May 6, 1977: Maze releases debut album
By any measure, one of the most talented but criminally underappreciated self-contained bands of the past four decades has been Maze feat. Frankie Beverly. Their ability to fuse soul and jazz with an irresistible groove and intelligent lyrical content has gained for them an extremely loyal following among Soul music fans and great respect among their performing peers, but little attention in the pop music world.
May 6, 1977: Maze releases debut album
By any measure, one of the most talented but criminally underappreciated self-contained bands of the past four decades has been Maze feat. Frankie Beverly. Their ability to fuse soul and jazz with an irresistible groove and intelligent lyrical content has gained for them an extremely loyal following among Soul music fans and great respect among their performing peers, but little attention in the pop music world.
Group founder and leader Frankie Beverly was born and raised in the musical city of Philadelphia, and began singing as a child in church. As an early teen he hooked up with 50s soul group the Silhouettes (who sang the doo-wop number "Get a Job," which influenced Smokey Robinson's first hit composition, "Got a Job"). By the early 60s, Beverly founded a doo-wop group called the Butlers and worked with future legendary Philly record executive and producer Kenny Gamble. The Butlers had significant local success, but never broke out nationally.
While clearly talented, Beverly and his various bands were not the prototypical Philly soul acts, and in the early 70s he moved with his new group to San Francisco, where he met Marvin Gaye, who took a liking to the group and helped them land a contract with Capitol Records under the new name Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly.
When Capitol signed the act, there was no way to know how truly transformative Maze would become, but soul music audiences fell for the group from the get go. The self-titled Capitol debut was a Soul smash, yielding the hits "While I'm Alone" and “Happy Feelin’s” and hitting the Soul top 10. As with the act's future albums, the subtle jazz stylings and smooth grooves were extremely appealing to Soul music fans, even if not getting much pop attention.
Over the next decade, Maze released a series of well crafted, well received albums that uniformly hit top 10 Soul and were certified gold or platinum. The group also released a number of memorable singles, including "Joy and Pain," "Southern Girl," "Love Is The Key," "Back In Stride" (a #1 Soul hit), "Can't Get Over You" (another #1), “Silky Soul Singer, and many more.
Now seemingly the official group of every family cookout, Maze feat. Frankie Beverly joined our family on this day in 1977.
By Chris Rizik