Almost twenty years ago, we’re at an amphitheater in Cary, North Carolina, a tony bedroom community south of Durham and west Raleigh. There was nothing but a sea of Black folk, anxiously awaiting Mint Condition and the headliner Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. You could count, without losing track, the number of White folks in the audience. The pairing was inspired, a throwback to the days when Black bands like Earth, Wind & Fire, The Isley Brothers, Mandrill, Lakeside, and Parliament-Funkadelic were at their peak. These groups, and so many others, came of age when the music still belonged to the people. Record sales were nice, but nobody measured an act’s value based on whether they went multi-platinum — few of the aforementioned groups did so. Perhaps the most important legacy of Frankie Beverly, was his commitment to keep Maze on the road for the people, so that folks would know that the Music belonged to them.
In a room filled with mixed company, mention the group Maze featuring Frankie Beverly, and hundreds of years of racial segregation will reproduce itself right before your eyes. Virtually unknown to White audiences, even in the years after Beyonce’s cover of their signature “Before I Let Go,” Maze featuring Frankie Beverly was the closest thing that Black America had to the Grateful Dead. But whereas “Dead Heads” — the traveling band of fans who followed the group around the country — were seemingly only looking for music to accompany the purple haze, most of Frankie Beverly’s fans were simply looking for good times and community. The band may not have been the most accomplished or even the most popular R&B band, but make no mistake, they are Black America’s band.
Maze’s roots go back to 1969, when Beverly formed a jazz-rock group called Raw Soul. The group had some local success in their hometown of Philadelphia, PA but when their label folded, they left the East Coast in the summer of 1972 for the San Francisco/Oakland Bay area. After struggling for a few years, the band had a fortunate encounter with Marvin Gaye, who asked them to serve as his backing band for a few dates in the area. Gaye took their demo to Larkin Arnold at Capitol Records (the same Arnold who later orchestrated Gaye’s comeback with “Sexual Healing”), who signed the band, renaming them Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. Their self-titled debut was released in 1977. Years later the band would pay tribute to Gaye with the song “Silky Soul Singer” (1989), which remains one of their most popular singles.
As a youth Beverly was enamored with Frankie Lymon, the lead singer of The Teenagers (“Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”), to the point of taking on the nickname “Frankie” (Howard was his given name). Given his stellar vocals and good looks, Beverly could have easily broken from the group and been a star in his own right. But like the example of Levi Stubbs (The Four Tops) and Joe Ligon (The Mighty Clouds of Joy), Beverly remained committed to Maze (and Raw Silk) for more than 50 years. Beverly’s loyalty and longevity extended to the band itself, which never strayed from its roots in groove-laden, upscale party music, perfectly pitched for the block party and the cook-out.
Commercially, Maze featuring Frankie Beverly was a bit of an enigma. The group never charted in the Pop Top 40; “Feel That You’re Feelin’” reached #67 in 1979 in the midst of the Disco era. “Back in Stride” (1985) and “Can’t Get Over You” (1989) were their only tracks to top the R&B charts. As much as we now love “Before I Let Go”, it didn’t even crack the top ten on the R&B charts. That seven of their eight studio albums and their Live in New Orleans (1981) were certified Gold records highlights their consistency and knowledge of their audience: hard-working Black folk for which a concert ticket or an album were luxuries.
My first experience with the Maze featuring Frankie Beverly phenomenon was during the Newport Jazz Festival in Saratoga Springs, NY in the early 1990s. The band was the closing act on that particular night, and I distinctly remember some of the White folk in the crowd (which the festival’s audience in those days was overwhelmingly so) sit restlessly, not quite knowing who the band was or what to expect. As the band broke into that all-too-familiar intro to “Joy and Pain,” my wife and I were among the hundreds or so who took over the seats close to the stage, that were abandoned by those who didn’t or couldn’t hang for the party — and party we did.
The best tribute to Maze’s formula is that they had not released new music since 1993’s Back to Basics, and had been without a recording label for thirty years. As Duke Ellington understood generations ago, the music didn’t matter, and didn’t mean anything, if the people who needed it most, didn’t get to be with it — and a record player was no substitute. Ellington was often on the road with his band 300 days out of the year, to not only sustain the music, but to remind us as he so often did, that he “loved us madly”; Frankie Beverly shared that ethic.
Sadly, Beverly’s death leaves a void that will not be easily replaced, Maze’s multi-generational appeal marked their music as unique; few if any contemporary R&B artists can speak to the grandparents as easily as they speak to the grandchildren. And while Frankie Beverly will never ever again ascend to the stage, he has left us a vault of music that reminds us that “we are one.”
Mark Anthony Neal is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African American Studies and Professor of English and Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Duke University. The author of several books including Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities and Black Ephemera: The Crisis and Challenge of the Musical Archive, both from NYU Press. His next book Save a Seat for Me: Meditations on Black Masculinity and Fatherhood will be published by Simon & Schuster.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Mark Anthony Neal's work on Medium.