The first time I heard Maynard Ferguson was at the Pinebrook Show Tent in New Jersey and it cost me all of a dollar for a seat on a long wooden bench. I was a kid in my impressionable teens and the tent was only set up for that one summer, but I was in the front row every Friday night. I’ll never forget it! That buck bought around three hours of nearly nonstop jazz performed by the likes of Ahmad Jamal, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck, Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey, (Maynard of course) and so many others! Sometimes I think the musicians had more fun than we did.
For my money, the band Ferguson had during the 60’s was his greatest ever. It was before the days of “Theme From Rocky”, “Pagliacci”, and some of the disco tunes with which he experimented later on. The three cuts below from 1969, to me, represent the sound of that incredible orchestra and the excellence that simmered just below the surface.
Maynard Ferguson and his Orchestra play “Somewhere” from Leonard Bernstein’s musical “West Side Story” on a 1969 TV show. Whether or not you like show tunes, you’ve got to love this rendition by the original “Boss”.
Here is Maynard with his high flying treatment of “One O’Clock Jump”, a song usually associated with the Count Basie Band. Please excuse the time code in the middle of the screen, but the Orchestra was too tuned in to miss!
“Danny Boy” is a bit of a departure for the Ferguson Orchestra but is proof positive that this powerful band had a deeper third gear in addition to hot or mellow … sweet. Brass, not pipes are callin’.
