The chances of me being invited to choose eight records to pack away for the life of a castaway on an otherwise uninhabited island remain, well, negligible is to put it too positively. So I thought, okay, I’ll interview myself, if only for my own amusement. Like most ‘real’ invitees to ‘Desert Island Discs’, I have discovered that it is no easy task to narrow my choices down to eight discs. But at least I don’t have to worry about how I am presenting myself to the nation! In fact, this blog might well be between me and me.
I know who I am and roughly how I came to be this way, so I can skip autobiographical odds and ends and just focus on the background to my choice of records.
- Dusty Springfield – Son of a preacher man
My first choice is one of Dusty Springfield’s singles. I puzzled awhile which one to select because it’s primarily the unique quality of her voice that swayed me. Its resonance distinguished her from her pop contemporaries and hearing her again will transport me back to my teenage years when I on Thursday evenings I banned my singularly unimpressed father from the sitting room (my mother was at amateur dramatics) while I listed in solitude to ‘Top of the Pops’.
- Melanie – Look what they’ve done to my song, ma
In my second year as an undergraduate at Surrey University, while resident in university accommodation in Godalming, I abandoned my small poky room to join my future wife, Annette in hers; she was also studying sociology and philosophy. Being an undergraduate was very different then from how it is now. We paid no fees and had grants to contribute to living expenses. If after two or three weeks I was on half pints rather than pints, this bears no relation to the fund-raising and future debts facing today’s students. Annette and I made regular trips by bus to Guildford to do our washing in a launderette located at the bottom of town, and the launderette had a juke box. Thus, I came to associate this trip with the songs of Melanie.
- Edith Piaf – Non, je ne regrette rien
I fit in quite well with Thomas Beecham’s throwaway line: ‘The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes’. I’m no connoisseur: I forthrightly rejected my parents attempts to get me to learn a musical instrument. So I’m largely persuaded by the ‘noise’ renditions have made to my untutored ear. But as already apparent, contexts can matter. While studying philosophy as an undergraduate I was introduced to existentialism and phenomenology by Irene Brennan. This was somewhat unusual in an era dominated by the sterile discourses coming out of Oxford. While never becoming a great fan of continental extravaganzas, they did at least address real life issues. Moreover, there was an attraction to the cafe-to-café ruminations of the likes of Sartre and de Beauvoir. The little flame that was lit then burns more brightly whenever I revisit Paris. And there is surely no wayward big city life and uncompromising voice more symptomatic of Paris in the post-war years than that of Edith Piaf.
- Louis Armstrong – Potato Head Blues
My lasting interest in jazz dated from my first trip to New Orleans, where I was intrigued at the way every corner of this Spanish/French enclave oozed blues and largely traditional jazz. A neophyte visit to Preservation Hall stands out. Back home I picked up two old cassettes of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Hot Sevens in a second-hand music store in Soho (I’ve never thrown them out). The fact that these recordings were not digitally remastered only added to their resonance. Recorded between 1925-28, from a total of 89 offerings I have selected ‘Potato Head Blues’ (from the Sevens sessions), which shows Armstrong at his solo best.
- Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit
I’ve never been drawn to jazz singers, with one exception. Billie Holiday had an emotional intensity born no doubt of a tumultuous life of hardship infused with systemic racism. As Langston Hughes said, the blues are ‘laughing to keep from crying’. As a black jazz singer Lady Day entered touring gigs via back doors. She died from cirrhosis in 1959, aged 44. I have selected her classic ‘Strange Fruit’, which paints a no-holes-barred portrait of lynchings in the American South. Written by communist poet Abel Meeropol, no record label would touch this ‘cry against racism’. It was eventually released by Commodore Records.
- Don McLean – American Pie
Recorded and released in 1971, ‘American Pie’ is one of those tracks that our daughters, acting DJs while Annette and I assumed horizontal positions and closed our eyes to relax, used regularly to play for us. So it brings back memories of their childhoods in our rented flat in Epsom. But it also reminds me of our road trip along Route 66 (from Atlanta to Los Angeles) during our mid-term break as visiting professors of sociology at Emory University in 1998. It was quite a trip and I have blogged about it previously.
- Charlie Parker – Ornithology
Just as one jazz singer stands out for me, so too one sax player of the many I like and enjoy heads my list. It’s his unrivalled virtuoso solo-playing and versatility, mostly on the alto sax, that is irresistible. ‘Yardbird’ or ‘Bird’ epitomised bebop in the early to mid-1940s. Fuelled often by alcohol and heroine his life too was prematurely ended aged only 34. I had the pleasure of visiting ‘Birdland’ in New York, though it had been thoroughly revamped by then. I could easily have accommodated eight Parker records in this selection, but have here selected a well-known favourite, ‘Ornithology’.
- Dave Brubeck – Take Five
Annette and I attended a Brubeck gig on London’s South Bank. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stuart Hall taking his seat. Although I’ve made it to quite a few jazz venues in several American and European cities, the only other major figure I’d heard previously was pianist Oscar Peterson in Brighton when I was in my teens. ‘Take Five’ was recorded in 1959 and released the following year. Paul Desmond is credited with composing it, though Brubeck claimed it was a group effort. As so often, its success was unanticipated. Now it’s a jazz standard. When the time came for its performance on the South Bank we all burst into spontaneous applause. So it holds personal memories as well as being a classic.
Scanning this impromptu list, I can readily see how I could substitute other tracks, perhaps most obviously in the jazz field. Eric Dolphy springs instantly to mind, but also Ben Webster, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and so on. But there you go … If memory serves me, I’m also entitled to choose one book in addition to the Bible (which would remain unopened) and Shakespeare’s plays (which I would certainly re-read or read). Plus, a luxury. The luxury is easy enough: a solar-powered laptop or, failing that, an infinite supply of exercise books and biros. As for ONE book! I’m leaning towards a history of philosophy. I began a Ph.D in philosophy at Birkbeck before switching to do a Ph.D in sociology at what was then Bedford College. Bertrand Russell’s classic volume is a possibility, though many have doubted his accuracy. The point would be to reconsider afresh what philosophers throughout history have thought and what I now make of their efforts. Maybe Anthony Kenny’s ‘A New History of Western Philosophy’.