It had all the makings of a musical disaster of epic proportions--yet it turned out to be one of the most stimulating and serendipitous live jazz performances ever captured on record.

This was the formula: Take the Les McCann Trio, put it onstage in the Montreux Casino before a packed audience, add two horn players--Eddie Harris and Benny Bailey--who had never played with Les before, give the musicians no rehearsal and no music, don't even tell the two soloists the tunes they are going to be called upon to play (not that they would know them anyway), set the tape rolling . . . and hope for a miracle.

That's precisely what producer Joel Dorn did--and, amazingly, it proved not to be a forlorn hope. If it wasn't exactly a miracle, it came pretty close, all things considered. There is an immediacy, an electricity, about the music on this album. You can almost feel the adrenaline flowing. The musicians are out there on a high wire with no safety net--and they are having a ball.

The Les McCann Trio, with Leroy Vinnegar on bass and Donald Dean on drums, was the main attraction on June 18; the Eddie Harris Quartet, with Jodie Christian on piano, Melvin Jackson on bass, and Billy Hart on drums, topped the bill two days later. Both groups were extremely well received. On the following evening, the Les McCann Trio took part in an impromptu jam session, and one of the sitters-in was the superb trumpet and flugelhorn player Benny Bailey, from Cleveland, Ohio.

Apart from a short break in the early '60s, Benny had been resident in Europe since 1953 and at that time was working with the Swiss Radio Band and living in nearby Lausanne.

Les and Eddie had already agreed that it would be good to have a trumpet player on the date and, after enjoying Bailey's extroverted contribution to the jam session, they saw him as the obvious choice. But Bailey himself had reservations: "I was really the odd man out. Les' bag was one which Eddie had no problem with, but it really wasn't my kind of music. Still, when they asked me if I would play a set with them the following day, I thought, 'Why not?'"

Benny Bailey says he didn't realize at first that the session was being recorded. "I didn't know any of the tunes, and there was no rehearsal. They had to call out the changes for me."

Eddie Harris was equally unprepared: "I told Les just to play his usual stuff with the Trio and I would look over his shoulder to check the chords--because I used to be a piano player. We had one microphone for Benny and me, and there was one television camera set right in front of us--but I couldn't stand out in front because I had to watch Les and play at the same time. Benny didn't really need the mike anyway--he's such a powerful player.

"Every so often a technician would crawl up onstage and pull the microphone back to the front--and I would grab it again and pull it right back again. If I hadn't done that there wouldn't have been a record, because I wouldn't have been on mike. It turned out to be a magical concert."

From the very first note that this quixotic quintet played, an unremitting groove was established--and it never let up.

[...]

The opening track, "Compared To What," the sardonic social commentary written by Gene McDaniels, who, earlier in his career, had sung with the Les McCann band, proved unquestionably to be the hit of the album. It had been in the Les McCann library for about six years, and he had recorded it in September 1966 for the Limelight album Les McCann Plays The Hits.

"But," says Les, "it was only just before we came to Montreux that year that we finally got the groove we wanted." Unquestionably, Les made the song his very own with the performance on this album.

Les recalls: "Benny didn't know the tune. I don't think he ever played a song that was on just one chord before. I shouted to him, 'We're in F, man--just play!' And he came up with a solo which was to become one of the most memorable on the album. People used to ask me afterwards, 'Who was that trumpet player?'"

And Benny remembers: "Some months after the concert, my sister wrote to me from the States and told me that 'Compared To What' was in the charts. I had totally forgotten about it by then. But when I went back to the States about ten years later, I found the only way people knew about me--especially young people--was through that record. That was amazing. They wouldn't have known me if it hadn't been for that album--so it proved very beneficial as far as my reputation was concerned. But, to tell the truth, I didn't really like the music too much--it was too commercial for me, not the kind of stuff I would normally choose to play. Still, the session developed such an irresistible groove that it just knocked everybody out. And the rhythm section was marvelous--Leroy's a tremendous walker on bass--he never wanted to take solos--and Donald Dean's a superbly swinging drummer."

[...]

"Another thing I'll never forget about that session--just before we went onstage, and for the first time in my life, I smoked some hash. When I got on the bandstand, there I was, the new slimmed-down McCann, trying to look cool--and I didn't know where the hell I was. I was totally disoriented. The other guys said, 'OK, play, man!' Somehow I got myself together--and after that, everything just took off.

"Swiss Movement was certainly a major landmark in my career. And it was a one-off phenomenon--something that can never be repeated."

--MIKE HENNESSEY