Young Man with a Horn
Memories of Maynard

By Manny Meland

	Maynard Ferguson, hitting the high notes

Walter “Maynard” Ferguson, jazz trumpeter extraordinaire, died August 26, 2006. He was born in Montreal May 4, 1928. He said he fell in love with the trumpet at a church gathering when he was 9 years old.

“I had the feeling after I played it that the trumpet was for me,” he was quoted as saying.

His greatest musical influences were his mother, a violinist with the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra and Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong and his horn.  He quit school at age 15 to pursue a career in music. This surprised me, as his father was the principal of Aberdeen School, which I attended in Montreal, and Principal Ferguson always preached education.

In the 1950’s, young Maynard was featured at the Friday Night Club in Westmount Hall in Montreal.  My friends and I and teens from the various high schools would come to hang out and dance. (Oscar Peterson, a Montreal native, was a regular performer here as well). Maynard rocked the room. We took a pride in his talent and delighted at the high notes he reached. He was, after all, one of us. I went to see Randy Brooks, a famous trumpeter in the ‘50s, when he came to Montreal to play. He had just had a hot single called “Honey Dripper” and was doing a concert in the old skating rink on Drummond Street downtown. The producer got Maynard Ferguson to do a warm up set. That was a bad idea.  Maynard, of course, hit a bunch of high C’s and Randy Brooks was visibly upset when he had to follow this act.

	Maynard Ferguson

Ferguson moved to the United States at age 20, playing with Jimmy Dorsey’s Big Band. Dorsey had him open the show, and he played higher on the trumpet than anyone else. You had to see his fellow musicians’ jaws drop. He also performed solo in New York City cafes. He then joined the Stan Kenton orchestra where his shrieking upper register trumpet formed the backbone of the group’s extensive brass section. In 1956, he formed the first of several orchestras featuring a crisp brass section.  This helped launch the careers of many jazz notables, including Chick Corea, Chuck Mangione, Bob James, Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul. He then scored a hit record with his version of  “Gonna Fly Now” from the film Rocky. This single spawned a gold album and a Grammy nomination in 1978. During the 1970’s, Maynard created a musical niche by rearranging pop and rock songs for big bands, songs like “MacArthur Park” and the Beatles’ “Hey Jude”. He was named Down Beat Magazine’s “Trumpeter of the Year” three times.

I caught Maynard’s act again in 2005. He was playing the condo circuit in Broward. I think  his energetic trumpet revived the old timers in Century Village. Then I was excited to read that he was booked to play Arturo Sandoval’s jazz club at the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach, Oct. 21, 2006. Sadly, in August of that year, at the age of 78, he ran out of time.