George Duke - A Profile

George Duke was born on this day (12 Jan) in 1946 and would have been celebrating his 77th birthday, but we lost him on 5 Aug 2013 to leukaemia aged 67. He is probably best known in the UK for the title track of his 1980 album "Brazilian Love Affair" which, may surprise you to learn, didn't make the US R&B chart, although it peaked at #36 on the UK pop chart in Jul 1980 spending six weeks on the chart.

Duke was born in San Rafael, CA, and became interested in the piano after being taken to a Duke Ellington concert at the age of 4 and began piano lessons at 7. To begin with he played classical music before switching to jazz after being influenced by his jazz bass player cousin Charles Burrell. He is also the cousin of Grammy winning jazz singer Dianne Reeves.

His first album ("The George Duke Quartet Presented By The Jazz Workshop 1966 Of San Francisco") was recorded in 1966 and he then spent two years as a member of Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention and another two playing with Cannonball Adderley before returning to Zappa. He often used the alias Dawilli Gonga when performing on other artists material.

He recorded approximately 37 albums between 1966 and 2013 and appeared on many more. In 2011 he released the first of three albums of early live recordings with Al Jarreau ("Live At The Half Note Club 1965 Volume 1") recorded in 1965 at The Half Note Club in San Francisco. Another two volumes were planned for release, whether or not they were before his death in 2013 I'm not sure, but they don't appear to have been.

He crossed over to funk (or jazz/funk as it became known and later Fusion) in the 70s with "Reach For It" being his first, and biggest, hit on the R&B charts reaching #2 in 1977.

In the playlist below I've endeavoured to select a track from each of his (available) albums to show his evolution, although a few from the 80s were skipped as sadly they suffered from that synthetic/artificial electronic sounding production that was prevalent in the mid 80s (along with bland ballads) which, for me at least, left the music soulless. There are also a few videos of him performing his classics live.

Album Discography

1966 - The George Duke Quartet Presented By The Jazz Workshop 1966 Of San Francisco

1970 - Save the Country

1971 - The Inner Source (Solus) 

           (First Disc Of The Album The Inner Source)

           (intended as a separate released as a double album)

1973 - The Inner Source 

           (Second Disc Of The Album The Inner Source)

1974 - Faces in Reflection

1974 - Feel

1975 - The Aura Will Prevail

1975 - I Love the Blues, She Heard My Cry

1976 - Liberated Fantasies

1976 - The Solo Keyboard Album 

           (aka The Dream - not released until 1982)

1977 - From Me to You

1977 - Reach for It

1978 - Don't Let Go

1979 - Follow the Rainbow

1979 - Master of the Game

1980 - A Brazilian Love Affair

1981 - The Clarke/Duke Project

1982 - Dream On

1983 - The Clarke/Duke Project II

1983 - Guardian of the Light

1984 - Rendezvous

1985 - Thief in the Night

1986 - George Duke

1989 - Night After Night

1990 - The Clark/Duke Project 3

1992 - Snapshot

1993 - Muir Woods Suite

1995 - Illusions

1997 - Is Love Enough?

1998 - After Hours

2000 - Cool

2002 - Face the Music

2005 - Duke

2006 - In a Mellow Tone

2008 - Dukey Treats

2010 - Déjà Vu

2013 - DreamWeaver

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