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George Duke Interview [img:$uid]http://i53.tiny.../img:$uid]
October 2010
Movie star tour buses pass through George Duke's hillside neighborhood, but guides do not point out his castle-like home.
The San Rafael-born, Marin City-reared keyboardist's star status in the music business is attested to, however, by the more than a dozen gold and platinum records that line his office walls and hallway to the recording studio in the house he and his wife, Corine, have shared for 35 years. Most are for hits he produced, mainly during the 1980s. They include the singles "Sukiyaki" by A Taste of Honey and "Let's Hear It for the Boy" by Deniece Williams and albums by Anita Baker, Natalie Cole, Rachelle Ferrell, Al Jarreau, Gladys Knight, Chante Moore, Jeffrey Osborne, Diane Reeves and Duke himself.
He says he never received one for the track he produced on Miles Davis' "Tutu," but there are platinum discs for two Michael Jackson albums on which he played.
These days, Duke doesn't produce many records for the American market, other than his own CDs, which mix jazz, soul and funk influences and are frequently laced with humor.
"Most of the big artists that I've worked with in the past, except for Anita Baker, don't have record deals anymore," says Duke, 64. "I've been producing Russian artists, Ukrainian artists and African artists. It's come down to that." He recently completed a second English-language album by Russian pop and jazz singing star Larisa Dolina.
Samples from some of the pianist's old recordings used by such hip-hop artists as Kanye West and Lil Jon help keep royalty checks rolling in. A Duke sample on the song "Play No Games" from Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz' hit 2002 album "Kings of Crunk" earned him enough money to record two CDs with his own band for his BPM label.
Duke - who spent much of the 1970s playing in bands led by Jean-Luc Ponty, Frank Zappa and Cannonball Adderley and recording with such jazz artists as Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins and Flora Purim - recently finished creating a CD of samples for the German company Virtual Instruments. "I must have played for four days, 12 hours a day, everything I could think of," he says. "They snip it up, and hip-hop producers do their thing. It's not the kind of stuff piano players or I would use, but that's how these guys who don't play (instruments) produce."
The stocky keyboardist has seldom used samples on his own albums, and a drum machine turns up on only one track of his latest release, "DéjÀ Vu." "Everybody goes in the room and plays at the same time, like in the old days," he says, jokingly adding, "Wow, what a concept!"
Besides doing concerts with his five-member band, like the one next Sunday afternoon at Woodminster Amphitheater in Oakland, Duke in recent months has been touring as the leader of a trio backing Jarreau, who had been his vocalist for two years in the late 1960s at the Half Note on Divisadero Street in San Francisco before either man was famous. And two weeks ago at UCLA, Duke collaborated with the 67-piece Symphonic Jazz Orchestra in a concert that featured two movements from his "Muir Woods Suite," a work inspired by his memories of camping trips as a Cub Scout to the national monument in Mill Valley.
Duke grew up with his mother and father in a two-bedroom apartment on a dirt road in Marin City. The roof leaked and the street turned to mud when it rained, he recalls. His earliest memories of jazz were the walking bass lines that filtered through the wall between his room and an adjacent apartment.
His neighbor, Duke explains, "would be in there with some woman. In between his grunting and her grunting while they were having sex, I could hear this 'doom, doom, doom, doom.' It was like the Hank Crawford/Ray Charles kind of jazz stuff. It almost sounds like gospel music, but secular. That's what pulled me into jazz."
Attending an outdoor Duke Ellington concert with his mom at the Presidio of San Francisco when he was 7 also left a major impression. He was particularly intrigued by the way Ellington played the piano with his right hand and directed the orchestra with his left.
"I thought he was waving, but something magic would happen," Duke remembers. "He spoke the King's English, but at the same time he spoke a lingo that I'd hear around the corner. It was like he was speaking two different languages, which I guess he was. I said, 'I don't know what he's doing, but I want to do that.' I liked the vibe. People were smiling. They were clapping and happy. And his name was 'Duke.' "
His mother bought an upright piano from a friend for $15, hired a teacher and made her son promise to practice a half hour every day but Sunday. At 12, he started playing piano and organ at the First Missionary Baptist Church in Marin City.
"I began to see the correlation between what I played and what people felt," he says. "What the preacher was saying and what the organist was playing were all connected. That's how I first learned how to play soulfully - in the church."
After graduating from Tamalpais High School in 1963, he moved to San Francisco to attend the San Francisco Conservatory of Music by day and play in such clubs as Facks, the Jazz Workshop and the Half Note at night.
He also joined the American Federation of Musicians and remains a member of the San Francisco chapter, even though he's been based in Southern California since the early 1970s, when his versatility and virtuosity on a number of keyboard instruments made him among the most in-demand session players there.
Duke doesn't get nearly as many sideman gigs these days, but he isn't complaining. "I do get calls, like from Queen Latifah for a big-band date or from Jill Scott asking for a real piano and real players," he says. "It does happen."
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Yeah, what a concept, lol. Great article. I've always loved George Duke, but even more after reading this. It's nice to know he's not broke, and that he's able to create music when and how he so chooses. I'm going to look up those Russian, Ukrainian, and African artists he's been producing. I love it when an artists' creativity is not bound by any format.  | |
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Sex pulled him into the jazz stuff | |
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I found this pic online of George with Russian vocalist Larisa Dolina, whose 2008 album, Hollywood Mood, he produced. | |
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Well this seems very plausible seeing" to jazz" is a euphemism, "to fuck you". | |
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Sex and music go hand in hand. | |
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yup
quite a discovery | |
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Then whoever fucked him just before he made his most recent album should have their hand cut OFF....because that album sucked BALLS. Funk Is It's Own Reward | |
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Ok....I typed that & went and ate me a sammich (ha)....got to thinkin..that was mean of me.
I mean I LOVE the guy. He's a saint of a person & hasn't ever reeeeealy done anything "bad" musically...a stellar career.
I just keep hopin he'll whip out something like "Follow The Rainbow" or somethin from that era again. That team of his was a MONSTER at pitchin a funky bitch.
He's a great jazz player & all...but....jeez. It's like Hendrix doin cocktail jazz, ya know? Funk Is It's Own Reward | |
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Yeah true..i believe his funk on follow the rainbow is just amazing....too bad he slided away from that track....Hendrix doin cocktail jazz...yeah..its true...but at least we understand now why he is doing it.. | |
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