George Duke Archives - JAZZ IMPRESSIONS

Cannonball Adderley – The Black Messiah

The year before pianist George Duke featured on Frank Zappa’s The Grand Wazoo, he recorded two solo albums and spent the best part of the year playing in the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. If Zappa was Duke’s mentor in all things rock, Cannonball was his teacher in jazz and soul. Joining Adderley’s Quintet gave the young Duke an opportunity to develop not only as a performer, but also as a composer and arranger. In the summer of 1971, Cannonball and his band recorded a live album at The Troubadour club in West Hollywood, Los Angeles. The album was named after its title track, a composition by Duke, and was released later that year as a double album on Capitol Records.

Frank Zappa and The Mothers – Blessed Relief

In between stints with jazz saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and fusion drummer Billy Cobham, keyboard visionary George Duke joined Frank Zappa and The Mothers for some of their most ambitious studio recordings.

George Duke – Peace

Our last post looked at Billy Cobham’s fusion classic ‘Heather’ from his album Crosswinds (1974) which featured the mellow tones of keyboardist George Duke. Flashing back a couple of years earlier to January 1971, a young George Duke had just left Frank Zappa’s group The Mothers Of Invention and joined saxophonist Cannonball Adderley’s new quintet, replacing pianist Joe Zawinul. The months that followed would prove formative for this young pianist and in this year he recorded two albums: Solus and The Inner Source, originally intended to be two separate albums but were later merged, released on German jazz label MPS in 1973.

Billy Cobham – Heather

From John Abercrombie’s Timeless classic on ECM, we follow the guitarist to another proto-ambient wonder of the fusion world: Billy Cobham’s ‘Heather’ from the Atlantic album Crosswinds (1974).