ONE SELF PORTRAIT EVERY DAY in 2020 : 88

I am blessed by having two musical children but I am totally unmusical (I can’t confidently sing “happy birthday” and in fact, when I used to smoke a lot, I used to light up when the singing started in an attempt to hide the fact that I couldn’t sing).

I got into jazz in the late eighties when I was at university, there was a jazz revival with Acid Jazz, Jazz FM and Giles Peterson. My girlfriend at the time, Lucy, introduced me to the jazz greats. I didn’t really understand it musically but it gave me immense pleasure (especially blues). I really got into Pharaoh Sanders, again, I didn’t really understand his music but the sounds he made really worked for me.

One winter, I went to a jazz week-end (I think organised by Jazz FM) at one of the Pontins holiday resorts. One of the gigs I was specially looking forward to was Pharoah Sanders playing with Roy Ayers. Just before the gig, I see Pharoah Sanders sitting at a table on his own. I don’t recognise faces but Pharoah Sanders is pretty easy to recognise. I’m star struck and ask him if I could buy him a drink and he says “no thanks”. I insist, “please, please, let me buy you a drink”. He says, “a mineral water” most probably so that I would leave him in peace. The queue was so long that by the time I got the mineral water, he was gone. I drank Pharoah’s water and really enjoyed the gig.

28.3.2020.

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