60 is the New 40: Frankie Beverly
by Mark Anthony Neal
So we’re at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary, North Carolina, a little bedroom community midway between Durham and Raleigh. Nothing but a sea of black folk, all congregating to see Mint Condition and the headliner Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. In many ways the pairing was inspired, much like the tour that sent Earth, Wind & Fire out with Chicago a few years ago (it’s about the horn sections, if you been sleeping on 70s era Chicago). Though Mint Condition and Maze have never achieved the crossover success of EWF, nevertheless both groups are the epitome of the self-contained R&B band—and two of the few examples of such bands to find lasting success since the late 1970s. Both bands are fronted by singular vocalists, Stokley Williams and Frankie Beverley, who in any other universe would have long decided to step out on their own and nobody would begrudge them. But taking a page out of the Levi Stubbs and Joe Ligon books on keeping the band together, Williams and Beverly have remained committed to their bands. For Beverley that’s meant 30-years of commitment and add a decade for the years that he toiled with Raw Soul, the precursor to Maze.
Read More at Vibe.com's CRITICAL NOIR
by Mark Anthony Neal
So we’re at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary, North Carolina, a little bedroom community midway between Durham and Raleigh. Nothing but a sea of black folk, all congregating to see Mint Condition and the headliner Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. In many ways the pairing was inspired, much like the tour that sent Earth, Wind & Fire out with Chicago a few years ago (it’s about the horn sections, if you been sleeping on 70s era Chicago). Though Mint Condition and Maze have never achieved the crossover success of EWF, nevertheless both groups are the epitome of the self-contained R&B band—and two of the few examples of such bands to find lasting success since the late 1970s. Both bands are fronted by singular vocalists, Stokley Williams and Frankie Beverley, who in any other universe would have long decided to step out on their own and nobody would begrudge them. But taking a page out of the Levi Stubbs and Joe Ligon books on keeping the band together, Williams and Beverly have remained committed to their bands. For Beverley that’s meant 30-years of commitment and add a decade for the years that he toiled with Raw Soul, the precursor to Maze.
Read More at Vibe.com's CRITICAL NOIR
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