yesterdays

A couple of days ago I made a prize acquisition. A charity shop in Sleaford had for sale an old Panasonic record player. A label on the dusty black casing read simply “PATS tested. Pooter. £5.00.” The machine even had my name on it. How could I resist? I bought it and carried it home.

The record player dates from the days when the original Dansette and Bush portables were in decline and manufacture was switching to places like Japan to produce a new breed of sleek, smoky-dark, Perspex-rendered modernistic products. It predates Euronics (whatever they are) and I suspect the anatomy of my new acquisition has more mechanical parts than a 1950s Meccano kit. It was produced when the word “digital” meant you used fingers to press buttons.

Mrs Pooter was not too impressed. I’m from the era of 78rpm and she’s more of your 45rpm age. “What do you want with that old thing?” she queried. The answer was obvious to me. So I can play my old albums on it, of course. “You’ve only got one,” she grumbled and left the study to stir the contents of the Remoska. She’s right of course. I do have only one album – but what an album! It’s Charlie Christian live at Minton’s in May 1941. I bought it on E-bay some years ago and have been waiting for this opportunity to play it on a genuine old-style record player. I also have a single – Hard Work by John Handy, but I question whether this latter disc can be regarded as jazz. It’s more R&B-cum-funk.

Despite uxorial reservations, the search is on. I want to buy old jazz LPs and EPs. Modern CDs are too clinically pristine for me, even the re-mastered ones. Reproduction is perfect to the extent that even Kid Ory sounds as if he recorded the track yesterday. All those atmospheric clicks and crackles have been digitised out. My tasty pig’s ear has been turned into synthetic yet expensive silk

Those for whom youth is still an anchor to their perceptions will probably not understand what I mean. But I was brought up on the then radically different and glorious Radio Luxembourg (hissing and fading) and warped shellac 78rpm disks that wobbled on the turn table and scratched irremediably the first time they were played. My original Bud Freemans never sounded as if he was standing next me in a synthesised and antiseptic recording studio; they sounded as if the band had performed on toy instruments in a noisy tin-lined club on the floor below. I’m conditioned to expect jazz to be enjoyed with socks in the ears and rusty nails being used as a stylus. Wonderful stuff.

Now, my new-old Panasonic turntable allows me to relive my youth. Charlie crackles and clicks, and clatters and claws, as only true and genuine jazz can and should. This is jazz with a capital C. I’m in my element again. I have jazz with the C-Factor. And I love it.