only the second owner in 47 years! I opened it to reveal both a pristine pressing and some 47 year old dust, probably skin flakes from the guys who processed it! It was a cut-out so perhaps the original owner was enticed by its cheapness, but never got around to playing it. Of course I did, and it is superb.

Please Send Me Someone to Love: Phineas Newborn Jr. - 1969

USA Pressing, 1969.
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.