Maynard Ferguson-"Dayride"

This is an object lesson in how to execute a fusion piece without losing your artistic integrity. Yes, fusion led to Kenny G(orelick) and his irksome peers. But, for a time (ending around 1980), there was a lot of good music done under this rubric-Weather Report, Mahavishnu... and Chick Corea's Return to Forever, whose tune (written by uber-bassist Stanley Clarke) Maynard and the gang perform here. This is circa 1979.

Clarke, not that anyone cares, is yet another jazz great from Philadelphia, The City of Brotherly Swing.

Stanley's website.

Nat King Cole-"Too Young"

Let's hear a little more from Nat King Cole. Here's "Too Young." No commentary necessary.

All right-I'll allow myself a little Archie Bunkerism here-remember when popular entertainers had actual talent?

(Ignore the incredibly lame visuals.)


UPDATE: If you hear daughter Natalie's version, you do find, unfortunately, that the apple does fall far from the tree. Natalie can sing lightly swinging material, but anything that requires a feel for lyrics and their meaning is a disaster.

Chet Baker/Nat King Cole/Bill Evans-"Autumn Leaves"

Here's one of my ultimate trumpet heroes, Chet Baker, with a 70's rendition of "Autumn Leaves." I could do without the electric piano (Bob James), which doesn't really work in this context, but still Chet's in good form. The Paul Desmond alto sax solo is just okay.



And here's Nat King Cole, also with Autumn Leaves. This looks to be from Nat's historic TV show of the 50's. Boy, Nat didn't have great range (he didn't swing much-as a singer that is-he could swing like hell on the piano), but within that range, he was incredible.


Just another in a long series of posts on my favorite trumpeters.


UPDATE: Speaking of favorite trumpet players-the best jazz site on the Net, Jazzwax, is doing a series of interviews with the legendary Clark Terry. Clark's played with pretty much everybody, including storied stints with Basie and Ellington.



FURTHER UPDATE: Let's include Bill Evans' idiosyncratically swinging treatment of Autumn Leaves. Evans was the most influential pianist of his generation. The bass player, from the comments at Youtube, seems to be the great Eddie Gomez. This is from, I assume, the mid 60's, after Evans' revolutionary trio with bassist Scott LaFaro. Gomez' bass solo would likely be simply unplayable for most of his peers.

Spike Jones-"Laura"

In keeping with the rather stuffy classical mood we've established, let's hear a little Spike Jones-this is "Laura".

Spike and His City Slickers actually play this one straight (supposedly he eventually wanted out of the comedy business) for a while, then they revert to form. He was a genius, no doubt.

Nemes/Nakariakov: Brandt Concertpiece no.2, for trumpet

This is trumpeter Balazs Nemes playing Concertpiece no. 1 2 by Wilhelm Brandt.

I had neither heard of the composer or piece before running across both on Youtube today. The quickie Wikipedia article on Brandt tells us that he was one of the late 19th Century's greatest trumpet virtuosi, and this is certainly a piece that deserves to be more widely performed by "classical" trumpet players.

Nemes has a funny expresssion on his face at the end of his perfrormance, as if he'd botched it, but this is a reasonably good job. He's not an elite player, by any means, in terms of tone or assured technique, but he plays a fairly difficult piece well, if not brilliantly.


Here's the same work, as performed by the masterful Sergei Nakariakov:

Maynard Ferguson-"I Love You"

Here's Maynard Ferguson from 2004 with a hot arrangement of Cole Porter's "I Love You". Good thing Cole's executors never heard this, or they might've sued, as the lawyers running Jerome Kern's estate threatened to do over the Charlie Barnet and Maynard wild treatment of "All the Things You Are", from 1949 (!).

In any case, this is MF very late in the game-his legendary chops are nowhere near what they'd been, and this is a band that's too small to really be a big band, but definitely isn't a small group...and yet this works, mostly because the quality of the writing (in this case, the chart's by Grammy nominee Steve Weist) and  playing are both so high.