Before British jazz-rock sank into lengthy repetition of the same, the most interesting music may have been that of Major Surgery. Prominent in my memory is a "Keep Music Live" event organised by the Glasgow Musicians Union one spring afternoon in a trade union social club just south of the river. The band played an exciting set and were happy to chat afterwards.
Major Surgery returned to Glasgow in autumn 1975, performing at Partick Burgh Hall (the jazz venue of the time). After that, I lost track of them. Although they maintained a long residency at a Croydon pub (link) , they left only minimal recordings, making it difficult to check my memories.
But I recalled an earlier cassette-only release, "St Vitus Dance", on Gordon Beck's Jaguar Records label. It is not listed on Discogs or any other platforms though. Re-finding my copy is an occasion. It is amazing how immediately familiar are the performances: that's one well-worn cassette.
My original focus was on Jim Roche's guitar, from memory using an octave divider as well as the obvious wah-wah of the time. He was such an inventive guitarist, capably moving from supporting soundscapes to solo or duet playing in seconds. I maybe found Don Weller's sax too muscular? The sax I had heard at home stopped at Johnny Hodges; on my own records it started with rock session playing by Alan Skidmore; the bop and hard bop generations were still to be encountered. So I lacked context and was not really ready for Don Weller.
Now, though, Weller and Roche sound well integrated, twisting and turning, propelled by the strong rhythm section. There is fine interplay here, sometimes quiet, sometimes tempestuous - such energy, far from the scale-running ditch into which jazz-fusion fell.
Tracks such as "Jerkin the Gherkin" deliver a funky beat opportunity for each musician to solo, but are pretty much standard fare of the time. Others though, especially the title track, are spacious: eddying and flowing, allowing each musician the space to stretch out in passing combinations. Unison passages and jamming recall performances by the 1971 King Crimson, when the musicians learned to set aside their repertoire and trust their instincts, listen and create.
There is an barely remarked historical moment in the early 1970s. If jazz musicians adopting jazz-rock could be accused by purists of chasing commercial success, it was not a move on which any prospered. In that, Major Surgery are emblematic but not unique. One of the most exciting bands of their time, but stuck playing in their local pub. Why was this? It may come back to my point above: a significant gap in the cultural familiarity rendered it unlikely that a jazz-rock fashioned from a post-Coltrane vocabulary could find a place.
So here I am, 50 years after last seeing Major Surgery and pretty much the same duration since losing interest in jazz-rock, retrieving that moment. How exciting and full of potential it felt.