Reach Out for Quasar: Bennie Maupin 85

Bennie Maupin Quartet - Penumbra

We're gonna end up August -- before I end up in an asylum for the terminally music-manic -- with another, perfect illustration of Joshy Goes Overboard.

Not that today's esteemed reed deity doesn't warrant going above and beyond the boundaries, something he and his armory of horns and things you blow into have been doing since before a lot of us were born.

In fact, before I go any further: if you wanna go above and beyond, you could help him recover from January's Eaton Fire in Los Angeles, in which he lost just about everything but a legacy as one of the greatest still-standing Jazz OGs going.

He began pushing envelopes 60 years ago, when he moved to NYC from his native Detroit, and ended up in the band of another saxophone sultan, Marion Brown.

Stints with Mike Nock's Almanac, Lee Morgan and Horace Silver followed, as did the sessions for Miles Davis' norm-destroying Jazz Fusion mushroom cloud Bitches Brew, on which our hero supplies iconic blasts of his distinctive bass clarinet, perhaps the instrument for which he is most known and appreciated by the uninitiated.

He plays them all though. As multi-skilled as any wind player I can think of not named Rahsaan, Henry Threadgill or Ralph Carney, he has over the six decades he's been a force maintained toppermost tone and chops on everything, from the stritch to the tenor to the soprano to a whole arsenal of flutes.

That career-altering 1969 Miles session led to not just more Miles sessions -- he's all over On the Corner, which for pure, unadulterated wicked Fusion mayhem makes Bitches Brew sound like Sing Along With Mitch Miller, for instance -- but into the band of MDIII alumnus Herbie Hancock, then also beginning to pave the Jazz-Rock roads everyone drives upon today.

At first it was the legendary Mwandishi group, which evolved into the even-more-legendary, funk-heavy Headhunters. Their 1973 record of the same name is oft considered a central pillar of this kind of music, and at the time was the highest selling Jazz record ever made.

So beloved that they branched off from Herbie after a bit and made a couple of (severely funkafized) records of their own.

During the 1970s his first record as a leader -- The Jewel In the Lotus on the seminal ECM imprint -- went on to become one of the label's most beloved and definitive releases.

Two more badass Fusion platters followed in 1977 and 1978, and today these are considered foundational as well, with both being sampled who knows how many times by hungry hip-hoppers on the forage for Funk upon which to freak.

Ever since then he has led bands, recorded as a leader and with other luminaries, and toured extensively, even into his 80s.

So, yes. He's one of my all-time favorite saxophonists of ever, if that isn't obvious by now -- and he's 85 today. His former Altadena home may, sadly, not be standing, but he still sure is.

OK, enough chattering! Let's overdo it! No one more worthy than the ridiculously great -- and born this day in 1940 -- Bennie Maupin.

Bennie Maupin Quartet

JazzFest Berlin

Quasimodo

Berlin, Germany
11.7.2008

01 Walter Bishop, Jr.

02 band introductions

03 Message to Prez

04 Tears

05 Prophet's Motif (incl. FM announcement)

06 The Jewel In the Lotus

07 Escondido

08 Spirits of the Tatras

09 ATMA

Total time: 1:36:44

disc brak goes after Track 05

Bennie Maupin - reeds & flute

Michał Tokaj - piano

Michał Barański - bass

Łukasz Żyta - drums & percussion

Hanka (Hania) Chowaniec-Rybka - vocals (Tracks 08 & 09)

256/48k audio from upkerry's mp2 capture of a European satellite radio broadcast

spectral analysis is lossless to 17 kHz

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, denoised, retracked & remastered -- 

with music and FM announcer at start of Track 05 remux-rebalanced -- by EN, August 2025
610 MB FLAC/direct link below

Bennie Maupin Quartet

Roma Jazz Festival

Alexanderplatz Jazz Club

Rome, Italy
11.29.2014

01 Penumbra

02 See the Positive

03 In a Silent Way

04 Escondido

05 The 12th Day

06 You Don't Know What Love Is

Total time: 56:06

Bennie Maupin - tenor & soprano saxophones, bass clarinet & flute

Michał Tokaj - piano

Michał Barański - bass

Łukasz Żyta - drums

384/48k audio, extracted from an mp4 file of a European "Mezzo" satellite TV broadcast

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, tracked and remastered by EN, August 2025
282 MB FLAC/direct link to both shows and maybe, just perhaps some other crazy awesome shit

Yeah, so there might be a little extra treat in that folder. Maybe the Tooth Fairy put it there? I can't say. But it probably contains a whole slew of Bennie Maupin outpourings of unalloyed Seventies funkness, perpetrated upon the albums of others as well as his own.

That's it from Bennie's fan page and for the month! Imma go lasso September and rustle up some audio vittles for the next phase, but be sure to donate to his re-establishment if you can and help Bennie Maupin -- as tremendous a reedsmith as has existed in this realm during our time -- begin his next 85 years of unparalleled artistry!--J.

Brackeen Interest

Joanne Brackeen Quartet - African Aztec

OK, kids! It's piannaversary time! This show is all of two whole years old, but its creator is headed for 90. I, for one, hope she gets to 100!!

This lady is another of those people I should have put on here years ago, but that's the fun, isn't it? After almost 12 years of this page, there are still megaluminaries that need and deserve tribute, right?

I know I've been very Piano Jazz lately. I must be living in Marian McPartland, which is geographically close to The Ivory Towers lololol.

Of course I thought about saving this one for her next birthday in 11 months, but we may all be who knows where by then, so I am doing it now.

I mean, once they fake an "alien invasion" and turn off the internet so douchebag can be president for the rest of his obese and worthlessly misery-generating life, they may imprison me for caring about Jazz and you'll never see me again.

Luckily this speculation, entertaining as it may be, has nada to do with Joanne Brackeen, as underrated a keyboardist as has walked the world during our rapidly-diminishing lifetimes.

At it since the 1950s, she's played with everybody from Dexter Gordon to her saxophonist hubby Charles Brackeen, another of those brilliant cats associated with the Strata East label out of Detroit.

She has led her own groups since the 1970s, and recorded 20+ albums as a leader over the last 50 years.

I love the music of Joanne Brackeen especially for the variety of compositions she has created and the loose-yet-tight, complementary way she comps behind a soloist.

She also has a pretty distinctive tone -- never easy for keyboard people, who you always hear on a different piano every time -- and way of voicing chords, somewhere between McCoy Tyner and Horace Silver.

Also a tremendously rhapsodic solo player, there are a couple of examples during this performance where she plays alone and just transports the audience to another, far more romantic and lush world.

Like I was saying, this concert is from only two years ago in NYC. As far as I know JB still leads her own quartet, even at 87!

Joanne Brackeen Quartet

Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola 

New York City, New York USA

8.23.2023

01 intro/JB announcement

02 Days of Wine and Roses

03 African Aztec

04 Someday My Prince Will Come

05 Cuban Exchange

06 Body and Soul

07 Giant Steps

08 JB announcement

09 Invitation

10 Resignation

11 Zapatos Espanoles

12 Wave

13 Mythical Magic

14 Tricks of the Trade/outro

Total time: 2:26:13

disc break goes after Track 07

Joanne Brackeen - piano

Steve Wilson - saxophone

Ugonna Okegwo - bass

Adam Cruz - drums

soundboard master of indeterminate origin from the collection of Jazzrita

edited, retracked, denoised & remastered by EN, July/August 2025
799 MB FLAC/direct link

I worked on the 2 1/2 hours of this thing for 5 hours, just denoising it of the hundreds of ticks and pops that were on the capture -- which is otherwise of official-live-LP quality -- for whatever reason.

Is this it for August? Maybe. I might do one more birthday, if I can get out of this slow traffic to the right I am always stuck in, honking my horn like a spoiled child.

That's a decision for next week, though! Right now it's time to make the scene with some pianoversary Joanne Brackeen, and long may she ivorize those ebonies, or is it ebony on those ivories?--J.

Drummer Side of Life: Alvin Queen 75

Robi Botos, Dave Young & Alvin Queen - The Honeydripper

As promised, we're back at the appointed hour to rejoinder the Oscar Peterson centennial flood with a musical compatriot of OP's who is exactly 25 years plus one day younger than Oscar, and who also features the always-attractive attribute of being still alive!

Full disclosure: I'm friends with this guy on Facebook, so I better get this right because he might (gasp) see it.

First, some basic biographicals: Born in the Bronx (like both my parents!), he was onstage with Ruth Brown (why have I never covered her on here? Shameful, I am) by age 16 in the mid-1960s. I think he replaced Billy Cobham in Horace Silver's band when BC went full Mahavishnu, but it might have been sooner than that.

I think it was not long after that that he emigrated to Canada, and then to Switzerland, where he established his own label -- Nilva, an anagram for Alvin -- in 1979.

It's there in Switzerland that he resides to this day, and I always see him in whatever airport or hotel when he posts his exploits and travels on FB.

One of the greatest living OG Jazz cats still doing it at the toppermost level on any instrument, he's been on too many records and played with too many of the world's finest musicians to even begin to list them all, or even a fraction of them, here.

I'm trying to think of the first time I ever heard or took notice of Alvin Queen. I wanna say it was way back in the 1980s, when my friend was obsessed with Charles Tolliver and those 1970s Music, Inc. records on Strata East, and insisted I come along for the ride. It didn't take much further prompting for me to hop in.

Something I truly dig about the rock solid, impeccably conceived and executed drumming of Alvin Queen is the fact that whenever I've come across a picture of him, or seen him on video, anchoring the backline so ably for so many Hall of Fame luminaries, he is almost always smiling the kind of smile that says someone is doing exactly what they want to do in life.

I guess that's one reason why the forces of depredation and evil tried to arbitrarily exile him that time, eh? Maybe after you-know-whore -- there, I said it -- gets done renaming The Kennedy Center for Hulk Hogan, he can get after making sure the unprecedented, knee-shaking terrorist threat posed by The Art Ensemble Of Chicago is taken care of. Oh, what am I saying? He probably thinks Roscoe Mitchell was in The Central Park 5.

Anyway this has precisely naught to do with President Dirty Diaper, and everything to do with the late, extremely great Oscar Peterson, because Alvin Queen -- I almost named this post "The Finest In Swiss Timekeeping," but thought it was too long for the header lol -- was in fact OP's last drummer. And since Oscar Peterson's passing in 2007, he has been somewhat of a keeper of the OP flame, helping organize and participating in several tremendous tribute projects.

One of which took place in 2013, when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation summoned three superheavyweights associated with Jazz in Canada to come to Montreal to recreate one of OP's most treasured and influential LPs, 1962's Night Train.

There's a pretty fabbo FM capture of this event -- with an announcer talking over the music too often -- that circulates in Bootworld, but after I whipped that version into presentable formation, I discovered that it was missing a whole bunch of the tunes and that the CBC site had it as a stream, complete, and with all the platter and none of the chatter.

This looked no lossier than the shorter iteration of it, so I integrated the salient CBC segments into the longer version and made sure no one is yakking over the songs whatsoever. You even get to hear OP's wife Kelly talk about how he came, at the instigation of Norman Granz, to write the epic Hymn to Freedom that closes the album and this concert.

Robi Botos/Dave Young/Alvin Queen

50 Years On the Night Train

A Tribute to Oscar Peterson's "Night Train"

Victoria Hall

Montreal, Canada

2.27.2013

01 CBC-FM intro

02 C-Jam Blues

03 Night Train

04 Georgia On My Mind

05 Bags' Groove

06 Moten Swing

07 Easy Does It

08 The Honeydripper

09 Things Ain't What They Used to Be

10 I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)

11 Band Call

12 Hymn to Freedom

13 CBC-FM outro

14 CBC talk: Kelly Peterson on "Hymn to Freedom"

Total time: 1:18:39

Robi Botos - piano

Dave Young - bass

Alvin Queen - drums

224/48k audio streamed from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation site @ cbc.ca

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, assembled & slightly remastered by EN, August 2025

CBC segments are inserted from stevemtl's digital capture of a 2020 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation analog FM rebroadcast

demuxed for continuity & edited by EN, August 2025
401 MB FLAC/direct link

This performance is just 97 kinds of exquisite, so I hope my little representation of it does the thing justice. Because all three of the dudes play their everloving asses clean off as they more than do justice to the sacred OP texts they've come to the MTL to radio-render.

I shall return in a week with more pianos and things, but I wanted to celebrate and honor the centennial of Oscar Peterson -- and the 75th birthday of the incredible (not a drum machine) Alvin Queen today -- with some posts and shows worthy of such beautiful Maestros of our epoch.--J.