Bennie Maupin - The Jewel In The Lotus

By 1974 Bennie Maupin had played bass clarinet on Bitches Brew and stayed on through Jack Johnson, On the Corner and Big Fun, and he had spent years inside both of Herbie Hancock's bands, the far-out Mwandishi sextet and the crossover hit Head Hunters. The Jewel in the Lotus is what he made with his own name on the sleeve, and it sounds like none of them.

Recorded in March 1974 at The Record Plant in New York and produced by Manfred Eicher for ECM. Maupin plays reeds, voice and glockenspiel. Herbie Hancock is on piano and electric piano, Buster Williams on bass, and there are two drummers panned hard to opposite channels, Frederick Waits on the left and Billy Hart on the right. Bill Summers is credited with "percussion and waterfilledgarbagecan," which tells you most of what you need to know about the session, and Charles Sullivan adds trumpet to "Mappo" and "Excursion." Every piece is a Maupin composition, and the record moves in long patient stretches of space rather than heads and solos.

It sits oddly in the early ECM catalogue, an American spiritual jazz session on a label then defined by Northern European restraint, and it has become one of the more sought-after things the label put out in the seventies. Jan Erik Kongshaug handled the mix. The cover was designed by the assemblage artist Betye Saar, with a photograph by James Lott.

Original 1974 US pressing on ECM, catalog ECM 1043 ST, distributed by Polydor.

Used copy: VG+ vinyl / VG+ sleeve