RIPMJAZZ
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Climax

Climax, “A creative review in the jazz spirit,” was officially published by The Climax Jazz, Art & Pleasure Society of Lower Bourbon Street (New Orleans). With Robert Cass as director and Del Weniger as contributing editor, Climax published two annual volumes labeled as “Sessions” with Session One containing 44 pages and Session Two 90 pages. Climax reflected the overlapping literary and musical scenes of 1950s New Orleans with contributions from numerous poets, prose writers, and essayists, many associated with the Beat Generation.

Robert Cass (1924-2005) was a bohemian poet and writer, self-described as New Orleans' “oldest living beatnik.” In an interview with the journalist Dennis Formento, Cass described Climax as being inspired by his interests in jazz and voodoo dance. The editorial “office” was in fact a bar and underground literature bookstore, A Quarterite Place at 733 Bourbon Street, which was previously subject to police raids. Weniger (1923-1999), a botanist then teaching in Oklahoma, provided the printing equipment for the first issue.

Perhaps the clearest distillation of Cass’s intentions for Climax can be found in a note to potential authors: “Climax offers the jazz-conscious writer an opportunity to get his kicks and share them with others on the Pleasure Principal alone, and free of any restrictions implicit in Hacksmanship. Particular emphasis will be placed on the writings of the jazzmen and on the work of those camp followers who have mastered the perspective of the creator. The angle of the creator is the CLIMAX SLANT. And our ‘policy’ as regards the so-called opposing ‘schools of jazz’ is oriented in the knowledge that School closes where Life begins and in our conviction that the jazz spirit embraces all that can be expressed in the VERB form of the concept Swing. Swing!” [Climax 1 (1955): ii. Formatting original.]

As such, jazz permeated all writings, either directly – in homages to particular musicians, literary interpretations of improvised solos, jazz instruments or clubs as metaphor or atmosphere, or depictions of nightlife in New Orleans – or in spirit. Writers who published in Climax include:

Kenneth Lawrence Beaudoin

Trumbull Drachler

Lawrence Lipton

Jacques Prévert

Pablo Picasso

Charles Guenther

Robert Cass (under the pseudonym Singer Beasley)

Judson Crews

Kenneth H. Ford

W. S. Allen

Robert A. Perlongo

Robert D. West

Gil Orlovitz

Pierre Emmanuel

Curtis Zahn

David A. Nassberg

Stanley Kiesel

Leslie Garrett

E. W. Northnagel

Anne McKeever

Neil Montgomery

David Fisher

In addition, the jazz writer Bruce Lippincott wrote on the New Orleans scene and Ralston Crawford contributed photography of jazz musicians in New Orleans.

“In New Orleans, Lawrence Lipton singled out Robert Cass for starting the magazine, Climax: A creative review in the jazz spirit in 1955. At the same time, Cass opened a club and art gallery call the Climax Jazz, Art & Pleasure Society of Lower Bourbon Street. Cass’s journal and club served as a magnet for bohemian and Beatnik activity in New Orleans. It was also one of the few openly integrated clubs in the South.”

Alan Bisbort, Beatniks: A Guide to an American Subculture (2010)

New Orleans Avant-garde