George Duke Biography
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 12 January 1946, San Rafael, California, USA. Duke studied the piano at school (where he ran a Les McCann -inspired Latin band) and emerged from the San Francisco Conservatory as a Bachelor of Music in 1967. From 1965-67 he was resident pianist at the Half Note, accompanying musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Dorham. This grounding served as a musical education for the rest of his life. He arranged for a vocal group, the Third Wave, and toured Mexico in 1968. In 1969, he began playing with French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, using electric piano to accompany Ponty’s electric violin. He played on King Kong, an album of music Frank Zappa composed for Ponty. He then joined Zappa’s group in 1970, an experience that transformed his music. As he put it, previously he had been too ‘musically advanced’ to play rock ‘n’ roll piano triplets. Zappa encouraged him to sing and joke and use electronics. Together they wrote ‘Uncle Remus’ for Apostrophe (1972), a song about black attitudes to oppression. His keyboards contributed to a great edition of the Mothers Of Invention - captured on the outstanding Roxy & Elsewhere (1975) - which combined fluid jazz playing with rock and avant garde sonorities. In 1972, he toured with Cannonball Adderley (replacing Joe Zawinul).
Duke had always had a leaning towards soul jazz and after he left Zappa, he went for full-frontal funk. I Love The Blues, She Heard My Cry (1975) combined a retrospective look at black musical forms with warm good humour and freaky musical ideas; a duet with Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson was particularly successful. Duke started duos with fusion power-drummer Billy Cobham, and virtuoso bass player Stanley Clarke, playing quintessential 70s jazz rock - amplification and much attention to ‘chops’ being the order of the day. Duke always had a sense of humour: ‘Dukey Stick’ (1978) sounded like a Funkadelic record. The middle of the road beckoned, however, and by Brazilian Love Affair (1980) he was providing high-class background music. In 1982, Dream On showed him happily embracing west-coast hip easy listening. However, there has always been an unpredictable edge to Duke. The band he put together for the Wembley Nelson Mandela concert in London backed a stream of soul singers, and his arrangement of ‘Backyard Ritual’ on Miles Davis’ Tutu (1986) was excellent. He collaborated with Clarke again for the funk-styled 3 and in 1992 he bounced back with the jazz fusion Snapshot, followed by the orchestral suite Enchanted Forest in 1996, and Is Love Enough? in 1997. Further albums have followed, showing that Duke is on a creative roll at the turn of the century, and beyond.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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12 January 1946, San Rafael, California, USA. Duke studied the piano at school (where he ran a Les McCann -inspired Latin band) and emerged from the San Francisco Conservatory as a Bachelor of Music in 1967. From 1965-67 he was resident pianist at the Half Note, accompanying musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Dorham. This grounding served as a musical education for the rest of his life. He arranged for a vocal group, the Third Wave, and toured Mexico in 1968. In 1969, he began playing with French violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, using electric piano to accompany Ponty’s electric violin. He played on King Kong, an album of music Frank Zappa composed for Ponty. He then joined Zappa’s group in 1970, an experience that transformed his music. As he put it, previously he had been too ‘musically advanced’ to play rock ‘n’ roll piano triplets. Zappa encouraged him to sing and joke and use electronics. Together they wrote ‘Uncle Remus’ for Apostrophe (1972), a song about black attitudes to oppression. His keyboards contributed to a great edition of the Mothers Of Invention - captured on the outstanding Roxy & Elsewhere (1975) - which combined fluid jazz playing with rock and avant garde sonorities. In 1972, he toured with Cannonball Adderley (replacing Joe Zawinul).