Editor’s note: Frankie Beverly, who died Sept. 10 at age 77, has been a favorite of Atlantans for decades. Maze featuring Frankie Beverly regularly played for huge crowds at numerous Atlanta venues through the year. This story was originally published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution nearly 40 years ago on Nov. 16, 1985.
Frankie Beverly and Maze have found the perfect market for their blend of Philadelphia-style vocals and San Francisco funk music: England.
That’s where the band first released “Can’t Stop the Love,” its current album, and where it opened the May-to-December tour that brings the eight musicians to the Fox Theatre Saturday, Nov. 16.
“We have a pop problem … a crossover problem in the U.S.,” Beverly says. “Whereas in England, the whites like the kind of gritty rhythm and blues that we do. There’s no problem with them understanding and accepting it.”
Not that the band, which has seven gold records to its credit, is without success in the U.S. Having sold a half-million copies of each album is an achievement in itself. And Beverly and Maze don’t regularly play stadiums or Omni-size venues, but shows such as that at the Fox generally sell out or come close.
But there’s very little radio play or singles action for the 39-year-old Beverly and Maze. “I Want to Feel I’m Wanted,” a 10-week-old single, dropped from 28th last week to 30th this week on Billboard’s Black singles chart and the current album isn’t even listed.
“I just refuse to compromise the music and, therefore, I’m going to have a problem with radio,” Beverly says during a telephone interview prior to a Dallas, Texas, concert. “You start changing your music and it’ll wind up hurting you.”
For proof, he cites Kool and the Gang, a band just now recovering from altering its music to try and compete with disco and other musical fads and changes in the late ‘70s. “They’re successful now, but it’s in another way,” Beverly says. “They’re not as wholesome as they used to be and not looked at in the same way.
“I’d rather keep what we’ve got than have No. 1 records. That’s what the problem is.”
What Beverly and Maze have is a loyal following and a live show that showcases his personality and some good musicianship. It’s an act that certainly features Beverly, but the rest of the band isn’t just a support group.
Organist Sam Porter, conga player and backup vocalist Roame Lowry, and percussionist and backup vocalist McKinley “Bug” Williams are the only other original members, but newcomers Wayne “Ziggy” Lindsay on keyboards, guitarist Wuane Thomas (a former member), bassist Robin Dhue and drummer Michael White have satisfactorily replaced the departed Phillip Woo, Ron Smith and Billy Johnson. The sound remains much the same.
“If you replace a person with someone who’s comparable, it’s almost always better,” Beverly says of the changes. “It kind of puts a spark in it, so most of the time it’s not a bad thing. I don’t want to use the word better for the music. It’s different and just as good.”
It’s danceable music with roots that go back to Sly and the Family Stone, the late-’60s and early ‘70s group that Beverly calls “the heavyweight impression of my life.”
Until then, Beverly and band had been the Butlers, which sang “like the Temptations,” and then Raw Soul — “that name fit us because we were kind of raw,” Beverly says. “The Butlers went from doing songs like ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’ to doing Sly and Crosby, Stills & Nash. We were even doing Richie Havens … all sorts of ‘60s music.”
The Butlers were organized in Philadelphia in the early ‘60s and the band was the reason Beverly left home. “I lost interest in getting up and dealing with school and I had a lot of problems with my father,” Beverly says. “It got to the point I’d say, ‘Dad, I’m going to do this,’ and he’d say, ‘You’re going to have to do it on our own,’ and I had to leave home.”
Beverly was 16 when he quit school and moved in with a friend’s grandmother, the first in a series of people who provided career-sustaining help. “She was a sweetheart and she wanted us to do our music.”
“We played some clubs, but we didn’t have any hits or anything,” Beverly says of those formative years with the Butlers. “Then, in 1972, to be exact, we decided we’d gone as far as we could go in Philadelphia. It’s kind of like boot camp. You learn what you need to know, but it’s not the place you want to stay, so we figured we’d move out to California.”
At first, all that was warmer was the weather. “We ran into a big wall out there,” Beverly says. “For the first year, just the grace of God kept us alive. Eight of us had gone out there on our bus, but some of us gave it up in a month or so.
“I don’t have any hard feelings about the guys who split, either. At that point, it was ‘how bad do you want this?’ I don’t blame those guys for leaving, but I didn’t want to go back home and meet that you-didn’t-make-it attitude. I had to suffer, but I’d have suffered more if I’d gone back home and heard all that.”
Fortunately, Beverly & Co. had a landlord who “saw our dedication and let us go a year without paying rent. It was an old white guy named Mr. Wilbert Chestnut in the Oakland area and he’d even let us use his truck to go to work and pick up things. Finally, we started getting some work and had a chance to pay him.”
Then, in 1976, came a major befriendment from Jan Gaye, the second wife of the late Marvin Gaye. “She saw us in a club called The Scene and liked us, and the next thing I knew he was on the phone,” Beverly says. “That was a real shock, and the next thing I knew he was inviting me to come down to his home and bring some tapes.
“From that point on, the whole thing turned around. Meeting him sparked other people’s interest and he was instrumental in putting together the record deal with Capitol three or four months later.”
The result was a debut album, “Maze featuring Frankie Beverly,” in January of 1977 and a succession of albums containing minor hits such as “Feel That You’re Feeling,” “Running Away,” “While I’m Alone” and “Southern Girl.”
Beverly attributes much of the band’s success and sound to Gaye, to whom “Can’t Stop the Love” is dedicated. “He was a genuinely true artist — one of those temperamental, really erratic artists,” Beverly says. “He’d go from one extreme to the other, but he was so much into his act.”
Once given the momentum of touring as Gaye’s opening act, Beverly and Maze rolled on into the ‘80s with successful albums and semi-successful singles such as “Love is the Key” and then discovered England in 1982.
“That was the surprise of my career,” Beverly says. “Nothing in my career could ever surpass what happened the first time — I don’t care if there’s Grammys.”
The British media raved — and still does — about the shows, and British music fans like Beverly and Maze so much the band opened its current tour before six sold-out crowds of more than 3,000 in London’s Hammersmith Odeon.
Beverly’s explanation: “The silly music that’s out today is just temporary. The pop music that is happening today is nothing like the pop music of 10 years ago.
“And we’re the last of the gritty bands. There ain’t no more around.”
About the Author
