Maynard Ferguson, 78, Master of High Notes and High Volume

Maynard Ferguson, who died Wednesday at 78, was a veteran trumpeter and bandleader best known for delivering stratospheric high notes, rock-concert-level volume, and sheer excitement in equal quantities.

He was born Walter Ferguson in Verdun, a suburb of Montreal, on May 4, 1928; one of his classmates in high school was another virtuoso who would achieve international fame as a jazz virtuoso, the pianist Oscar Peterson. His first influence as a trumpeter was the American star Harry James, and when practicing along with James's records, Ferguson aspired to not only soar higher than his original inspiration but to play in the upper, upper register with greater accuracy. He led his own band in high school, and worked with local Montreal groups, and at the age of 19 offers began coming in from prominent bandleaders in England and The States.

He signed on with the highly-experimental, modernistic bandleader Boyd Raeburn. The young Ira Gitler, not yet a prominent jazz critic, saw the Raeburn band at The World Famous Apollo Theatre and later remembered, "The poise and extroverted style of playing of Maynard Ferguson led me to tell my friend, ‘This guy is going to have a band of his own some day.'" Because Raeburn only worked sporadically, Ferguson also played and recorded (for the first time) with saxophonist Jimmy Dorsey's big band.

Ferguson was also featured to good advantage with Charlie Barnet, a veteran swing bandleader who was experimenting with bebop.

When I interviewed Ferguson in 1987, he chuckled over the coincidence that Barnet, at the time, had an all-Scandinavian trumpet section, that included, in addition to Ferguson, the Swedish Rolf Ericson, as well as Doc Severinson, later Johnny Carson's bandleader on "The Tonight Show."

Ferguson became a star for the first time in 1950 when he joined Stan Kenton's orchestra. The trumpeter's high=note specialties fit right in with the ambitious pianist-leader, driven to produce a new American concert music born of swing and bebop and heavy doses of European classical music. Kenton's arrangers wrote expressly for his extroverted style, most famously a composition entitled "Maynard Ferguson" by Shorty Rogers, also a trumpeter, who was astounded by Ferguson's range. During his three years with Kenton, Ferguson was regularly designated as the number one trumpeter in the country in the down beat magazine polls, and also began making records under his own name.

In the mid-'50s, Ferguson worked in the Hollywood studios (he plays on the soundtrack of "The Ten Commandments") and freelanced on many jazz dates in Los Angeles, most famously on a classic jam session in 1954 with singer Dinah Washington and fellow trumpet prodigies Clifford Brown and Clark Terry. Ferguson began gradually working up to the point where he could launch his own big band; in the fall of 1956, he toured as the leader of The Birdland Dreamband.

Out of this grew Ferguson's own orchestra, which recorded for the first time at The Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. The Dreamband was a group of already-famous New York players, but The Maynard Ferguson Orchestra, in the tradition of Kenton and Woody Herman, featured younger, emerging players and arrangers and kept them together on a long-term, full-time basis. The band of 1958-1962 is generally regarded as Ferguson's greatest contribution to musical culture, boosting the careers of such important players and arrangers as Don Sebesky, Slide Hampton, Mike Abene, Bill Holman, Ernie Wilkins, Marty Paich, Tom McIntosh, Don Menza, Bill Chase, Don Ellis, Billy Byers, Joe Farrell, John Bunch, Joe Zawinul, Jakie Byard and Jake Hanna. The group recorded 141 tracks for Roulette over five years, climaxing in classic live album from Birdland in 1962, were collected into a ten-CD boxed set by Mosaic Records in 1992.

Ferguson kept the band together, more or less, for the rest of the '60s, recording occasionally; like many musicians of the period, he also traveled to India for spiritual renewal. In the '70s and '80s, Ferguson enjoyed a long-running resurgence as one of the few leaders of a successful big band in the age of rock and disco: he recorded a best-selling series of pop-oriented albums for Columbia, and in 1976 was responsible for one of the biggest instrumental hits of modern times, "Gonna Fly Now (Theme From ‘Rocky')." In the mid to late '80s, he formed "High Voltage," a completely electrified, rock-style band, which he defended to me in our interview: "When I get a new keyboardist or electric bassist, the band really does sound different. These instruments are still being played by people and everyone who plays them has a different sound."

For most of the last 15 years, Ferguson recorded and toured with a new acoustic group he called Big Bop Nouveau. The band occasionally included saxophones and usually had at least one trombonist, but its most salient feature was a powerhouse trumpet section of three Ferguson-styled trumpeters in addition to the leader. Like drummer Buddy Rich's later bands, this group stressed volume and virtuosity over nuance, but it was always exciting. When they played New York last year, I wrote that "Big Bop Nouveau band makes so much noise that the patrons at Birdland have no trouble hearing them. Which is really saying something, since Ferguson is actually appearing this week 40 blocks to the South at The Blue Note."

Ferguson had just played the Blue Note again two months ago, and at the same time, recorded sessions for a new album, which will be released later this year; a tribute concert is also being planned in St. Louis.

Mr. Friedwald is the Sun's jazz critic.

Maynard Ferguson

Born May 4, 1928, in Montreal; died August 22 at a hospital in Ventura, Calif., of kidney and liver failure brought on by an abdominal infection; survived by his daughters, Kim, Lisa, Corby, and Wilder.