[Trombone-l] (no subject)

[Samuel Keyser]

There have been a number of comments on the list about lapses in  
Maynard Ferguson's various obituaries.  Some have left out the fact  
that his mother was a violinist, for example, or failed to mention  
his super bone work. Or stories about how, as a young man, when he  
first went to work for a big band, I think it may have been Count  
Basie's, he went through the book in one long afternoon and from then  
on played the charts as if he had written them himself.

I think this is a general failing of obituaries about great  
musicians.  I remember when Billy May died in 2004, I was appalled by  
the obit that appeared in the Boston Globe.  Here was one of the  
greatest big band arrangers of the 20th century and the obituary was  
perfunctory, comparing him to Nelson Riddle, for example, and talking  
about his work with Frank Sinatra without any sense of the  
extraoordinarily original things he had done himself, like his  
arrangements of the classics or, most startling of all, his  
arrangements of Bugle Calls.  Making something exciting out of taps,  
now that takes talent.  Wanting to do it in the first place, takes  
vision and humor.

Anyway, I wonder if flat obituaries are the way they are because they  
are not generally written by musicians.  If you haven't walked in  
those shoes, it must be very hard to have anything more than a  
"factual" sense of what has been lost.

Jay