Malcolm Jones

Following our ‘Music and Memory’ event, part of the launch of Granta 111: Going Back, we have been asking writers to choose five songs or pieces of music which are important to them, and which bring back particularly salient memories.

Malcolm Jones

Every time I hear ...

1. Miles Davis: ‘Pharoah’s Dance’

I am 16, on my bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking, this spooky, almost scary music makes everything in this little room seem so square and I don’t care – for music like this, I’ll betray my life.

2. Fred Astaire: ‘Pick Yourself Up’

Some people measure out their life in coffee spoons but with me it’s movie scenes. I can’t hear this song without seeing Fred Astaire posing as a neophyte at the dancing school and trying to seduce Ginger Rogers with this song and then saving her job by convincing her boss that she’s taught Fred the amazing dance they do while the song still plays, and in the middle of it all, they fall in love.

3. The theme song from High Noon

I hear a muzak version in a restaurant where, at 18, right before going to college, I’m visiting my father, who I haven’t seen much since he divorced my mother six years earlier, and who now asks, Do you know what that song is? And I say no, and he says, a little incredulously, ‘High Noon’, looking at me like I've failed a test and me staring back, thinking the same thing.

4. Jerry Lee Lewis: ‘Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On’

I see my then 2-year-old son, who’s never heard this song, react as though someone just stuck his finger in a light socket or hit him with the Holy Spirit and he goes rocketing around the room – dancing, running, grinning, laughing and literally bouncing off the walls and the furniture – as long as the song plays – he’s as transported by that music as any human can be.

5. Jo Stafford: ‘Scarlet Ribbons’

I am five again, riding in the backseat of my aunt’s car when this comes on the radio in the dark, sung by a woman, probably Jo Stafford, and it sounds almost like a lullaby but one with magic in it – and I remember struggling against sleep to hear the end of the song, to see if there was some explanation of what happened, and when it ended asking, Was that real magic? And my aunt leaning over the bench seat and saying, Go back to sleep.