We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…..
The big bands were dead…oh sure, some guys kept on touring playing the hits of Glenn Miller, Count Basie & Duke Ellington. Buddy Rich was still out there and Stan Kenton too. But the pickings were getting pretty slim as the 70’s dawned. And there was Canadian trumpeter Maynard Ferguson who morphed his big band into a jazz-pop-fusion powerhouse that released and toured through the 70’s and 80’s. I saw them play the Wausau East Auditorium around this time and went out to pick up this LP.
It includes a bunch of pop hits of the day arranged as big band jazz fusion charts. And it works. Cool versions of Fire & Rain, Stoney End, My Sweet Lord, Move Over, Your Song, Living In The Past, Aquarius, and, of course, Bridge Over Troubled Water (a song that almost every artist took a crack at). He would follow this formula throughout the 70’s and early 80’s.
There is one original…a nice fusion track called The Serpent, written by sax player Keith Mansfield. The only quibble with this album is that there is no personnel or artist solo liner notes.
He also hired his musicians through the years from noted college jazz programs and did educational music tours of high schools and colleges around the country (like when he came to East) that earned him a generation of fans (like me) that went out and bought the records. My favorite was the double live set recorded at Jimmy’s in New York in 1973. It’s great!
If you like trumpet…you’ll like this…if you like big band jazz that spreads out and colors outside the lines a bit, you’ll dig this. ….It’s a big, bold, brassy sound as you might expect. Enjoy!
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