Rest In Peace

[SwingNorthtoSouth]

Maynard Ferguson
May 4, 1928 - August 23, 2006

Virtuoso jazz trumpet player who as a soloist and as a bandleader wowed audiences with his flamboyant technique


SHORT and stocky with a mop of curly hair and pugilist features, Maynard Ferguson was one of the most naturally talented brass players in jazz history, with a soaring upper register on the trumpet. His extraordinary technique allowed him not only to hit the highest notes in his instrument’s range with frequency and accuracy, but to play at that level with great speed and perfect articulation. He was a star soloist from the moment he joined Stan Kenton’s orchestra in 1950, and he went on to lead a succession of his own bands. Unlike many jazz specialists, Ferguson also hit the Top Ten pop charts — with Gonna Fly Now, Bill Conti’s theme to the 1978 movie Rocky, for which he also won an Oscar nomination.
Walter Maynard Ferguson was born in Montreal, Canada, and began piano and violin lessons as a small child, before switching to the trumpet at the age of 9. It was quickly apparent that he was a prodigy, and by the age of 11 he had made his first broadcasts with the CBC Orchestra. He left school at 15 to become a professional musician, and was soon leading his own band.



In the late 1940s, if a jazz musician wanted to progress, it was important to find work in the United States, and Ferguson moved south of the border to join Boyd Raeburn’s band, before joining Jimmy Dorsey, with whom he made his earliest records in 1949. Later that year he joined Charlie Barnet, and by February 1950 he was in the ranks of Stan Kenton’s giant orchestra. Alongside him in the trumpet section was Shorty Rogers, who wrote a musical portrait of Ferguson which the band recorded the following June. For the next five years, Rogers’s composition Maynard Ferguson became the trumpeter’s showpiece with the orchestra, giving him a chance to display his flamboyant technique.

Although he remained a member of Kenton’s band until 1956, Ferguson’s power and range made him a sought-after studio musician, as he could make even the smallest trumpet section sound full and strong. His freelance discs include small-group jazz with Ben Webster and with the Lighthouse All Stars, and big-band playing with Shorty Rogers (notably on the album Cool and Crazy), Louis Bellson, Pete Rugulo and Billy May. His trumpet was also one of the prominent textures in Buddy Bregman’s Orchestra on several of Ella Fitzgerald’s Songbook albums.

Ferguson’s consummate technique and love of brass playing made him adept at playing numerous other instruments, and he recorded on the trombone with Jimmy Dorsey and on the euphonium in Milt Bernhardt’s band. He later developed a hybrid instrument, the Superbone, which combined a valve-trombone with a slide, allowing him to play trombone parts with the precision of valves, but also incorporating the slurs of the slide. He also occasionally took time out from his jazz work to play solo trumpet parts with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

Having been voted Down Beat magazine’s top trumpeter of the year for three years, starting in 1950, Ferguson made the first discs under his own name in 1952, with a big band drawn from Kenton’s personnel. He also made some exceptional octet recordings in 1954, before founding his own Dreamband in 1956. With such famous jazz players in its ranks as Jimmy Cleveland, Budd Johnson and Hank Jones, it created a stir. However, his finest early band was the group he led at Newport in 1958, with arrangements by his trombonists Don Sebesky and Slide Hampton, in which his own playing was backed up by the idiosyncratic trumpeter Don Ellis.

In 1967 Ferguson settled in London, where he formed a big band largely made up of local players, including Peter King, Chris Pyne and Danny Moss, with whom he recorded his first hit record, Macarthur Park in 1970. This group toured four times to the United States, until constant problems with the immigration authorities led him to re-form a band in North America. This was the group that went on to make the Rocky soundtrack, and Ferguson recalled that as they recorded the title tune, Sylvester Stallone was thumping a punch-bag in time to the music, which can just be heard in the original mix.

His subsequent fusion band with Stanley Clarke and David Sanborn was a short-lived enthusiasm, as was a project to incorporate Indian instruments and rhythms. In 1988 his Big Bop Nouveau brought him back to the world of big-band jazz, and he continued to lead it until the time of his death, appearing last month at New York’s Blue Note club, and subsequently recording an album which is expected to be released later this year.

His four daughters survive him.




Maynard Ferguson, jazz trumpeter and bandleader, was born on May 4, 1928. He died on August 23, 2006, aged 78.