25 August 2006 TRUMPETER MAYNARD FERGUSON DIES

Following a historic run at New York’s Birdland last month trumpeter, flugelhornist, valve trombonist and bandleader Maynard Ferguson died late last night in Canada, from kidney failure resulting from an intestinal infection.

Born in Verdun (part of Montreal), Canada 4 May 1928, as a child he studied piano and violin. Taking up the trumpet at nine, he was a member in his teens of dance bands led by Stan Wood Roland David, and Johnny Holmes (his older brother Percy, a baritone saxophonist, also played for Holmes) and studied 1943-8 at the CMM. Ferguson was heard frequently on CBC radio and on one occasion played a “Serenade for Trumpet in Jazz” written for him by Morris Davis. While leading his own band in the Montreal area and in Toronto during the mid-1940s Ferguson came to the attention of US bandleaders. As Paul Bley recalled (Montreal Gazette, 28 Oct 1978), “Maynard would always open the show, and he played three octaves higher on trumpet than anyone else ... you ought to have seen the jaws drop on the visiting musicians.”

Ferguson went to the USA in 1948 and worked in turn in the big bands of Boyd Raeburn, Jimmy Dorsey, and Charlie Barnet. It was during his term 1950-3 with Stan Kenton that he first received great public acclaim, winning the DownBeat readers' polls for trumpet in 1950, 1951, and 1952. He made his first records under his own name in 1950 for Capitol, leading the Kenton band of the day.

He spent the rest of the 50s recording with small groups and playing in Hollywood studio orchestras under contract to Paramount until he formed the Birdland Dreamland Band to perform at the eponymous club. This was the first of several 'small' big bands (12 or 13 musicians) with which Ferguson toured until 1965, appearing at festivals, clubs and concerts.
Ferguson spent a year in India studying meditation and lecturing on music, then in 1968 moved to England. It was with a 17-piece English band, which combined the orchestral conventions of jazz with the vitality of rock, that he regained and even surpassed his former popularity with the general public, but created some disquiet within the jazz community. The band made its North American debut in 1971, and its recording of “MacArthur Park” was popular early in the decade.

With New York now as his home base Ferguson gradually replaced the English musicians with young US players, reducing the band again to 13. His recording of “Gonna Fly Now,” the theme from the film Rocky, was a major hit single (by the standard for pop intrumentals) 1977-8; it was followed by a second lesser hit in 1978, the theme from the movie Battlestar Galactica. His album Conquistador exceeded 500,000 in US sales alone. In the mid-1980s, by which time Ferguson had moved to Ojai, Cal, he reduced his band still further and in 1987 introduced High Voltage, a fusion septet. By 1990, however, he was leading more traditional ensembles.

Ferguson's famed showmanship and dramatic virtuosity in the extreme upper registers of the trumpet (extending with ease to double-high 'C') took his popularity beyond the jazz world and with it, eventually, a large amount of critical disdain. His tendency towards exhibitionism - his grandstanding high notes and his use for many years of an aria from I Pagliacci as an encore - has led to his dismissal in some quarters as ‘mere show-biz’. However, much of his work in the small-group context reveals a mature improviser whose high-note facility becomes a well-integrated aspect of an expressive and lyrical style. A natural leader, Ferguson had the ability to form and mould an ensemble of young musicians, and to infuse it with his own considerable energy and enthusiasm.

Source: Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.

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