THE GEORGE DUKE QUARTET: PRESENTED BY THE JAZZ WORKSHOP 1966 OF SAN FRANCISCO

Better known for his days in the early 70s as the keyboardist with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention on the albums "The Grand Wazoo," "Over-Nite Sensation" and "One Size Fits All" as well as his 1969 collaboration with Jean-Luc Ponty, the California born GEORGE DUKE while never gaining the popularity of artists like Herbie Hancock was one of the premiere jazz-fusionists of the 1970s. While primary associated with the piano and synthesizer, DUKE also mastered the saxophone, flute, bass guitar and trombone but is probably most associated with his keytar synthesizer during his disco and jazz pop years that came later in his career.

DUKE was also quite prolific as a solo artist and released a total of 35 albums before his untimely death at the age of 67 in 2013. While his fusion days would begin with his second album "The Jean-Luc Ponty Experience with the George Duke Trio" which was released in 1969, his cumbersomely titled debut album THE GEORGE DUKE QUARTET PRESENTED BY THE JAZZ WORKSHOP 1966 OF SAN FRANCISCO was really his only straight forward jazz release which found DUKE still in hero worship mode before finding his own voice in the changing tides of the jazz world in the late 60s.

THE GEORGE DUKE QUARTET PRESENTED BY THE JAZZ WORKSHOP 1966 OF SAN FRANCISCO emerged from DUKE's collaborations with THE JAZZ WORKSHOP which was a famous jazz club in 1960s San Francisco. The whole project happened somewhat spontaneously while DUKE was studying at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music and while playing at the club one fateful evening was approached by SABA Records owner Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer who wanted him to record an album. After the shock wore off DUKE signed a deal to release one album and this album was a result. The quartet consisted of DUKE solely on piano, David Simmons on trumpet, John Heard on double bass and George Walker on drums.

The album was recorded quickly and pretty much emulates the great John Coltrane during his post-bop years of the early 60s. Despite this late year in 60s jazz, this album sounds more like what was commonplace in the late 50s / early 60s but in all fairness, the whole thing was thrown at DUKE fairly quickly and with no experience or material prepared, the album comes off as a tight- woven yet standard sounding jazz album of the era. The whole album only took six hours to record so in effect this is most likely a live in the studio sort of album where the chips fell where they did. GEORGE DUKE has always stated that this is his weakest album however this is not a bad album by any stretch of the imagine however originally creative it is not either.

Despite the less than earth-shattering performances on this debut, GEORGE DUKE succeeded in attracting the attention he needed to further his career fairly quickly after this album appeared in the jazz circuits. It would take another three years for the Luc-Ponty collaboration to appear but after that a prolific stream of solo albums and Zappa collaborations would keep DUKE busy for the rest of his days on the planet. THE GEORGE DUKE QUARTET PRESENTED BY THE JAZZ WORKSHOP 1966 OF SAN FRANCISCO is hardly the sort of album that historians will salivate over but it does deliver the proper emerging artist perspectives much like Hancock's "Takin' Off." An excellently performed set of six mostly high velocity tracks but unfortunately lacking in any kind of memorable artistic stamp.