In the summer of 1984, in the era of "Frankie Say Relax" t-shirts, I travelled to Berlin by way of Hamburg. In Hamburg I stayed with my dad's friend Vincenz Raffay and his wife. They were, I guess, half way between my dad and me in age — which, I'm horrified to realise, means they were probably younger than I am now. Without children but with many young people visiting their house. Vincenz loved to talk about culture. He told me all about the Bauhaus movement, and, on my way back, I was able to give him the catalogue from the Kandinsky exhibition showing in Berlin. When I mentioned an interest in jazz, he leapt at the chance to play me some of his favourite records.
This one, he said, was the greatest jazz concert ever (Wikipedia tells us that this phrase was part of the marketing in some countries). My ear was insufficiently tutored to hear what was so great about it — Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were just names to me, while Roach, Mingus and Powell would have been unknown. But Vincenz's recommendation was good enough for me, so I got a copy when I got back to the UK (£2.49 from W.H.Smith), in order to educate my ears. Nearly a quarter of a century on, they're beginning to get it.
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