1. Diz Duz Everything
2. Body And Soul
3. All The Things You Are
4. Maynard Ferguson
5. Take The A Train
6. Short Wave
7. Love Locked Out
8. The Band Ain't Draggin'
9. Hot Canary
10. What's New
11. King's Riff
12. Wow
13. The Way You Look Tonight
14. All God's Chillun Got Rhythm
15. Over The Rainbow
16. Hymn To Her
17. Wonder Why
18. C'est The Blues
19. Miss Pitlack Regrets
20. Maynard The Fox
Maynard Ferguson (trumpet) with his Orchestra,
Jimmy Dorsey and his orchestra. Stan Kenton
and his orchestra, Ben Webster and his sextet
rec. 1949-56
Ferguson’s recent death focused
attention once again on this prodigious and
bravura high note specialist. Of course his
more poetic mid-range moments have tended
to be swept aside in favour of the coruscating
brilliance of his playing, tending to shroud
things such as The Way You Look Tonight
where he plays with fluid and mellow perception
before a jaunt to the stars in the last chorus.
It’s easy to forget just
how young Ferguson was when he emerged, seemingly
fully formed as to technique, in these earliest
tracks. He was twenty-one when he bursts out
the Jimmy Dorsey orchestra in this live performance
of Diz Duz Everything. The tribute
to trumpet hero Gillespie is apposite – and
the way Ferguson launches into his solo is
evidence of the blistering talent already
on the scene. His apprenticeship was short
indeed. But we can also hear vestiges of the
big vibrato that he surely inherited from
players such as Harry James and Ziggy Elman
– try the live Body And Soul as evidence,
though we also find here other examples of
his youthful extravagance yet fully to be
shed – gauche quotations and a Bunny Berigan
style I Can’t Get Started cadenza.
Much of the playing is simply
spectacular. Naturally the Kenton Innovations
in Modern Music band plays the song written
for him by Shorty Rogers – Maynard Ferguson,
which is awe inspiring in the extreme,
even now. Even Rogers’s use of strings doesn’t
detract. Fortunately it’s not all high-powered
stuff. The Band Ain't Draggin' is a
jivey workout complete with vocal contributions
from the band Ferguson was by now leading
in 1950. A few names culled from that organisation;
Shorty Rogers and Al Porcino, Milt Bernhart
and John Graas, Art Pepper, Bud Shank, Bob
Cooper, Jimmy Giuffre – and a drummer called
Shelly Manne. Not bad.
The stellar company that
Ferguson kept is evident throughout these
sides. There’s a single track with Ben Webster
- who goes a bit berserk in his second chorus
– and plenty with the West Coast octet and
orchestra he led. Articulate and ear catching
saxophone solos pepper these sides as they
do in the later recordings with the likes
of Herb Geller, Al Cohn and Budd Johnson.
So there are always things
to admire, even if one perhaps tires of Ferguson’s
stratospheric outings from time to time. The
recordings are fresh and immediate, and Digby
Fairweather’s notes are, as ever, written
from the inside.
Jonathan Woolf
Fresh and immediate recordings
of Ferguson’s stratospheric outings ... see
Full Review
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ASV LIVING ERA AJA 5659 [78:58]
