The name alone is epic: Sonny Sharrock.
I won’t resist the urge, because I can’t, to pick a low-hanging pun and opine that Sonny put the rock back in jazz.
Still blazing down the trail Miles helped forge with the genre-obliterating Jack Johnson sessions (which Sharrock made an appearance at), Sonny seamlessly wove angular, concrete-hard riffs into compositions that were just on this side of free jazz. He was recognized as a genius fairly early on, which naturally meant he had no chance to make a decent living as a musician.
He dropped out of the scene for many years and came back (and/or was goaded back by the indefatigable Bill Laswell, not only one of the all-time heroes of postmodern jazz, but a man who has helped create, collaborate on and produce more albums than some people will ever listen to), invigorated and en fuego. He made, arguably, his best music at the end. Just as he was on the precipice of way-overdue major label acclaim he was felled by a heart attack. He remains not only a guitarist’s guitarist, but a jazz guitarist’s guitarist, which naturally means not nearly enough folks know about him.
In late 2015 we finally got an appropriately remastered reissue of his masterpiece, and swan song, Ask The Ages.
It’s well worth reaquiring for anyone who has earlier, inferior pressings, and obligatory –as in, drop everything, take my word for it, and just go buy this– for the uninitiated. Get initiated, and then take a deeper dive into Sharrock’s oeuvre.
Consider this a primer.
Anyone with ears can understand the beauty there. But Sonny was also a beast, and he brought the pain with an intensity that has not been rivaled by many names outside of Greek mythology.
Exhibit A: From the same album, this one really showcases the incomparable Elvin Jones and Sharrock’s closest aesthetic compatriot, Pharoah Sanders. It’s okay to be afraid; that is what happens just before you break through to the bright lights.
Whenever a remarkable artist is taken from us entirely too soon, there’s all the more reason to savor (and yes, celebrate) whatever scraps they left behind, making sure we appreciate all there is to get. And for the major works they gifted the world? These are to be treasured, studied, absorbed, and imitated. Yeah right, imitated? Well, no one can duplicate the kind of majesty on display here, but when I say imitate, I mean incorporate this type of honesty and passion, realize what things you were put on this earth to accomplish, and use a man like Sharrock as a motivating force for good. It’s the least any of us can do, considering what he’s already done for us.
There is music we rightly esteem, and keep close to our hearts. There is music, whatever its original intent, that can inspire or console us, or make us a bit more grateful to have been born. And then there is the rarest work, the stuff we can only call other. It is, as is always the case with geniuses stolen years or even decades before it made any sense, bewildering and confounding to contemplate what else might have been in store (for them, for us). But there is a surreal sort of symmetry when a singular artist’s final statement becomes instantly elegiac and immortal. Ask The Ages is a definitive document of Sharrock’s imagination; it’s also a living document of what humankind, at its best, is capable of achieving.
