Maynard Ferguson squeals like a pig. He is a "high note specialist" on the trumpet. As his band kick up a "Would you please welcome to the stage!" vamp, fever spreads around the many brass players in the house. It is like waiting for a boxer.
Ferguson, built like a small caravan, arrives in his sharp blue suit. He prepares, building pressure behind the mouthpiece. Then he bursts a few notes. It's a wonder you can't see his liver down the bell. The crowd punch the air and roar. Ferguson whips the brass off his face and throws a champion pose.
In truth, at 75, Maynard ("Strain-hard" to his detractors) can't get it up like he used to - certainly not in the way that gained him credit for making such high-altitude playing musical. Done for its own sake, it is just a weight-training substitute for musicians who got bullied at school. His phrasing is sledgehammer-blunt, his sound sometimes like sandpaper.
But the trumpet section of Ferguson's eight-piece band, Big Bop Nouveau, are being groomed to take over the shop, and often step down to swap screams with the big man. They can play rings round him, and he loves it - a self-deprecation that makes Ferguson a charming and very funny raconteur. "I'd like to meet you guys some time," he says to the band, realising he has forgotten what they are supposed to be playing. They laugh like a locker room full of jocks.
Big Bop Nouveau make a gloriously cheesy sound. No party trick is left out: pianist Jeff Lashway pops The Simpsons theme into a solo; trumpet players walk into the audience to prove they can cut it without a mic.
The sound and feel of the night is Rocky, the tune that made Ferguson famous. Every tune that goes into the ring comes up fighting: The Girl from Ipanema seems to be working undercover with Starsky and Hutch, and the cool of Milestones is pushed along so much you start thinking Busby Berkeley. There is a moment in every track that sounds like Miss World is about to walk on. What the heck - this is party music, and Ferguson is a great entertainer, even if at times the stage felt more like a gymnasium.
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