Maynard Ferguson
Archbishop Alter High School
(referred to as "Kettering Alter" by locals)
Kettering, Ohio (near Dayton)
December 17, 1974


Ampex GMII-90 high bias master cassette > Adobe Audition (96k/24-bit) > numerous audio repairs >
downsampled to 44.1k/16-bit > TLH level 8 flac, aligned on sector boundaries


01 Blue Birdland
02 Left Bank Express
03 Chameleon
04 Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me
05 Super
06 La Fiesta (cuts)
07 MacArthur Park (cuts plus tape flip)
08 I Can't Get Started
09 Hey Jude

Total time approx 58 minutes


This uncirculated master tape surfaced recently, and the taper sent it to me to repair the broken tape.
It had broken off from the plastic leader inside the cassette, and once that was fixed the tape was
captured at 96k/24-bit. It broke again just as the tape finished playing, but the capture was fine.
The audio levels were all over the place on the recording due to the auto-level feature on whatever recorder
was used. When the crowd would cheer, the volume would drop for several seconds and then gradually
come back up. A hard limiter was used to bring the volume up in those sections to more-or-less match the
surrounding audio. It took a couple of hours to get it smoothed out without overly compressing the overall
recording. It's not perfect, but many passages were almost silent and now the whole thing is very listenable
and the volume levels are pretty smooth. The taper turned off the recorder during some of the extended jazz
solos in tracks 6 and 7 in order to save tape, but all of the ensemble and MF parts are there. Lynn Nicholson
stood very near the taper during Hey Jude, which you'll hear. This was recorded three days before the end of
the last '74 tour, right before Lynn Nicholson left the band. We're lucky this surfaced--this is the last
known recording of the Chameleon Band, and MF sounds incredible on this one.


Included in this torrent are photos of MF's personal gig calendar and manager Ernie Garside's calendar,
both of which list this date as Dayton, OH.


Probable personnel:

Trumpets: Maynard Ferguson, Stan Mark, Bob Summers, Lynn Nicholson, Don Hahn, Ernie Garside (manager)
Bones: Randy Purcell, Jerry Johnson
Saxes: Andy Macintosh, Brian Smith, Bruce Johnstone
Piano: Alan Zavod
Bass: Rick Petrone
Drums: Dan D�Imperio