Maynard Ferguson

Several years before cornering the disco market with his Conquistador LP, trumpeter Maynard Ferguson cut a series of jazz/rock/funk fusion albums, each bearing the phrase "M.F. Horn" in the title. The first two volumes, dating from 1970 and 1972, demonstrated Ferguson's growing interest in contemporary pop music, rather than the older pop repertoire that had ripened into jazz standards during the '50s and early '60s. M.F. Horn, Vol. 3 contained a larger quantity of original works, refreshingly funky in texture. On July 10, 1973 Ferguson and his big band recorded enough music to fill a double-album LP, soon issued by Columbia as M.F. Horn, Vols. 4-5: Live at Jimmy's. Produced by Teo Macero, this amazing session took place in front of an audience almost entirely comprised of jazz columnists and CBS employees. Jimmy's, a nightclub specializing in jazz, was located on West 52nd Street in New York City. M. F. Horn, Vols. 4-5 is still considered to be Maynard Ferguson's best -- and jazziest -- big-band album of the '70s. In 2007, the British Dutton Vocalion Laboratories remastered and reissued M.F. Horn, Vol. 3/M.F. Horn, Vols. 4-5 in a double-CD that is guaranteed to please those who aren't too uptight to enjoy a bit of funk, electric keyboards and rock drumming with their big-band jazz. The trick photography used on the packaging typifies the wild and sometimes outrageous sort of pseudo-hallucinatory album cover art that popped up everywhere during the mid-'70s. Ferguson, seemingly grown taller than a parking garage, is seen wandering between skyscrapers and planting his butt on top of a restaurant, grinning broadly and waving his trumpet at the tiny pedestrians below. The neighborhood chosen for these visual shenanigans appears to have been near the intersection of 52nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas, not far from CBS headquarters and Jimmy's jazz club. ~ arwulf arwulf, All Music Guide