New Orleans said farewell to Frankie Beverly and Maze at sold-out Smoothie King Center

New Orleans turned out in force, and in white, for Frankie Beverly’s farewell.

On Saturday night, a sold-out Smoothie King Center hosted a triple bill of the Whispers, the O’Jays and Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. Most of the 14,000 or so in attendance wore white, to match Beverly and company’s traditional stage attire.

The show, promoted by Urban Vibe Entertainment, was billed as the 77-year-old Beverly’s final concert in New Orleans, a city that wholeheartedly embraced Maze’s easy-groove soul and R&B even before the band recorded its landmark 1981 concert album, “Live in New Orleans,” over two nights in November 1980 at the Saenger Theatre.

The 2024 Essence Festival of Culture plans to salute Beverly — the closing act for the festival’s first 15 years — in the Caesars Superdome on July 7. But that will apparently be more of a tribute, and not a full Maze performance.

Compared to the lavish Essence production, Saturday’s presentation at the Smoothie King Center was barebones: a low backdrop curtain, a modest video screen at center stage, two additional screens suspended at the sides of the stage, a couple of simple lighting trusses.

Not much more was needed (though bigger video screens, and more thoughtfully curated video content, would have been a nice bonus). This was a decidedly old-school show, one that focused on music and communal nostalgia.

On many levels, it felt like an especially good night from the early years of Essence Fest. It was a collective, feel-good, family reunion-style love fest with a soundtrack — courtesy of the three bands and DJ Captain Charles, who spun song snippets between acts — that most in attendance grew up with.

The Essence vibes extended to the chilly temperature inside the Smoothie King Center, a fact not lost on the O’Jays’ Eddie Levert.

“Y’all, it’s cold as s*** in here,” Levert declared soon after arriving onstage. “Might as well be at the North Pole.”

O'Jays boarded the 'Love Train'

The Mighty O’Jays have declared their current tour to be their last. Levert, who turns 82 on June 16, is finally starting to show his age. His hair and beard are white, and he spent most of the show sitting down. “I fell in love with an inanimate object,” he quipped. “I love this chair.”

During “Love Train,” the stage screen broadcast a 50-year-old clip of the O’Jays performing “Love Train” on the TV show “Soul Train.” The young Levert exuded an almost feral intensity.

That intensity still burns, even though his movement is limited and his voice is more gravelly. He still threw himself into the songs from the confines of his beloved chair, as 80-year-old O’Jays co-founder Walter Willams Sr. and latter-day O’Jay Eric Grant flanked him with choreographed steps.

The three O’Jays principals wore matching purple suits. Their three backing vocalists rocked red. Hidden in the shadows, the six members of the locally recruited horn section — Jason Mingledorff, Mark Mullins, Clarence Johnson III, Jamil Sharif, Alonzo Bowens and Barney Floyd — wore black.

During an hourlong set, the O'Jays worked through “Backstabbers,” “For the Love of Money,” “Livin’ For the Weekend,” “Stairway to Heaven” (their song, not the Led Zeppelin warhorse of the same name), “I Love Music,” “Family Reunion” and, as Levert put it, “songs that helped you make babies.”

The latter included “Sunshine”; Levert’s voice was strong as Williams and Grant supplied harmonies. If this was the last we’ll see of the O’Jays, they did their legacy justice.

Big love for Beverly

At 10:17 p.m., it was time for the main event: a 90-minute mass Maze love affair.

Beverly strode onstage, beaming, as the band locked into “You.” The lyrics are addressed at a girl, but he could just as well have been singing to New Orleans: “Through all the hard times, you’ve been my friend/Through good and bad, through thick and thin/Sometimes I know I hurt you so/but I could never let you go.”

They continued with “Southern Girl,” “I Need You” and the audience singalong “We Are One,” which rolled right into “Can’t Get Over You.”

The current, seven-piece Maze is a revamped version of the band that lit up Essence all those years. Longtime stalwarts such as guitarist Jubu Smith and co-founding percussionist Roame Lowry are gone.

The new incarnation, while tight, treats aspects of the Maze catalog differently. Historically, Maze is about locking into an easy, sometimes breezy, seemingly effortless groove. The new Maze sometimes pushed songs a little harder and played them a little faster. To varying degrees, that was the case on “Running Away,” “Golden Time of Day” and “Happy Feelings.” “Back In Stride” went over big, and the familiar intro to “Joy and Pain” triggered fans to fill the aisles for the Electric Slide.

The best I’ve ever seen Beverly and company was in the early years of Essence, at the highly emotional 2006 show that was the band’s first in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and Maze’s something-to-prove return to Essence in 2015 after a six-year exile.

On Saturday night, Beverly's husky voice was consistently solid. At times — such as during “Before I Let Go,” when he was bearing down and swaying his shoulders for emphasis — he was very much his old self. No one should have exited the arena on Saturday with the not-so-happy feelings that followed his widely criticized set at the 2023 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Beverly didn’t say much about the significance of Saturday night, but others did. For the final number, local singer Tonya Boyd-Cannon — wearing white, naturally — literally gave Beverly his flowers while he can still smell them. She showcased her powerhouse voice fronting Maze for a gospel-tinged “I Wanna Thank You,” singing directly to Beverly on behalf of New Orleans. He seemed genuinely moved by the moment, trading “Lord have mercy" with her.

As “I Wanna Thank You” wound down, a brass band, a pair of Mardi Gras Indians in full regalia, and a gaggle of black-and-red-clad dancers from the Krewe of Femme Fatale converged on the stage, surrounding Beverly in a celebratory scrum.

It was one final New Orleans embrace for Frankie Beverly, at least until Essence.