Duke Robillard creates another guitar tour-de-force as he delivers a brilliant double-set of varied approaches to the world of blues 
  
Any biographical introduction to Duke Robillard has to cover a lot of ground. 
  
• His legendary playing skills as one of the most versatile guitarists on the planet. 
• The fact that only a tiny handful of other players (B.B. King and Buddy Guy, for instance) can equal his ability to tour, non-stop, around the world. 
• The fact that he has made more than a dozen CDs as part of a world-wide record deal — and with a Canadian record label at that. 
• That he’s a session player who’s recorded with Bob Dylan, Maria Muldaur, Dr. John, John Hammond, and sorely-missed legends such as Jay McShann, Ruth Brown, Jimmy Witherspoon, Roscoe Gordon, and Long John Baldry. And he’s toured with Tom Waits. 
• And that he’s a one-man cheering section for the blues, in all its many forms and permutations.

Now, with a new double CD on the Edmonton-based roots music label Stony Plain — Duke Robillard’s World Full of Blues — he has made what he calls “a statement that is true to what I am about.”

 What he is “about” is the blues, that most basic life-force of all American music, and one of infinite variety. That’s always been at the heart of Robillard’s music, from the day he started the seminal band Roomful of Blues to his latest non-stop tour. His four-word description of the new album — “All Killer, No Filler” — equally sums up a career that’s still going strong after 40 years.

The W.C. Handy Awards have named Robillard “Best Blues Guitarist” no less than four times, B.B. King says “Duke’s one of the great players,” and the Houston Post called him “one of God’s guitarists.” And the New York Times says Robillard is “a soloist of stunning force and originality.” He’s won Canada’s Maple Blues Award for Best International Musician three years in a row.

In June, he received the 2007 Rhode Island Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts, which recognizes artistic excellence in Robillard’s home state and on the national level. Additional award winners included Academy Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis. Previous Pell honorees include actors Jason Robards, Robert Redford, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, as well as Stephen Sondheim and Beverly Sills.

None of all this goes to Robillard’s head. He’s still on the road, still playing as many as 250 dates a year. And still proving, night after night, that his true talent is bringing people out to hear the music, appreciate the show, and dance to the blues.

AN EARLY START

Duke had his first band in high school ­— he was born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island — and he was fascinated from the beginning by the ways in which jazz, swing, and the blues were linked. In 1967, still a teenager, he formed Roomful of Blues, and the band was tight enough and tough enough to accompany two of his heroes, Big Joe Turner and Eddie ”Cleanhead” Vinson on record and in live appearances.

Always ahead of his time, Duke’s first band pre-dated the renewed interest in jump blues by more than a decade — and almost 20 years later, in 1986, when he recorded with jazz sax master Scott Hamilton, he recorded a collection of classic big band tunes from the ’30s and ’40s, thus skillfully pre-dating the neo-Swing craze of the mid ’90s.

Roomful of Blues — which still continues 40 years on — gave Duke his first exposure to a wide public, and when he left after a dozen years, he played briefly with rockabilly king Robert Gordon, then cut two albums with the Legendary Blues Band (a sterling group of former members of Muddy Waters’ bands). He led his own group until 1990, then replaced Jimmie Vaughan in the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

THE STONY PLAIN CONNECTION

In 1993, as he was about to sign a world-wide recording deal with Virgin/Pointblank, he met Holger Petersen, head of the Canadian independent label Stony Plain, at a folk festival in Winnipeg. In conversation, he mentioned he wanted to record a complete album of blues, without the r&b and jazz influences of his work to date.

Petersen was interested; Virgin gave the go-ahead, and the resulting album, Duke’s Blues, earned rave reviews. It was so successful, in fact, that Virgin licensed the record from Stony Plain and released it around the world (except in Canada, where it continues in the Canadian company’s catalogue).

In the years since his relationship with the Canadian label has been astonishingly fruitful. As a solo artist, he has released close to a dozen records with the label.

Just as remarkable have been the projects he has produced (and played on) for Stony Plain, including two albums with the late Jimmy Witherspoon, three with Kansas City piano king Jay McShann, comeback CDs for Billy Boy Arnold and the late Roscoe Gordon and two superb albums of guitar duets with the jazz legend Herb Ellis. Along with guitarists Gerry Beaudoin and Jay Geils, he’s recorded — and released a live DVD — as the New Guitar Summit. Veteran Canadian rocker Randy Bachman has released a new CD (Jazz Thing II) on which he performs with the Summit’s three members.

Robillard now has his own 24-track studio in his home, and he has become deeply involved photography as well as record production.

On his new double CD, he’s backed by a number of players from his regular recording and touring lineups, including Mark Teixeira on drums, John Packer on bass, Doug James on sax, Marty Ballou on bass, Bruce Bears on keyboards and “Sax” Gordon Beadle on sax. Special guests include “Sugar” Ray Norcia on harmonica and Al Basile on cornet, among many others.

 The album is, in fact, a tour-de-force — proof that Duke Robillard is a man in command of a full range of creative talents — unique in the blues, and rare in the music industry as a whole.

He is, in fact, a complete artist at the height of his powers.

Something completely different from Duke's new GRAMMY nominated CD, Guitar Groove-A-Rama - THIS DREAM.
Featuring: Doug James-baritone sax, Sax Gordon-tenor sax, Billy Novick-alto sax, Al Basile-cornet, Marty Ballou-bass, Mark Teixeira-drums, Matt McCabe-piano. Recorded live at Bryant University, April 6, 2006

http://www.dukerobillard.com/ 
www.stonyplainrecords.com