H5 to a fellow Maynard Ferguson fan.
Thanks, CC. Toward the end, he was playing very, very poorly and was extremely obese. I caught one of his last performances in the Salt Lake City area in 2004. He passed of kidney failure in early 2006, IIRC.
In his day he was an unbridled monster of the trumpet - while he solos weren't nearly as lyrical as Clark Terry's for example, he played with power and accuracy (which is a helluva lot more than you can say for guys like Lin Biviano, who had chops out the ass but was notoriously inaccurate) and did more for jazz education than anybody I can think of.
If you like lead trumpet players, here's a good web site with lots of stuff to melt your speakers with:
Scream Trumpets