http://youtu.be/iPACrVFD5DI
Here is the original “Ole” on Maynard ’63. He completely stopped playing this song in 1970 when MF Horn 1 came out in 1970. Notice the Conn Connstellation trumpet he always played in the early 80’s on the cover. My dad got me a used one I played in high school. They played very easy in the high register, but not this easy!
It was in 1970 that Maynard changed his equipment and direction in music. In fact, by the late 60’s the big bands were dying and Maynard was going to have to shut down his big jazz band. He signed a deal with Columbia to start playing music the younger generation liked and was new, rock music. Most rock music didn’t incorporate much soft music, so Maynard’s beautiful, soft high and low playing basically disappeared. It was all loud and louder from then on, with a larger bore horn that would help him do that. It worked and the band survived, but Maynard had to reinvent himself and the band. The jazz critics hated it, but the younger generation loved it.
Maynard has said that the music he put out in the early 60’s on the Roulette label was his best playing. The hardest thing to do on a trumpet is to play soft with control, and Maynard could do it in any register, as this piece shows. Most high note trumpet players don’t have a very good low register because playing high every day tends to tighten up the lip muscles too much. Wille Maiden, the great music writer and sax player on the albums of this era, once said that Maynard was the greatest low note player of all time because he could play so high! On this piece, Maynard puts on a clinic on what is possible on the trumpet.