PHANTOM SWAY

    • Jazz for Nonbelievers: Maynard Ferguson

    James is on travel this week, so the bigwigs in the Phantom Sway C Suite tagged me with this week’s Jazz for Nonbelievers playlist. And when I say “tagged”, I mean “sent two large men with baseball bats to loom menacingly over me while saying things like ‘youse better picks some tunes what swing’ and ‘you ain’t gonna look pretty if your playlist don’t make the boss dance'”.

    So I went with one of my Top Three jazz musicians ever, Maynard Ferguson.

    Few trumpeters have wielded their instrument with as much sheer joy as Ferguson, who began his career as a 15- year old high school dropout in his native Quebec. When he was 20, he joined Charlie Barnet’s trumpet line alongside a young Doc Severinsen and when that band ended, he played with Stan Kenton’s Innovations Orchestra. Jazz fans loved Ferguson, who won Down Beat magazine’s reader poll as best trumpeter for three years running.

    He led and played in bands consistently until the late 60s, when the demand for swing dance bands bottomed out. Ferguson essentially disappeared from the music scene and began to experiment with many of the nascent psychedelic spiritual movements that cropped up throughout the decade. He lived for a while with Timothy Leary’s psychedelic movement and eventually moved to India, where he studied and taught spiritualism.

    Long story short, he couldn’t stay away from music. He formed a band at the institute where he taught in India and, when he moved to the UK, he formed another band and started recording albums. Later, his music caught fire again and he came back to the US where he moved from traditional jazz to jazz fusion to cool jazz to surprisingly solid covers of movie and television themes with ridiculous ease and rock-solid musicianship. In all of his music, though, he always brought two things — his amazing range and supreme swagger. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a jazz trumpeter who had a stronger nor higher “scream” range than Maynard nor one who owned the stage like he did.

    I tried to give you a solid sampler of Ferguson’s range. He truly did dabble in many different styles and I’m sure there’s something in his discography you’ll love and something you’ll hate. Here are a few things for which you might want to listen.

    1. Maynard. I mean, the man never took a solo off ever. You may think I’m overestimating his range and his power. I’m not.
    2. Denis DiBlasio, the baritone saxophone player on his albums after 1982. Before that, Bobby Militello was very good, but Denis was…man. I played bari sax in a jazz band for 11 years and his big, fat bouncy sound was one I really tried to emulate as much as I could. Dig his solos in “Sesame Street” and “Coconut Champagne”, especially.
    3. The cover songs. It’s a jazz tradition to cover songs that aren’t jazz and most attempts aren’t all that good. Maynard’s bands made far more of them work than you’d expect. He went gold with his cover of “Gonna Fly Now”, but his covers of the “Sesame Street” theme and “Hey Jude” are way better than you’d imagine.

    I saw Maynard live, late in his career.  Even though he was clearly nowhere near his prime (and was fighting off a persistent chest cold), he was electric. His horn was majestic. It was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen.

     

    Jimmie Bise Jr
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