Bennie Maupin: Slow Traffic to the Right (Verve By Request series) [VERVE]

Why you'll love it

This Verve By Request pressing is mastered by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound and pressed on 180g vinyl at Third Man Pressing in Detroit. It's the second album from the reedman behind the sound of Head Hunters, with Patrice Rushen on keys.

This edition

• Verve By Request series
• 180g vinyl
• Mastered by Ryan Smith at Sterling Sound
• Stereo mix

About the album

Bennie Maupin spent the early 70s as one of the great supporting players in jazz, blowing bass clarinet on Miles Davis' B*tches Brew and reeds in Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters band. On Slow Traffic to the Right he steps into the fast lane himself, with a warm, synth-glazed jazz-funk record cut at Different Fur in San Francisco.

Maupin plays everything from soprano and tenor sax to saxello, piccolo, flutes, bass clarinet and an Oberheim synth, with Patrice Rushen on piano, Rhodes and clavinet, Paul Jackson and Ralph Armstrong on bass, James Levi on drums, Blackbird McKnight on guitar and Eddie Henderson on trumpet. Producer Patrick Gleeson adds layers of polyphonic synthesizer. "It Remains To Be Seen" and "Quasar" are deep grooves, and "Lament," by Onaje Allan Gumbs, is a short, lovely breather.

Rushen soon went on to her own run of hits, and the album plays like a summit of West Coast jazz-funk talent. The title is sound road advice, though on this evidence Maupin was happy in any lane he chose.

Also at Kops: more Bennie Maupin on vinyl · browse Modern Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Verve / Mercury (cat# SRM-1-1148), a reissue of the 1977 album.