Free Reliable Essays by Clive James

squeaks, Bronx cheers and throttled slate-pencil noises for serious consideration . . . dervish-like heights of hysteria.’ It should be remembered, if this sounds like a grave being danced on, that Larkin’s was virtually the sole dissenting critical voice. Coltrane died in triumph and Larkin had every right to think at the time that to express any doubts about the stature of the deceased genius was to whistle against the wind.
    The whole of All What Jazz is a losing battle. Larkin is arguing in support of entertainment at a time when entertainment was steadily yielding ground to portentous significance. His raillery against the saxophonists is merely the most strident expression of a general argument which he goes on elaborating as its truth becomes more clear to himself. In a quieter way he became progressively disillusioned with Miles Davis. In January 1962 it was allowed that in an informal atmosphere Davis could produce music ‘very far from the egg-walking hushedness’ he was given to in the studio. In October of the same year Larkin gave him points for bonhomie. ‘According to the sleeve, Davis actually smiled twice at the audience during the evening and there is indeed a warmth about the entire proceedings that makes this a most enjoyable LP.’ But by the time of Seven Steps to Heaven a year later, Davis has either lost what little attraction he had or else Larkin has acquired the courage of his convictions. ‘ . . . his lifeless muted tone, at once hollow and unresonant, creeps along only just in tempo, the ends of the notes hanging down like Dali watches . . .’ In 1964, Larkin begged to dissent from the enthusiastic applause recorded on the live album Miles Davis in Europe . ‘ . . . the fact that he can spend seven or eight minutes playing “Autumn Leaves” without my recognizing or liking the tune confirms my view of him as a master of rebarbative boredom.’ A year later he was reaching for the metaphors. ‘I freely confess that there have been times recently, when almost anything – the shape of a patch on the ceiling, a recipe for rhubarb jam read upside down in the paper – has seemed to me more interesting than the passionless creep of a Miles Davis trumpet solo.’ But in this case the opening blast was followed by a climb-down. ‘Davis is his usual bleak self, his notes wilting at the edges as if with frost, spiky at up-tempos, and while he is still not my ideal of comfortable listening his talent is clearly undiminished.’ This has the cracked chime of a compromise. The notes, though wilting as if with frost instead of like Dali watches, are nevertheless still wilting, and it is clear from the whole drift of Larkin’s criticism that he places no value on uncomfortable listening as such. A 1966 review sounds more straightforward. ‘ . . . for me it was an experience in pure duration. Some of it must have been quite hard to do.’
    But in Larkin’s prose the invective which implies values is always matched by the encomium which states them plainly. He jokes less when praising than when attacking but the attention he pays to evocation is even more concentrated. The poem ‘For Sidney Bechet’ (‘On me your voice falls as they say love should,/ Like an enormous yes’) can be matched for unforced reverence in the critical prose: ‘ . . . the marvellous “Blue Horizon”, six choruses of slow blues in which Bechet climbs without interruption or hurry from lower to upper register, his clarinet tone at first thick and throbbing, then soaring like Melba in an extraordinary blend of lyricism and power that constituted the unique Bechet voice, commanding attention the instant it sounded.’ He is similarly eloquent about the ‘fire and shimmer’ of Bix Beiderbecke and of the similes he attaches to Pee Wee Russell there is no end – Russell’s clarinet seems to function in Larkin’s imagination as a kind of magic flute.
    The emphasis, in Larkin’s admiration for all these artists, is on