Fifteen Minutes of Magic.
October 12, 2012I like vinyl. Finding a long-lost recording on vinyl is like finding you hadn’t, after all, drunk all the Chateau Lafite. A friend, considering his preference for LP over CD, did not cite all the audiophile reasons, like smoother dynamics or listening fatigue, but remarked that vinyl, with its cover and notes and artwork, is a possession. What would he have made of Bruce Willis finding himself unable to bequeath his vast collection of downloads to his family? My recent purchase from Crazy Beats Records, Upminster, is an artifact. Magic and Movement by tenor sax player John Klemmer has a gatefold sleeve, with minimal written content, but a huge painting of a blonde young man – Klemmer himself? – lying on his back in water with a square of the canvas torn out to reveal the starlit cosmos. Add in the pompous eastern-style pronouncements, and you’re there. But where, exactly?
Some cultural orientation might help. It is 1973. The recording is on Impulse, which had been John Coltrane’s label since the early sixties, so the confluence of jazz and eastern mysticism was in full flow. Impulse was also host to Pharoah Sanders, Michael White and Gato Barbieri, which represents a definite world/West Coast/hippie/bells-and-shakers attempt to broaden the appeal of plain old jazz. I assume this is what Buddy Rich had in mind when he talked about “funny hats”.
1973 was a good year at Montreux Jazz Festival, where side 2. of this LP was recorded. Miles Davis was there, as was Canned Heat, Albert King, and Gene Ammons. Sam Rivers was there, which accounts for the presence of bass player Cecil McBee at the festival, and thus with Klemmer on 6th July. McCoy Tyner recorded his classic album Enlightenment the next day, his group containing drummer Alphonse Mouzon, which accounts for Mouzon’s availability for the Klemmer performance. Mouzon also got to play with the huge gongs thoughtfully provided by the Paiste company. The last member of this ad hoc quartet was Tom Canning (piano), better known for his long stint with Al Jarreau.
John Klemmer had already made Waterfalls and side 1. of this album with a band comprising two quarters of the Fourth Way, Mike Nock (piano) and Eddie Marshall (drums), and Wilton Felder on bass. After the foursquare subtleties of this band, a lesser player getting on stage with the Canning/McBee/Mouzon outfit would have felt he had been dropped into a whirlpool. The title of the main piece, Tree of the Forbidden Fruit, is presumably a rationalisation after the event and it lasts about 15 minutes. It verges on a cutting session. The drums are a polyrhythmic barrage, the bass an off-the-beat staccato. The mood is militant and the execution supremely confident. The first-time listener is left stunned, gulping for air, pleading, where’s the one? Klemmer, nevertheless, rides the wave with Coltranesque brio and stamina.
Much is made of the spontaneity of jazz, its essential improvisatory character. But much jazz is hardly spontaneous at all, as remarked by drummer John Marshall. Play with the same people long enough and you’ll hear the same things. Nevertheless, one of the glories of jazz is its potential to concentrate the cultural influences of its time, put together a temporary gathering of musicians with all their differing attitudes and agendas, then transcend it all to produce a moment of concentrated excitement and beauty. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore: not often, anyway.
Posted by Mark Laurence.