The Aura Will Prevail (Remastered) George Duke

• 1 Dawn 04:53
• 2 For Love 04:39
• 3 Foosh 03:10
• 4 Floop De Loop 06:47
• 5 Malibu 04:06
• 6 Fools 04:34
• 7 Echidna's Arf 03:35
• 8 Uncle Remus 05:10
• 9 The Aura 01:27
• Total Runtime 38:21

Info for The Aura Will Prevail (Remastered)

MPS head Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer discovered 20 year old George Duke by chance during a concert in San Francisco in 1966. A long partnership developed out of this unexpected meeting, topped off by a series of albums that Duke recorded for MPS during his Zappa phase. This 1975 recording is a reflection in concentrated quartet form of how far Duke had moved away from being, in his own view, “too conservative and serious a jazz musician”, and evolved into an inventive and humorous “master of fusion”. With Santana drummer Leon “Ndugu” Chancler, bassist Alphonso “Slim” Johnson, and the Brasilian percussion sorcerer Airto Moreira, Duke designs a stunningly cinematic sound scenario that also points to him as one of the pioneers of the synthesizer. He paints a fantastic morning atmosphere in “Dawn; in “Floop the Loop” Duke conjures animated, funky tone poems. There is a change of scene as Duke takes up the role of soulful singer on the smooth ballads “For Love” and “Fools”. His onetime collaboration with the Mothers of Invention rubs off on Duke’s adaptations of “Echnidna’s Arf” and “Uncle Remus”, and a touch of samba is added to the relaxed tropical magic of “Malibu”.

„This is my personal favorite from my days at MPS Records. I again see a lot of growth in myself as a musician. It's quite obvious to me that I had become more confident in my synthesizer playing. I took more chances. I liked to start a solo with one texture and end with another. I didn't hear any musicians doing that, and still don't. I was trying to take the listener on a sonoric adventure. Once again Ndugu was behind the drums; but I enlisted the help of a young bass player named Alphonzo 'Slim' Johnson who had just got the gig with Weather Report. Airto was back on percussion, and I used some background singers. This was unheard of in Fusion at this time, but I saw possibilities down the line!

'Dawn' was written at The Caribou Ranch Recording Studio, in my room, after a session with Zappa. We recorded there for a week or so, and I guess the snow and altitude had an affect on my creativity. I've always loved this tune.

I re-recorded an old tune of mine, 'Foosh,' with a funkier approach. I had already recorded it with Jean-Luc Ponty, but had a different idea for this LP.

My love affair with Brazilian and Latin music began many years before this LP, but my real love wasn't felt on record until now. Malibu, became a hit jazz radio cut. There were vocals, but no lyric. I had everyone in the band sing, and added a couple of professionals so we wouldn't sound so bad. Actually, I wanted the vocals to sound like everyday average people singing the melody. I got my wish - it's kinda rough! The tune is really an instrumental with a vocal singing along.

'Echidnas Arf' was written by Zappa. I loved playing this tune with Frank, and decided to record it on this album with a different vibe. I also recorded 'Uncle Remus,' an original song of mine that Frank wrote lyrics for, and was first released on his album Apostrophe.

'Fools' became my first attempt at singing an R&B flavored tune. I always felt that I had more vibe singing in falsetto than my natural voice. I still do! It wasn't a great vocal, but one sure can tell how I wound up singing the way I do now. This was the beginning! The year was 1975, and I was still touring with Zappa's band.“ (George Duke)



George Duke, keyboards, vocals
Gee Janzen, vocals
Sylvia St. James, vocals
Kathy Woehrle, vocals
Alphonso Johnson, bass
Leon 'Ndugu' Chancler, drums, percussion
Airto Moreira, percussion

Digitally remastered

George Duke
The scope of keyboardist-composer-producer George Duke's imprint on jazz and pop music over the past forty years is almost impossible to calculate. He has collaborated with some of the most prominent figures in the industry. A producer since the 1980s, he has crafted scores of fine recordings – many ofthem GRAMMY winners – for artists representing almost every corner of the contemporary American music landscape.

Duke was born in San Rafael, California, in January 1946. When he was four, his mother took him to a performance by that other Duke of jazz, Duke Ellington. He admits that he doesn't remember much of the performance, but his mother told him years later that he spent the next several days demanding a piano.

Duke began his formal training on the instrument at age seven, his earliest influence being the culturally and historically rich black music of his local Baptist church. By his teen years, his universe of musical influences had expanded to include the more secular sounds of young jazz mavericks like Miles Davis, Les McCann and Cal Tjader – all of whom inspired him to play in numerous high school jazz groups. After high school, he attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and received a bachelor's degree in 1967.

But perhaps the most important lessons came after college, when Duke joined Al Jarreau in forming the house band at the Half Note, the popular San Francisco club, in the late '60s. He also played with Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon in other San Francisco clubs around the same time.

For the next several years, Duke experimented with jazz and fusion by collaborating and performing with artists as diverse as Jean Luc-Ponty, Frank Zappa,Cannonball Adderley, Nancy Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Cobham and Stanley Clarke. He launched his solo recording career at age 20, and shortly thereafter began cutting LPs for the MPS label in the '70s. As the decade progressed, he veered more toward fusion, R&B and funk with albums like From Me To You (1976) and ReachFor It (1978).

During this period he recorded what is possibly his best known album, Brazilian Love Affair. Released in 1980,the album included vocals by Flora Purim and Milton Nascimento, and percussion by Airto Moreira. Love Affair stoodin marked contrast to the other jazz/funk styled albums he was cutting at the time.

Duke's reputation as a skilled producer was also gathering steam. By the end of the'80s, he had made his mark as a versatile producer by helping to craft recordings by a broad cross section of jazz, R&B and pop artists: Raoul deSouza, Dee Dee Bridgewater, A Taste of Honey, Jeffrey Osborne, Deniece Williams, Melissa Manchester, Al Jarreau, Barry Manilow, Smokey Robinson, The Pointer Sisters, Take 6, Gladys Knight, Anita Baker and many others. Several ofthese projects scored GRAMMY Awards.

During this time, Duke was just as busy outside the studio as inside. He worked asmusical director for numerous large-scale events, including the Nelson Mandelatribute concert at Wembley Stadium in London in 1988. The following year, along with Marcus Miller, he served as musical director of NBC's acclaimed late-night music performance program, Sunday Night.

The'90s were no less hectic. He toured Europe and Japan with Dianne Reeves and Najeein 1991, and joined the Warner Brothers label the following year with therelease of Snapshot, an album that stayed at the top of the jazz charts for five weeks and generated the top 10R&B single, 'No Rhyme, No Reason.'

Other noteworthy albums in the '90s included the orchestral tour de force Muir Woods Suite (1993) and the eclectic Illusions (1995), in addition to the numerous records Duke produced for a variety of other artists: Najee, George Howard, the Winans, and Natalie Cole (Duke produced 1/3 of the material on Cole's GRAMMY winning 1996 release, Stardust).

In 2000, Duke severed his ties with Warner Brothers and launched his own record label, BPM (Big Piano Music). 'I spent thirty years at other labels as arecording artist,' he says. 'I felt it was time for me to step up to the next level of challenge and form a company that would give me and other artists the opportunity to create quality music and push back the musical restraints that dominate most record labels these days.'

But even with the new responsibilities and challenges associated with running arecord label, Duke has continued to juggle the multiple career tracks ofrecording solo albums, international touring and producing records for otherartists. In addition to his own Face the Music (2002), he also produced recent records for Wayman Tisdale, Dianne Reeves, Kelly Price, Regina Belle and Marilyn Scott.

For the better part of 25 years, Duke has also composed and recorded numerous scores for film and television. In addition to nine years as the musical director for the Soul Train Music Awards, he also wrote music – either individual songs or entire soundtracks –for a number of films, including The Five Heartbeats, Karate Kid III, Leap of Faith, Never Die Alone and Meteor Man.

With more than thirty solo recordings in his canon and a resume that spans more than 40 years, Duke joined forces with the Heads Up label with the 2008 release of Dukey Treats, a return to the old-school funk sensibilities of icons like James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone and Parliament/Funkadelic.

His most recent Heads Up recording is Déjà Vu, an album that revisits the classic synthesizer sound that characterized some of his most memorable recordings from the golden age of funk, soul and jazz in the mid-1970s. It is a glance back, but with a very contemporary sensibility – a piece of work that comes together very much in the present, but also conjures up a persistent feeling of something great that came before. Déjà Vu is scheduled for release on August 10, 2010.

'I've always considered myself a multi-stylisticartist,' says Duke. 'I try to take people on a musical journey, whether it's on an album or in a show. I think the style of music that you choose to play is really irrelevant, as long as you're honest about what you're trying to present - and Déjà Vu is an honest look back and forward at the same time.'

This album contains no booklet.