Maynard Ferguson It Might As Well Be Spring: The Roulette Years
(EMI)
Reviewed by Jeffrey Stoub

Although Maynard Ferguson's induction this year into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame (announced last year but formally presented at the recent Juno Awards) didn't attract a lot of newfound attention to the Montreal-born trumpet player, it did inspire this hastily put together compilation of his late 50s and early 60s post-big band jazz.

That's not to say that there's anything but some of Ferguson's best playing on this disc. In fact, tunes like Slide Hampton's Frame for the Blues (from the 1968 album A Message From Newport) and Lester Young's Stella by Starlight swing hard and allow Ferguson to show off his upper-register talents.

For the most part the playing is tight, with Ferguson leading several variations of his 13-piece band from the period, with the likes of trombonist Slide Hampton, trumpeter Don Ellis and tenor saxophonist Willie Maiden backing him up. A couple of tunes, for example Leonard Bernstein's Maria and the Rodgers and Hammerstein title track, even let Ferguson show some subtleties in his playing without the constant competition for louder and higher playing of the scores.

But this compilation seems less about showing a Maynard Ferguson before Gonna Fly Now (you must have seen Rocky) and more about getting out some music that would show Ferguson closer to his Canadian roots. In fact, it seems a fairly blatant attempt to capitalize on the Juno award by highlighting Ferguson's brief Canadian career in relatively extensive liner notes.

Clearly Ferguson's exposure to music at the tail end of the big band era in Canada (he started playing lead trumpet in his teens and even played in a group with Oscar Peterson at 13) influenced his playing later on. But by the age of 21 Ferguson departed for the United States, never to return and without a surviving Canadian recording. The liner notes can't wait to jump ahead to Ferguson's collaborations with band leaders like Jimmy Dorsey and Stan Kenton.

Even Ferguson seemed surprised, in a thank-you note that prefaces the liner notes of the disc, by the recognition from this side of the border: "I have been very fortunate to have won my share of musical awards, but it always has occurred to me, nothing from Canada, where I grew up and received all of my musical education - but maybe this makes this award all the sweeter."

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