Jazz Week
The Song of the Day is:
Stanley Clarke & George Duke – “Wild Dog”
From the album The Clarke/Duke Project (1981)
It’s most commonly thought that jazz fusion is a melding of rock and jazz, but in many cases it’s a mixture of R&B and jazz. In fact, this variety of fusion can be more commercially successful and even more subversive. I look to artists like Al Jarreau, Cassandra Wilson, George Benson, and Dianne Reeves, who have built their careers walking the tightrope between the two genres. Today though, I am featuring two instrumentalists who walk this tightrope: bassist Stanley Clarke and keyboardist George Duke. For the record, they both also sing, but they are more famous for their instrumental skills and their composing. Of the two, George Duke (who was about five years older than Clarke) started to achieve fame first. Duke released his first album in 1966 and soon had joined up with jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty , which helped open the door for Duke to become a member of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention for a few years in the seventies. Duke was quietly becoming one of music’s most sought-after keyboardists and synth players. Stanley Clarke, on the other hand, broke out very suddenly as a member of Chick Corea’s Return to Forever and also released a string of highly acclaimed solo albums. Clarke had suddenly become a major up and coming star in jazz and R&B. From what I can tell, the two had first collaborated on Clarke’s third album, Journey of Love in 1975. By the time that they decided to record an album together, the pair were both big stars, and Duke had also begun producing R&B albums for artists such as Smokey Robinson, Deniece Williams and Jeffrey Osborne. Now for some reason, I woke up this morning with a real Jones to listen to these two artists, and cover two jazz legends with one song. I find “Wild Dog” to be a funky jazz workout that showcases the talents of both artists. I listened to the whole album, I found it entertaining, if kind of inconsistent. Allmusic guide, which I post a link to on nearly every entry I write, gave this album a dismal review. In fact, with one and a half stars awarded, this is one of the lowest rated albums I’ve featured. I’m pretty shocked about this, and it seems that Allmusic’s reviewer doesn’t think that the album lives up to the potential of the artists combined. They also panned the two subsequent reunions (though many of their individual albums received very high marks). Oh well, that’s not the review I’d give it, but if this song or album works as an intro to either or both artists and warrants further listening, then so be it. Both artists were as equally prone to getting wildly funky (check their cover of Parliament’s “Mothership Connection“) as they were to create quiet storm bedroom ballads. Duke would go on to release an astonishing thirty-two solo albums, and produce or guest appear on scores of albums, prior to his 2013 death due to leukemia. He was 67. Clarke has been equally active as a solo artist and sideman for artists as varied as Paul McCartney, Beck and Dexter Gordon. Clarke is still recording and performing, and has reunited with Return to Forever multiple times in the past decade. This is truly just a sample of two massively prolific artists who can be found prominently or subversively all throughout jazz, pop and R&B music. (BTW, coincidently there is a young comedic actor name Clark Duke who has appeared in The Office and Hot Tub Time Machine, though I could not find any indication that he was named in honor of this pairing).
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Hear Today, Grown Tomorrow 