|
Extrait de la compile
GREATEST HITS
Biographie:
" b. 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
plugged-in 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 bassist 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 (1979) he was merely 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 's 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. "
(source http://music.yahoo.com/)
|
