Jazz and the Ambiguity of Influence, Pt. 13: Maynard and Me
I was a nerd in high school. A band nerd, that is. There I was in the trumpet section, and loving it. As an introvert and essentially unsure of myself, the band room was a safe haven for me. It gave me somewhere to go and something to be part of, something to apply myself to. And I got pretty good, because when you are shy you get a lot of alone time to practice your instrument. Between practicing my horn and hitting golf balls, I was able to get my solitude and get good at some things. Win-win. Lots of musicians are probably solitary in a way. I once read that Bruce Springsteen basically never left his room during high school and practiced his guitar like eight hours per day. Of course, he seems like an extrovert, but that's a stage persona, and he gets to define the terms of his interaction with the world.
If only I had played guitar, I might have become hipper sooner. But that's not the way it was. I was a trumpet player and I liked to listen to trumpet music. Sure, I liked all the songs on the radio, and really loved the Beatles and the Allman Brothers and stuff like that, but I was never cool enough to know that maybe I shouldn't advertise my love for people like Maynard Ferguson, like when I brought his LP MF Horn II to a high school date. Yes, Maynard Ferguson. Either you have no idea who that is, or you know that in the 70s he charted a course in jazz that veered away from artiness and jazz cred toward a brand of big band music that found significant popularity among geeks like me and "band people" in general.
When I say that he veered, Maynard had been known as a pure jazz player, and high note specialist, of the first rank, starting with Stan Kenton and then through performances with the Birdland Dream Band where he played with heavyweights like Jaki Byard, Don Menza, and Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul. Many of the people from this group would go on to various jazz-rock explorations, as did Maynard. Quick performance note: On the 1954 recording called Jam Session, Maynard held his own with the jazz trumpet masters Clark Terry and Clifford Brown. He was that good.
What caused Maynard's move toward a somewhat simplified pop-jazz-rock style? I've got a theory. In the early 60s he and his family became part of the Timothy Leary and Ram Dass community at Millbrook, New York, that was famous for its explorations with LSD and other hallucinogens. He was a spiritual seeker. He even went on to teach at a Krishnamurti-associated school in India, where he became a disciple of the guru Sathya Sai Baba. Where some musicians of this orientation choose to then go in the direction of out-there spiritual jazz in the mode of late Coltrane, it seems that Ferguson's enlightenment led him in the direction of direct communication capable of bringing pleasure and joy to a wider audience. Maybe he had some sort of insight, not self-evidently mystical perhaps, revealing that we're here on this orb to connect, emotionally, aesthetically, communally. I saw an article once where someone described Maynard as the hippest person they had ever met. So if he went on the create music that was never seen as being as hip as that of Weather Report and Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, I think we have to conclude he knew what he was doing.
I probably saw his band perform at least a couple times or more, and what Maynard did was act like a front man, both directing the big band -- trumpets, saxes, trombones, and rhythm section -- while also taking solos and leading the group to exciting climaxes with his legendary high note capacity, punctuating these occasions with a flourish of outstretched arms and head-shaking grin. Such reveling in chops appeals to adolescent boys such as I was back then, rather like fast guitar playing does for many. So it's a bit cheesy like that. Yet, the unimpeachable Duke Ellington employed the high note specialist Cat Anderson to supply excitement in a similar way. Quite simply, it's thrilling. And give Maynard credit, his music was a lot more fun than the old Neal Hefti arrangements of Count Basie tunes that back then were the bread and butter of high school "stage bands."
So how good -- or bad -- was the music? Thanks, to the bounty of streaming music services I was able to pull up the aforementioned MF Horn 2 on my Apple Music, and listen with an unbiased ear. You see, as my musical sophistication grew, I stopped listening to the jazz fusion and prog-rock stuff that so excited my youthful ears, deeming it terminally uncool. So revisiting it is quite interesting. So let's evaluate MF Horn 2 cut by cut.
Side one starts with the song "Give it One," which blasts out of the blocks with the trumpets playing a pure rock riff that appears to me now to be in a tricky time signature, though it still rocks. It shifts in and out of a groove section and features a monster sax solo in the little-bit-out-there jazz solo. This cut thrilled me as a youth, and it still sounds good. The second track was always a standout in my mind. It's James Taylor's "Country Road," and features some gospel electric piano and some chill section work before it escalates. Really good Maynard trumpet solo. Side one continues with big band take on the "Theme from Shaft," one of the funkiest tunes of the 70s. They acquit themselves pretty well. Let's say it never sounds lame, and there's some wicked hip drumming from Randy Jones. Next up is the side one ballad feature, "Theme from the Summer of '42," also a big hit at the time. Nice melodic solos from Maynard and a tenor man, with rich background voicing, swelling at key times for drama. I bet this was a crowd pleaser live.
Side two opens with an effective treatment of John Lennon's "Mother." It starts in free-tempo blues mode, with Maynard bending notes all over the place, before shifting into a nice whole band groove, with especially cool work from the sax section. Then it moves into an impressive, boundary-pushing tenor sax solo over backing that shifts from walking blues to straight rock. I wish they still had liner notes so I knew who was soloing. Well done. Next, they tackle the Blood Sweat and Tears' mega-hit "Spinning Wheel." This already features horns in the original, so will this be redundant? No, thanks to an incredible arrangement by trombonist Adrian Drover. The third side-two cut is the one track that has no rock element at all; just pure jazz. Called "Free Wheeler," it's a tribute to the British trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, who Maynard must have known from his time in London. In a way, it's the dullest cut on the record, which is suggestive. The album concludes with a take on "Hey Jude," the Beatles tune that is perhaps best suited to a big band treatment. This is also a Drover arrangement. I would have loved to be in the trumpet section, playing that superlative melody. For the "na na na na na na na" out choruses, they take it into freakout mode, with instruments playing free and moving into anarchy. The band comes back together over some wild drum work, replete with shouted vocalizations. Finally, the band does out-of-time pulsating underneath Maynard's sustained high note work, which ends the piece and the record.
The verdict? This is actually a fine record. Almost as good as Gil Evans' celebrated Plays the Music of Jimi Hendricks, probably the most famous big band attempt at rock music. I don't think the musicians in Maynard's band would have felt at all like sell-outs playing dumbed-down music, designed merely to move units. No. In fact, they probably preferred it to rehashing the standard big band music they had all been playing since they were kids. It was time for something new, and all the various modes of jazz-rock, jazz-funk fusion happening at the time really did represent the next step for the music, even if not all of it succeeded. Long story, short: I should cut my adolescent self a break. I might have been a nerd loving nerd music, but there was something real and good there.
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