George Duke earned his chops playing with such artists as Cannonball Adderly, Billy Cobham, George Clinton, Jean-Luc Ponty, Miles Davis, and even Frank Zappa. He has moved from jazz to funk and back again several times since the early 1980\u2019s. The newly released Dukey Treats <\/i>find him primarily in funk mode. Duke, who wrote all the tunes contained on the album, employs vocalists Rachelle Ferrell, Teena Marie, Jonathan Butler, and Howard Hewett. Sheila E. makes a number of appearances on percussion. <\/p>\n
Duke is now about thirty albums and forty years into his career. He has started his own label, so now he can basically make the music that he desires. As such, Dukey Treats <\/i>may have a modern sound, but Duke brings his keyboards to some old time funk.<\/p>\n
While he can be playful at times, there are several serious and socially conscious songs. \u201cEveryday Hero\u201d is a song of appreciation for policemen, firefighters, teachers, and the like who are always there but often go unnoticed. Duke calls this song, \u201cLike Sly Stone on steroids.\u201d This is funk at its best; the song simply takes off driven by Duke\u2019s Keyboards and Sheila E. showing off on percussion. \u201c Duke keeps the light and even comedic spirit of funk alive on some other tracks. Somewhere George Clinton is smiling. \u201cA Fonk Tail,\u201d which is spelled correctly, is a science fiction comic book-type tale set to a funky groove. \u201cCreepin\u2019\u201d is a re-working of a song that first appeared on Duke\u2019s 2002 album, Face The Music. <\/i>It is a song about cheating that is fair to both sexes. The title song, \u201cDukey Treats,\u201d is a loose fitting, meandering funky groove complete with blazing horns. <\/p>\n \u201cI Tried To Tell You,\u201d \u201cListen Baby,\u201d and \u201cRight On Time\u201d are ballad-type songs that are interspersed throughout the album and are nice counterpoints to the up-tempo funk numbers and allow the listener to catch his or her breath. The album closes with the seven-plus minute instrumental \u201cImages Of Us.\u201d Here Duke returns to his jazz roots as he turns his keyboard virtuosity loose on a creative journey of sound. <\/p>\n Dukey Treats <\/i>is a solid outing by George Duke and proves that funk is still alive and well and worth listening to. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":29611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8297],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-41208","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-george-duke","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41208"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}