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.