Sonny Sharrock – Ask the Ages

Produced by Bill Laswell and Sonny Sharrock, Ask the Ages was guitarist Sharrock’s final studio album before his passing in 1994. It’s a wonder of tightly wound power bop and free jazz, one that merges the guitarist with drummer Elvin Jones, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, and bassist Charnett Moffett. By the early ’90s, the band members had eased into middle age after rising as so-called young guns. Any notion that they’d softened, though, is destroyed within the first 32 bars, as Sharrock wends his way through an opening phrase given wings by Jones, Sanders and Moffett’s combined energy. Dense with power, Ask the Ages is one of the great jazz records of the ’90s, and was originally only released on CD and cassette. It was released on vinyl for the first time in 2019 as pair of 45 rpm LPs on Hive Mind, and issued again as a single-LP Vinyl Me Please exclusive in 2021. Both versions will now set you back more than $150 on the used market. Even the CD versions are getting pricy; currently used copies are fetching $30. – Randall