Deaf Dumb Blind (Summun Bukmun Umyun)

One night a DJ changed my life... It was Pete Drummond, who would go on to reach the dizzy heights of presenting Rock Goes To College for BBC2. I was listening to his late-night show on my dad's transistor radio, probably with the little white ear piece attached to my shell-like to keep the parents far hence. Turn that thing off; it's high time you were asleep!

I must have been 15 or 16 at the time and fortunately I hadn't drifted off to sleep, because I caught the whole mesmerising 18 minutes of a piece of music that was like nothing I'd ever heard before. Fortunately, too, Pete Drummond was a sensible DJ, who gave out the full information. The sound-scape of mystical music replete with melody and exotic percussion that seemed to rise and fall and then rise and fall again like waves lapping within my head was Pharoah Sanders, with 'Let us go into the House of the Lord', a traditional negro spiritual adapted by the band's pianist, Lonnie Liston Smith.

It was jazz, Jim, apparently – but not as I knew it. I used to watch the Ronnie Scott programme on BBC2 with my dad, partly out of curiosity, partly to keep him company and partly for the thrill of being able to stay up later than normal. Jazz at that point in my life seemed to mean the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra with Cleo Laine and the Buddy Rich Big Band, who were all right, I suppose, even though Buddy Rich himself seemed as flash and as showy as his drumming... and a weird pianist called Thelonious Monk, whose music was intriguing but a little difficult.

There was nothing difficult, though, about what I heard on my dad's red Japanese transistor – apart from the business of getting hold of the album. The title, Summun, Bukmun, Umyun, was taken from a chapter of the Koran and translated as Deaf Dumb Blind. 'Deaf – To the pleas of fellow creatures to harken, Dumb – To spiritual enlightenment and Blind – To the essence of beauty and truth', as Jameelah Ali's sleeve notes explain. And certainly, to someone searching at the time for the meaning of life in the portentous music of Van Der Graaf Generator, this saxophonist who went by the glorious name of Pharoah Sanders seemed to have created something that contained 'the essence of beauty and truth'.

I couldn't find it in Belfast and I was a little reluctant to use the new Virgin mail order service, because it meant that my mother could more easily keep tabs on the amount of pocket money I was spending on LPs. However, I tracked it down in what I believe was the first Virgin Records store, in London, after a few weeks in the summer holidays of picking strawberries in the Fens – to earn some money to buy more LPs. It was an inauspicious little shop on the first floor of a building at the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford Street. And there it was! On the pink Probe label, A great name from ABC/Dunhill Records, USA.

Finally I could listen to it in living, breathing stereo. Which is the only way to appreciate how first Sanders himself on the soprano sax, then Lonnie Liston Smith's tinkling, trebly piano and then Cecil McBee's extraordinary bowed bass carry the beautiful melody through a swirling periphery of bells, shakers, maracas and all kinds of African percussion that creates an impression of a steaming night on a veranda, sipping a cold drink and staring into the heart of a jungle darkness. The music was all-embracing and all-encompassing. You had no choice but to sit and listen. Well, not at that age anyway.

And it wasn't just me. A few years later, I was lying on my bed in a house I shared as a student in Exeter, listening to the same piece of music spinning on my BSR MacDonald deck. I was waiting for my man, my disreputable friend Simon, who was late as usual. He was due back from London on his old, impossibly noisy Ariel motorbike. Suddenly he was there standing transfixed at the door that led from my bedroom into the conservatory and thence into the back garden. Looking a little like an elongated Richard III, with his thin lank body and his long limp hair – but covered in oil after another misadventure with his bike – he was riveted by the music.

He had never heard anything like it, either. This was someone who listened predominantly to rock music by the likes of Led Zeppelin and The Who. Someone who once set light to his waste paper basket across the corridor in our Hall of Residence, just for a bit of atmosphere while he played some Pete Townshend air guitar during 'Won't Get Fooled Again'. Black smoke billowed out of his window and the communal fire extinguisher had to be employed. This was someone who would not have had any truck with jazz.

If I remember correctly, he didn't have enough patience for the 22-minute title track. I, too, found it a bit protracted and certainly not up to Side 2. Significantly, it was edited to half the length on the double-CD Pharoah Sanders anthology of 2005. Later, I would come to appreciate that it's effectively an extended Afro-Latin jazz workout for three horns (Sanders, Woody Shaw on trumpet and Gary Bartz on alto sax) and piano powered by congas, assorted percussion and Cecil McBee's fat (I suppose I should spell that 'phat' these days) resonant double bass.

Some 20 years or so later, I would finally catch the Pharoah in concert at the Leadmill, Sheffield: a smallish, quite intimate venue that offered a good view of the four- or five-piece band and the great man himself. In fact, John Coltrane's pupil, sporting what would become his trademark bushy white beard, was not the physical titan I had envisaged. He played more tenor than soprano that night and no one I've ever heard roars on the big sax quite like the Pharoah does, but he was significantly shorter than his tone suggested.

The album still smoulders and captivates today as it did 45 years ago when it came out. Pharoah Sanders led me musically to Africa and the joy of riddim. Deaf Dumb Blind helped teach me to listen and hear, to be around and be aware, and to look and see.

Hot Rats

My daughter thinks this is a really cool cover

'I'm a little pimp with my hair gassed back/Pair a khaki pants with my shoe shined black...'

I was too young really when I bought this very grown up album to understand exactly what a pimp was. I missed the clues about the little lady who walked that street and there were still a few years to go before Harvey Keitel and an uncomfortably young Jodie Foster would make it all transparent in Taxi Driver.

However, I did appreciate that 'Willie the Pimp' was a bit of an unsavoury character, that the vocals by Captain Beefheart were like nothing I'd ever heard before and that Frank Zappa's extended guitar solo with its emphasis on the wah-wah pedal was thrilling enough for me to get out the Slazenger Les Paul, 'plug' it into an old 1950s fan heater and play-along-a-Frank. Which became one of the most mortifying moments of my teenage years when my mother came into the room mid-solo. I remember feeling it necessary to explain what I was doing and probably not managing with any coherence.

My mother didn't like Frank anyway. His Rasputin-like features adorned the walls of my bedroom and she thought that he, like Roger Daltrey before him, was the Devil incarnate. It probably alleviated the situation slightly when I explained that he was Jewish – like Saul Bellow, her favourite novelist, and like all those millions of people persecuted by the Nazis and others throughout history – and that he was a family man. I don't think I bothered to reveal that he called his children Moon Unit and Dweezil, if I remember correctly. Gee, thanks Dad.

It wouldn't have made any impression if I'd told her that his music was some of the most literate of the time. There weren't many poking fun at flower children and writing about the thought-police in those heady days, and there weren't many capable of composing something as multi-layered and as richly melodic as 'Peaches en Regalia', the track that kicks off the album with a drum roll and an unforgettable bang. His music would probably have come under the same category as my simulated guitar playing, an 'awful racquet'.

But 'Peaches en Regalia' was the kind of song that I would have wanted to try out on the unconverted – parents, even grandparents. Which just goes to show how naive one can be in your mid-teens. Yet it did have an instantly recognisable tune and, like 'Son of Mr. Green Genes', the track that sandwiches 'Willie The Pimp' on the brilliant first side, it seemed to be orchestral in a way that older generations' ears might recognise, even though it used few of the instruments they would have recognised as 'classical'. My father seemed to quite like it, in any case, though he didn't stay on to listen to 'Willie The Pimp'.

'This movie for your ears was produced & directed by Frank Zappa' the credits proclaim and I knew enough to recognise that Zappa was not simply a great guitar-player, but a kind of presiding genius and creative consultant in the manner of later heroes like Charles Mingus and Gil Evans. I probably didn't recognise, however, just how important a role Ian Underwood played in providing many of the exotic sounds that were assembled into Zappa's aural movie: piano, organus maximus (whatever that was), flute, clarinets and saxes. Ian and his wife, Ruth, were both regulars in The Mothers of Invention and both, I believe, were trained as jazz musicians.

That's Ian on the right of our Frank

As indeed were several of the other luminaries that Zappa employed on Hot Rats. People like the bass player, Max Bennett, and the French violinist, Jean-Luc Ponty, whose King Kong I would investigate soon after. The jazz element is particularly pronounced on the second side.

It would have been very hard to come up with something as good as the dazzling first side, and the second side is, I suppose, a slight disappointment. The two jazzier numbers, 'Little Umbrellas' and 'It Must be a Camel', are just fine and can live happily with 'Son of Mr. Green Genes', but 'The Gumbo Variations' do go on rather. They also feature to an excessive degree the shrill violin of Don 'Sugarcane' Harris, one half of the Californian rock 'n' roll act, Don and Dewey. Even though I was a fan of bands at the time that featured the electric violin, like Curved Air and It's A Beautiful Day, all that string-scratching was and is too much for my tender ears.

Still. One weaker track would not debar Hot Rats from the Hall of Fame. It is generally considered as Zappa's masterpiece and, while his brooding hirsute features no longer grace my bedroom wall, the album has never figuratively left my side. Apart from the quality of the music itself, one reason I think why it had such a huge impact on impressionable mini-me was simply the fact that it was – apart from the Captain's banshee yips and squawks on 'Willie The Pimp' – an instrumental album. Groovy music didn't have to have words. So, in that respect alone, the album opened up my gates of perception. Once opened, I would stumble my way into the secret garden of Jay-azz.

Hot Rats came out on Zappa's own Bizarre label, part of the Warner Seven Arts conglomerate. The bizarre thing is that I have never even heard the album's supposed follow-up, Waka Jawaka. I think that Zappa's visual movie, 200 Motels, and its deeply disappointing double soundtrack album, made me tread more warily when it came to our Francis Vincent Zappa. I sold the album to Peter Metcalfe from my A-level English class. I hope he found something more to enjoy in it than I did.

What's Going On

As a kid growing up in Belfast, Thursday evenings in our household was Top Of The Pops followed by The Man From UNCLE. And the former gave me my only dose of what probably wouldn't have been called at the time black music. Fortunately, the days of referring to it as race music were behind us by then.

And black music seemed to mean primarily a string of hits from Detroit. Motown. I was fond of '(Reach Out) I'll Be There' – largely because I associated it with my first kiss, with a girl called Jane Eyre, on the evening of the Aberfan disaster – and a few assorted others, but Motown seemed to mean largely skinny women in sparkly dresses and beehives or male groups in monkey suits doing daft synchronised dance-steps. It didn't seem hip.

But later I bought myself Stevie Wonder's Music Of My Mind to find out what all the fuss was about. He used synthesisers and other modern stuff and, behold, it was good. Very good. But it wasn't a life changer. Not long after, however, I found myself in London after a few weeks of picking strawberries in the Fens. I stayed overnight with a friend of my dad's, who handled the PR for the company he worked for back home. God alone knew what PR meant, but he was a nice guy who lived in an elegant Edwardian apartment block somewhere near Victoria Station.

I must have reached the age of consent by then, because he offered me a (quote, unquote) smoke, but I didn't feel quite ready for that kind of thing. Since he had to go out for the evening, he showed me how his big hi-fi worked and offered me a pair of huge cushioned headphones for supreme stereo sound. He strongly recommended that I take a listen to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.

The other day, I listened to it again – I mean really listened to all 35 minutes and 35 seconds of it, sitting equidistant between the speakers and not even reading a book. It was a luxury that I can rarely afford in these days of to-do lists, but I wanted to remind myself why it shifted my entire musical focus and why it remains, to my mind anyway, one of the three best albums ever made. Perhaps the finest: better even than Sergeant Pepper and Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.

'Hey, what's happening?' I've always thought of Side 2 as the funky side and Side 1 as one long symphonic paean to the power of lerve. 'War is not the answer/For only love can conquer hate...' In fact, the first side features a plethora of congas and, driven by Benny Benjamin's incredible bass playing, it rattles along at a very brisk and danceable lick.

I always thought, too, that each of Side 1's six tracks segued seamlessly into one indivisible whole. Actually, there is a break between the title track and 'What's Happening Brother', probably because it was conceived as a single. But also, as with 'So What?', the opening track of Kind of Blue, it lays out the modal theme of the whole album and we hear echoes of its beautiful chord structure throughout.

So it's actually the 15 or so minutes that follow before the dying heavenly choir concludes 'Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)' which represent the true seamless suite. But that's just being picky. Here's the thing, ya? It's the subtle shifts in tempo, the breathtaking key changes (from 'Save The Children' to 'God Is Love' and then from 'God Is Love' to 'Mercy Mercy Me') and above all Marvin's magnificent soulful voice that betrays, especially on 'Flyin' High (In The Friendly Sky)', his gospel and doo-wop roots that help it stand above other notable suites, or whatever you want to call them – such as Brian Wilson's Smile and the second side of The Beatles' Abbey Road.

That vinyl coat is wild, man!

After such an opening, the flip side could have been a disappointment. But Side 2 simply shifts into a funkier gear and we hang on for the ride. A washboard or one of those scratchy percussion things that sounds like an amplified cicada introduces 'Right On': the kind of sinuous funky number in which Curtis Mayfield would specialise and which almost certainly influenced Donny Hathaway's fabulous 'The Ghetto'. It came out the next year, in 1972, and it's no coincidence that Donny recorded on his live album a version of 'What's Going On'.

'Right On' segues into 'Wholy Holy', with its strings and plaintive alto sax and gospel vocals that echo Side 1, before the album ends not with a whimper but a bang. A piano vamp and a truly deft bass line usher in the classic soundtrack to all those long tracking shots through scenes of urban desolation. 'Inner City Blues' indeed make you wanna holler ('the way they do my mind').

Not only does Marvin sing on the album like an angel, but he also produced it and wrote prescient songs about subjects I'd never yet heard about, such as ecology. 'Money, we make it/Before we see it, you take it'. 'Inner City Blues' is full of such resonant lines that underline how nothing would change in the year's following Marvin's masterpiece.

Such knowledge probably didn't help brother Marvin's state of mind. Even though there are people who prefer his follow-up album, Let's Get It On, it looks to me like it was downhill all the way from here on in. The usual cocktail of drink, drugs, divorce and other troubles.

'Don't punish me with brutality', Marvin sings poignantly on the title track of 'What's Going On'. And his father would do just that – with a smoking gun. Apparently, it was as if the son goaded his old man into doing it. His life might have ended in an extraordinarily squalid and unlikely manner, but at least he left the world with one of its greatest musical treasures. Don't take my word for it. Dig out your old copy – or for God's sake buy one if you haven't already done so – sit yourself down between the speakers and really listen to what's going on.

Post script to Nice Enough To Eat

I am indebted to my old friend, Roger Trew, noble citizen of York, for putting me right about Heavy Jelly. I quote: I have to correct you on the Heavy Jelly reference though, as it is a popular myth that it was Jackie Lomax who did use that moniker but not for this cut. The band responsible were Skip Bifferty, who were popular on the Essex blues club circuit around that time. Strangely I think I saw them supporting Quintessence back in the day, clearly not an entirely unforgettable experience though perhaps it should have been.

I still have the first Nick Drake album that I purchased after hearing the track on Nice Enough to Eat. I don't think, though, that NEtE was the most influential budget album for me: my sister bought me This is Soul when I was starting to listen to music, and though I had to take it to school inside a brown paper bag to avoid the derision of all the progressive rock snobs, I think I had the last laugh. Every cut a classic, a fair number making the 60th party list, which can't be said of Dr Strangely Strange, strangely!

(Strangely, too, I actually owned an album by Skip Bifferty. Briefly. I half-inched it from Woolies during an expedition with some naughty friends from school. When I spotted the woman behind the counter pick up the telephone and call someone – a security man? – I sounded the alarm and we ran like the wind through Belfast's city centre. Exit pursued by a bear...)

And Brian Milne on the Survive France network elucidated me about the identity of the 'spies' on the cover of Unhalfbricking: Oh yes, Unhalfbricking - which I have recently digitised. Neil and Edna Denny outside the gate on the driveway, with some of the Fairports having tea in the garden. My mother and Edna were good friends, oh the boring hours of them gossiping. Sandy and I used to have a joke about being born in the same bed! She was a year and a half older than me. My parents were over on leave, some of my mother's family had moved into SW19 and SW20 so that is where they went. I was born in that little hospital (still there but changed function somewhat). The birthing room had one bed, hence our joke. We went to the Leather Bottle pub opposite a couple of times to toast the hospital. She could tip a pint or two, our Sandy. Even from 1978 to the present I terribly miss her.

So, I am biased as hell. Despite that, she had the voice that other female folk singers aspired to before and since and had she lived and cleaned up a bit would have just got better and better.

(Fascinating addenda. Thank you fellas.)