Saturday, March 27, 2010

The sublime Ella





In 1970-71, I had a Saturday job at a grocer's on Oldham Street, Manchester. The shop, and the small chain it belonged to - Maypole - have long gone, of course, but when I bought some CDs yesterday, I was reminded of it. My wage, for a nine-hour day, was 25s, (£1.25) less 5d for my insurance stamp, so I took home 24s 7d, in a brown envelope, usually two ten-shilling notes, two florins, a sixpence and a penny. I remember going out in my lunch hour to buy an LP, probably Paul McCartney's first post-Beatles effort. It cost me 39s/11d, and would have cost that wherever I bought it because of retail price maintenance. So, for my younger reader, that's all but £2. In other words, Sir Thumbs Aloft's magnum opus cost me about as much as I earned in one and three-quarter days. If I were 16 now, I would have to be paid at least the minimum wage, which Dr Broon and his pals have currently fixed at £3.57 per hour, so I'd have been making about £30 for a day spent lugging boxes of tinned peas up from the cellar, swabbing down surfaces, making tea for my superiors, and so on. If I chose to spend this largesse on those quaintly old-fashioned CDs that old people have, even at top prices, I could afford three with my day's pay, and more if I bought at the frequently available discount. In effect, then, my labour would buy at least five times the product it would have bought in 1970. What's more, LPs, because of the restrictions of the vinyl format, rarely contained much more than about half - an - hour's music: five or six three minute tracks per side. A forty - minute running time was rare. So with CDs routinely clocking in at an hour or more, I estimate that my day's wage now would be worth about eight times the amount of music it was worth then. If I downloaded, instead of buying the compact shaving - mirrors, I could probably double that. Music can never have been as cheap as it is now.
In Fopp yesterday, I spent a massive £7 - two hours' minimum wage for a 16 year old - on two items. The first, costing the same as I spent nearly forty years ago on McCartney, was a double reissue of Count Basie's two albums from the late fifties, The Atomic Mr Basie and the live album of Quincy Jones tunes, One More Time.

My other purchase, for £5, was the complete Ella Fitzgerald Sings Gershwin, from the songbook series. This was originally issued as five LPs, and is now presented as 3 CDs, each with about 20 tracks, so the cost is about eight of your earth pence per track. For that, you get Ella on absolutely sensational form, singing some of the all-time great songs from the Gershwin catalogue: "A Foggy Day", "But Not For Me", "Nice Work If You Can Get It", "I've Got A Crush On You", "How Long Has This Been Going On", "Strike Up The Band", "They All Laughed", "Fascinating Rhythm", "Embraceable You"....She recorded this in her forties, when she was arguably at the peak of her powers, and she soars effortlessly over the swinging Nelson Riddle arrangements. It is sublime.
Both of these buys are new reissues from a company I'd not heard of before, the curiously named Not Now Music, from that hotbed of popular song, er, West Hampstead. They've done a great job here, so next time I have a few spare shillings, I'll be on the lookout for more.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Ee the't an owd'un. How does my 89p download of Billie Holiday's I Cover the Waterfront stand up to inflation? It feels like good value right now.

Rob said...

Pretty good, I think - but you can get a box of all the Holiday Verve albums for a fiver.