Jazz -funk fans must have been taken aback when multi-instrumentalist and composer Bennie Maupin's Jewel in the Lotus was released by Manfred Eicher's ECM imprint in 1974. For starters, it sounded nothing like Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters recording, which had been released the year before to massive sales and of which Maupin had been such an integral part. Head Hunters has remained one of the most reliable sales entries in Columbia's jazz catalog into the 21st century. By contrast, Jewel in the Lotus sounded like an avant-garde jazz record, but it stood outside that hard-line camp, too, because of its open and purposeful melodies that favored composition and structured improvising over free blowing. Jazz after 1970 began to move in so many directions simultaneously it must have felt like it was tearing itself apart rather than giving birth to so many new and exciting musics. Considered carefully, however, Jewel in the Lotus was the perfect realization of the skills acquired by Maupin from the mid-'60s on, when he had played in bands led by Marion Brown, McCoy Tyner, and Pharoah Sanders. He'd even recorded an album under his own name in 1967 entitled Almanac. Maupin was first heard by the masses, however, when he played bass clarinet on the landmark Bitches Brew session by Miles Davis, and as a member of Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi and Sextant groups. He was the lone holdover when Hancock formed the Headhunters, who blasted their way onto FM radio and into the ears of fans who also dug Earth, Wind Fire and P-Funk.

1		Ensenada
2		Mappo
3		Excursion
4		Past+Present=Future
5		The Jewel in the Lotus
6		Winds of Change
7		Song for Tracie Dixon Summers
8		Past Is Past

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