Maynard Ferguson has passed

[Robert J]

Our weekday afternoon jazz DJ, Joe Bourne, is getting ready right now to play some Maynard Ferguson music--from 3:30 to 4 EST and 4:30-4:55 EST (he has a prescheduled guest from 4 to 4:30). You can listen here.

listening now

[Lazaro Vega]

When you see someone going out with their boots on, the way Maynard did, and the way Elvin Jones did, it's inspirational.

Does anyone have a copy of Bob Graettinger's "A Trumpet" written for Maynard and recorded by Stan Kenton?

That's alluded me.

Blue Lake will honor Maynard tonight. We'll begin the program with "Frame for the Blues."

[Tom 1960]

Sorry to come across this news. While I don't own any of his recordings, I clearly remember as a kid, a neighborhood friend who was a trumpeter, being a huge fan of his. When I was over at the house, he could usually be found playing his recordings over and over. R.I.P.

[ghost of miles]

Does anyone have a copy of Bob Graettinger's "A Trumpet" written for Maynard and recorded by Stan Kenton?

Lazaro, do you or the station have the Kenton CD City of Glass? It's on there. (As is just about all of Graettinger's work for Kenton.)

[Stereojack]

Love those Roulette albums! I gotta play "Frame For the Blues" tonight.

[Lazaro Vega]

Ah, we have excerpts from "City of Glass" but not the whole enchilada.

Will also spin a 1966 Maynard Ferguson and His Orchestra radio broadcast from the Blue Room of the Tropicana Hotel, Las Vegas, including "Take the A Train" and "Got the Spirit." "Live Jazz From Club 15," 1966 CBS Radio Series (disc includes The Stan Getz Quartet and The Gene Krupa Orchstra featuring Anita O'Day on Honeysuckle Rose amongst others, both 1966). 2006 Request Records.

[Durium]

Maynard Ferguson ( 1928 - 2006 )

A great trumpet player and band leader.

Keep swinging

Durium

[wigwise]

Early this morning during an encore of Larry King, the CNN ticker at the bottom of the screen made mention of Maynard's passing. They quoted something Scott Yanow said about Maynard, spelling his name as Yarnow.

R.I.P.

[ejp626]

I saw Maynard live once. He was the featured guest at a high school marching band competition held in Soldier Field in Chicago. It was probably 1985, maybe 1986. He was on after the finals. Anyway, he was in good form and could still hit those high notes. During a Brazilian-inflected number, the band I was in started doing a congo-type line dance and pretty soon we were snaking through the stadium. At the very end of the show, there were fireworks. What a night! We were so jazzed to make it to the competition and to be in the big city. If I recall correctly, we came pretty close to making the finals that year and made the finals the following year. I never really thought about seeing him live again, as nothing would quite live up to that.

[Ed S]

Maynard Ferguson performs Round Midnight

[kulu se mama]

sad news about maynard.

i enjoy his early work, but not much of his later work.

i mean no disrespect (and this might not be the time nor forum), but his manager is quoted in the morning paper as saying there are no greats left - kenton, basie, ellington and maynard are gone.

the quote might be out of context - he might be referring to band leaders and not just jazz musicians - but if he was referring to jazz musicians then i think a man known as sonny might disagree.

[ghost of miles]

sad news about maynard.

i enjoy his early work, but not much of his later work.

i mean no disrespect (and this might not be the time nor forum), but his manager is quoted in the morning paper as saying there are no greats left - kenton, basie, ellington and maynard are gone.

the quote might be out of context - he might be referring to band leaders and not just jazz musicians - but if he was referring to jazz musicians then i think a man known as sonny might disagree.

Not too keen on his later work either, but have just begun to discover his earlier work in the past year or so, and rue that I never got the Mosaic set.

Re: band leaders, one could make the argument that Gerald Wilson is pretty close to the "great" category. Or possibly even in it.

[chris olivarez]

I've said this before somewhere on the board but god I don't remember where. Anyway-again- I saw Maynard years ago at a county fair in Imperial County in California which is just about as nowheresville in California as you could get and he and the band were playing just across the way from a dirt track at the same time a race was going on. Maynard appeared unphased about this unfortunate turn of events and proclaimed to the audience that the band could play louder than the automobiles and proceeded to do just that and played great to boot. I felt blessed to see Maynard even if it was in the middle of freaking nowhere California and I'll miss him.RIP.

[DMP]

Firsr saw Maynard in the early '60's, and caught him off and on for the next 45 years - not sure I can say that about too many other musicians. (Maybe Clark Terry and Sonny Rollins.) I remember a review years ago calling one of his Roulette albums "high, loud and ridiculous" - never quite got the negative reaction to those bands, I always thought they were pretty good. Ferguson usually included one or two of his big numbers ("Frame For The Blues," "Ole," "Motherless Child," and, later, "Maria") in his shows, but there was always plenty of less familiar material, too, and the bands were packed with first-rate soloists. A couple of years ago, the night before an annual concert we put on here in Pittsburgh, we took a couple of the musicians down to hear Maynard at a local club - Joe Lovano and Mark Whitfield - and they both had a great time; Whitfield was still shaking his head the next day.

[CJ Shearn]

RIP Maynard. I missed my chance to see him locally a year and a half ago

[sheldonm]

RIP Maynard. I missed my chance to see him locally a year and a half ago

...and he was scheduled to play here in Indy in the next month or so!!

[Randy Twizzle]

From the Washington Post, an appreciation of MF from a writer with some issues:

Is there something vulgar about a man in a bright jumpsuit, a long scarf around his massive neck, screeching out a tragic opera theme on a highly amplified trumpet?

This seems clear to me now, in retrospect. I guess Maynard Ferguson's foot-stomping, groin-thrusting, ear-splitting, glass-shattering musical style was not always in the very best of taste. Hearing him play in a school gymnasium was not, I admit, as exquisite an experience as hearing Roy Hargrove at the Village Vanguard. Give the Jazz Purists their due: You were right, my smug and urbane betters; Maynard was a vulgar passion. Now please go back to your cork-lined rooms with the custom-engineered acoustic baffles, the better to hear each tuneless squeak and skronk of your vintage Ornette Coleman recordings

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6082501440.html

[Larry Kart]

To really appreciate what made MF unique, I think you need to hear his vintage Kenton stuff -- things like "What's New," for example, rec. 1951, where his playing borders on delerium. The Roulette band of the late '50s and early '60s was a fine, hip, gutty outfit, but those early Maynard things were flat-out insane. In that vein, there's a very good Johnny Richards album (if you have taste for Richards) from 1956 on Bethlehem, "Something Else," where the trumpet section includes MF, Pete Candoli, and Buddy Childers (plus, I think, Stu Williamson and Shorty Rogers). The three lead men (in effect) work very well together, but when Richards wants to show how much more MF has left in the tank, it's kind of astonishing.

[marcello]

I had quite a few friends who played with him in the 70's. He always had exciting bands, and even though the shownmanship might go a little overboard some nights, he always gave it his all. He was known to be fun on the road; young at heart.

I always took a sort of perverse pleasure in the way they would play pop music of the day like Bridge Over Troubled Water or Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, because the band played with such passion and power! Whew! They made those songs sound like national anthems!

It was funny at the time because there was so much movement of player within Maynard, Buddy and Woody, that they all played La Fiesta with different arangements! They all played the shit out of that one.

Before that peroid , during the MF Horn days, he had a great band made up of British players like Ernie Garside, Lin Biviano and Joe Temperley that was great also.

[Brad]

I have and enjoy his Birdland Dream Band. Not so much the later stuff but a heck of a performer. RIP.

[sidewinder]

Before that peroid , during the MF Horn days, he had a great band made up of British players like Ernie Garside, Lin Biviano and Joe Temperley that was great also.

Lin Biviano British?

I caught Maynard's band just once, around 1980ish at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon. Agree that he put 100%+ into the show, one heck of a showman. Can't recall who else was in the band but I do remember the innevitable 'Rocky' and also a nice version of 'Superbone Meets The Badman' with Maynard on the superbone. In fact he played that instrument quite a bit during the concert. A hugely enjoyable evening.

Playing the Mosaic box this weekend - that stuff is excellent. The band with Willie Maiden packed one heck of a punch for its size.

[marcello]

OOPS! Biviano was in a later band, of course. He had a nice big band himself; out of Boston, right Jack? Steve Smith played drums.

But Garside played trumpet ,and he was the Manager ( or at least the road manager ), as I recall.

The buddy of some here, Danny D'Imperio, was also in the band at one time. Swung it like hell!

Hey, here he is!:

[sidewinder]

Nice clip - thanks for that ! Based on Maynard's garb it looks like it was filmed around the same vintage as the 'Chameleon' LP.

If my memory is right, Ernie Garside organised that concert at the Croydon Fairfield Hall. He arranged tours for many of the leading US big bands over here around that timeframe, including one of Woody Herman's I also checked out.

[David Ayers]

Now it is time for EMI to do a budget box reissue of all the Roulette material. Go on, EMI. You know you want to!

[Stereojack]

OOPS! Biviano was in a later band, of course. He had a nice big band himself; out of Boston, right Jack?

Biviano is on the faculty at Berklee, but I don't know where he's from originally.