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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Elsewhere In The Blogosphere

August 31, 2006 by Doug Ramsey

Many Rifftides readers are themselves bloggers. Richard Carlson, the proprietor of JazzoLOG, called my attention to a fine piece about his memories of Maynard Ferguson. Here’s a taste of it.

Maynard stood out in front of that band like a cheerleader/drill sergeant somehow combined. He was constantly on the move to the rhythm. He must have been in a marching band around his home of Montreal when he was a kid, because he liked to tuck his horn under his arm and just march up there while the ensemble played away. A huge smile on his face and eyes closed, marching, marching, a bit hunched over…until time for that closing climax, when he’d face us and let loose with such a screaming, molten sound, our jaws would drop and stay that way. He loved to talk to us during breaks and gave us all the time we wanted.

One night, the young Carlson and his friends asked Ferguson how he reached so high on the trumpet. To read the answer and the rest of a lovely memoir, go here.

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Comments

  1. Mel Narunsky says

    August 31, 2006 at 10:04 pm

    Maynard The Fox
    Richard Carlson in his wonderful piece on Maynard Ferguson mentions that “Capitol put out records then without any dates on them”.
    It must be remembered that in those days few record labels if any indicated the recording date on any of their issued recordings, which often makes research difficult today. I doff my hat to those discographers who, for our benefit, do their utmost to ascertain the correct recording dates when not documented.
    Regards – Mel.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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