JAZZ NOTES: The passing of icons Frankie Beverly, Dan Morgenstern, Sergio Mendes
Due to the proximity of such prominent contributors to American music passing in recent weeks, this column is dedicated to the iconic contributions of Frankie Beverly, Dan Morgenstern, and Sergio Mendes. Their contributions, whether through music or words, transcend boundaries of genre, connecting music as a whole.
It came as a total shock to awaken that morning to a text that read "this is a hard one Frankie Beverly," with the sad face and prayer emojis. To confirm beyond a doubt, I googled Frankie Beverly, and there it was: "dies at age 77 on September 10."
Beverly's was one of the few R&B groups that still maintained an actual band similar to Kool and the Gang in the mode of Sly & the Family Stone. Frankie Beverly and Maze: you knew the band's sound after a few funky bars, and its frontman's high-spirited baritone vocals could be acknowledged in one beat that was the distinctive sound of one of America's most influential R&B groups.
Although the guitarist, producer, and songwriter Beverly and the seven, then later eight-piece band Maze were never affiliated with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's The Sound of Philadelphia label (TSOP), their Philly sound was just as innate. It enthralled the world. Their soulfulness tantalized the heart and made us swoon. Maze was just as smooth and hard hittin as MFSB, TSOP's studio band.
From 1977 to 1993, the songwriter and Maze unleashed a string of R&B hits: "Golden Time of Day," "We Are One," "Joy and Pain," "Happy Feelin's," "Southern Girl," and "Before I Let Go." Beverly's songs are cemented in Black community celebrations; they are anthems, such as his 1981 song "Before I Let Go," which immediately beckons folks to the dance floor whether they are at a cookout, community room, or house party. That song is multigenerational: elders to teens take to the floor for that communal "electric slide," and it doesn't matter if your cousin or uncle steps on your foot — no, at that moment it's all about family or good friends enjoying the groove that was about "Happy Feelings" during that "Golden Time of Day." Who would've known his beautiful ballad "We Are One" could become an anthem or that his midtempo "Joy and Pain" would charm the world? His music has a stimulating warm groove that brings comfort and joy to listeners, a healing groove that brings people together.
Beverly, finished his farewell "I Wanna Thank You" tour in his hometown of Philadelphia in July. That same month, the Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans included a special tribute to Beverly and Maze, who closed out the event for its first 15 years. Maze will continue touring with vocalist Tony Lindsay.
Beverly's family said the singer "lived his life with pure soul as one would say, and for us, no one did it better. He lived for his music, family, and friends."
Dan Morgenstern, an esteemed jazz writer, keeper of jazz history and its musical tradition, who won eight Grammys for his prolific liner notes, died on Sept. 7 in Manhattan. He was 94.
Some months prior to Morgenstern's passing I had the opportunity to speak with him briefly during the Jazz Gallery's annual gala where he was presented with the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award. Despite his huge presence in the jazz world, he would take time to speak with aspiring writers or musicians.
"The late Dan Morgenstern was my jazz journalist compass for four decades, pointing me in the right direction as a young writer, with his encyclopedic knowledge, vast connections, and deep humanity," stated freelance writer Eugene Holley Jr. "To paraphrase Duke Ellington, I will miss him madly!"
Morgenstern was one of the last jazz scholars to have known the giants of jazz he wrote about as both a friend and a chronicler, from Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Roy Elridge to Oran "Hot Lips" Page. "I don't like the word 'critic' very much. I look at myself more as an advocate for the music than as a critic," he wrote in "Living With Jazz." "My most enthusiastic early readers were my musician friends, and one thing led to another. What has served me best, I hope, is that I learned about the music not from books but from the people who created it."
His two authored books, "Jazz People" (1976) and "Living with Jazz" (2004), the latter a reader edited by Sheldon Meyer, both won ASCAP's Deems Taylor Award, and in 2007 he received the A.B. Spellman Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The record producer and historian became known as an advocate for musicians and works he considered were overlooked, such as the avant-gardist Ornette Coleman and the late recordings of blues singer Bessie Smith. Morgenstern enjoyed positions as editor at three celebrated jazz magazines: Metronome, Jazz (later Jazz & Pop) and DownBeat; wrote album and concert reviews for the ; and directed the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University at Newark (1976). Under his leadership, the Institute became an essential resource for scholars and musicians. He retired in 2012.
"Dan (Morgenstern) was a living Encyclopedia of Jazz and while alive, its ultimate historian. To create his thousands of published works, he first gathered the facts, and combined the result with what he already had stored in his mind and made this information available in various ways," said Hank O'Neal, a close friend of Dan's. "I often told him he had to hang in there until science came up with a way to download his brain. He almost made it."
The Brazilian-born pianist and composer Sergio Mendes, who intensified world sounds in the 1960s with his bossa nova music of Brasil 66, which turned memorable songs like "Fool on the Hill," "So Many Stars," and "Mas Que Nada" into restructured bossa nova hits, and recorded albums with Cannonball Adderley and Herbie Mann, died on Sept. 5 in Los Angeles. He was 83.
Early in his career, Mendes played with fellow Brazilian guitarist, composer, and songwriter Antônio Carlos Jobim, who was regarded as a mentor. Mendes formed the Sexteto bossa Rio and recorded Dance Moderno in 1961. He moved to the U.S. in 1964 and cut two albums under the group name Sergio Mendes & Brasil '65 with Capitol Records and Atlantic Records.
After signing with A&M Records, it was agreed he would record albums under the name "Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66." The group soared with their first single, "Mas Que Nada," written by Jorge Ben. The original vocalists of Brasil '66 were Lani Hall and Bibi Vogel. The group's best selling album was "Look Around" (1966 A&M).
The pianist and arranger continued as an influence in popular music for more than six decades, releasing over 35 albums and winning three Grammys, and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2012 for best original song (as co-writer of "Real in Rio," from the animated film "Rio").The Mendes' bossa nova sound was an effect of Brazil's dance music style known as samba, which has roots in Africa. Bossa nova means "new wave" which referred to a new way of singing and playing samba that began on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s as jazz grew in popularity. The subtle drums often accompanied by a melodic conga, keyboard arrangements, and those alluring vocals introduced a new rhythmic flow that swayed the body. Mendes never tried to fit in; he infused jazz and pop music into his native musical tradition.
