Mike Pointon, London-born writer/broadcaster and jazz trombonist looks back over the life of his deeply missed friend, Alan Cooper.

Alan Cooper was much more than a jazz clarinettist of world-class stature, he was a true gentleman born out of time with an innate capacity for friendship that transcended music .Perhaps he gained most public recognition via his eccentric Edwardian persona and a brief chart-topping period with the original Temperance Seven when they had an unexpected hit with You’re Driving Me Crazy in 1961 but there was much more to ‘Coops’, as his many friends affectionately called him, than that…

Gordon Alan Cooper was born in Leeds in 1931 and,while studying at Leeds College of Art,started playing in the Vernon Street Ramblers alongside fellow student Diz Disley ,who had entered the College on the same day in 1947. They both joined the Yorkshire Jazz Band in 1949 and by all accounts Leeds at that time with its street parades and use of jazz at local functions developed a communal ambience not unlike its inspiration,New Orleans .

The band’s trips to London brought them wider recognition,together with early,if primitive,recordings which included such future names as Dickie Hawdon and Ed O’Donnell . Unlike some of his contemporaries Cooper decided , although he loved playing,that his principal career lay in the art world and he graduated in sculpture at The Royal College of Art,eventually teaching at St. Martins and Chelsea Colleges .

He still took part in the burgeoning mid-50s London jazz scene and when the newly-formed Temperance Seven enlisted him in 1957,initially on bass clarinet ,Cooper’s tall,subsequently bearded,elegant figure and soft, cultured voice were ideal for their majestic on-stage image.(On a Middle East tour many years later,when playing in front of an after-dinner audience, he once drolly informed them that the bass clarinet was a seldom-heard instrument,mainly because its volume could hardly project above `soup level’).

I was playing regularly at the Royal College Of Art a year or so later in a band which included Bill Greenow and our banjoist was John Watson, to become known as `Gieves’ with the Temps, thanks to Cooper’s period sense of humour. Although several of their members sat in with us on occasion I don’t recall encountering Coops at the time but came to admire his gracefully stylish playing via their later records and through seeing them live .He gave up playing regularly with the Temps after his natural instinct against the more venal aspects of showbusiness became offended but his idiosyncratic style was showcased with such leading groups as Alex Welsh,Freddy Randall and Sandy Brown ,for whom he often depped as their creative styles had much in common.
Continued on Farewell 2