Maxine performed by Jon Herington

Here’s another one from the new book, (More!) Arrangements for Guitar, and one of the few that comes from the pop world instead of the jazz standard or classic American songbook worlds. Maxine, in its original recording on Donald Fagen’s Nightfly album, not only managed to take the Four Freshmen and Beach Boys concepts to new heights of vocal harmony beauty, but also captured American post war innocence perfectly with its lyrics. Other songs on the record (like , New Frontier, and Walk Between the Raindrops) do this as well, but Maxine does it uniquely in that it gets personal (and it’s a ballad, of course!). In spite of all it has going for it in the context of that fantastic album, Maxine is a gem of a composition in itself, even without the lyrics, and I couldn’t resist including a solo arrangement in the book. (My apologies for the less than perfect syncing of the audio and video on this clip. My lovely digital audio and video recording apps must have lost track of some ones and zeros somewhere along the way...)