YES! We now have a vinyl record player

Our gift vouchers that we could spend at a well-known department store had accumulated to the value where we could buy something tangible to share.

Our agreed choice was to buy a vinyl record player.

Stored away in a cupboard were some thirty two LP’s. Most of them hadn’t seen the light of day for at least ten years as they came from my parents’ home when we had to close it up. My one surviving brother then, David, who was the eldest, had first dibs from the collection and then I ended up with the ones I have now which included one that used to be my other elder brother’s, Brian.

All of them, bar one, have a patina of memories and connections with people, most of whom are now mere shadows from the past stretching back as far as the early 1960’s. They range from a totally ersatz orchestrated collection of cover tracks of hits of the 60’s and 70’s , some early Woodstock genre music, a Brahms and big band and jazz which dominate the collection. Goodness knows why I ended up with that so totally ersatz album unless it got stuck between a couple of other albums when I was packing things away.

My prize possession in amongst these discs is “Jazz Samba” with Stan Getz. I did buy a CD version at the weekly street market in nearby Lymington but nothing can ever be better than playing the original vinyl version that has been in the family for sixty years at least.

Yes, they did make vinyl records that long ago.

The personal backstory to “Jazz Samba” is that shortly after we moved here to England from Canada we had a long-time family friend, also from Canada, stay with us for a few months. Just before Joan returned to Canada she bought this album. Probably in 1964 shortly after its release.

One evening my parents and brothers were out while Joan stayed in. I would only have been ten at the time. Instead of watching something like the Man From Uncle or Top of the Pops, Joan put this album on the family record player and I was hooked.

The first track “Desifinado” started imperceptibly and built to a soft crescendo while waiting for the tenor sax of Getz to join in. Once he was there I was away to sun drenched beaches being lapped by warm ocean waves. Anywhere, just so long as it was away from this damp, cold, cloud covered place called England and away from a school I was having a bit of trouble settling into.

My musical education had begun.

At junior or “primary” school, as we call it over here, it wasn’t the done thing to bring records in from home for your classmates to “oohhh” and “aawwe” over. We were all at the age where toys after Christmas and birthdays would be brought in to be shown off.

At secondary school that trend was just beginning to kick in. Before the bell went in the morning summoning us to class records would appear out of satchels or during breaks. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and Procul Harem. Each one when shown and shared around the group would trigger the same almost Pavlovian reactions. “Great cover”, “My favourite track is…”, They were on Top of the Pops last night” and the conversation stopper “Can I borrow that?”

Somehow I didn’t believe that taking Jazz Samba into school to show the rest of the class would do my class, playground or street cred any good. I was already suffering from enough minority anxiety because of my still strong Canadian accent so why add another layer that would single me out any further. I became a closet lover of jazz from an early age but didn’t come out until my late teens and early twenties.

Enough of the past.

I put the record on the turntable, set it in motion and gently dropped the needle on to it. Ever so quietly the sound of two pieces of sandpaper being rubbed together started to come out followed by the main drum set, the tenor sax and the two guitars.

That was it. I was back in our 1960’s home with Joan and even longing, just a bit, to be on a sun drenched beach watching the tropical waves.

A cup of coffee in hand suited the ambience coming out of the speaker. And it sounded just as it had all those years ago. In fact it sounded better as the music was enriched with life’s experiences. It was too early in the day for anything else such as Pinho Collada. The tracks slipped by and then stopped. I added to my daily step count and went over to check what had happened.

“Damn! This is an LP and not a CD so it will have to be flipped to hear the full album. “