George Duke Revisits The Sounds Of The Golden Age Of Funk And Soul On Déjà Vu

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African American, Funk, George Duke, Keyboards, Piano

George Duke | Déjà Vu – [BPM/Heads Up International, 2010]

Features guest performances by trumpeter Nicholas Payton, flutist Hubert Laws and saxophonist Bob Sheppard

George Duke - DejaVu

When keyboardist-composer-producer George Duke made a return trip to the heyday of funk on his 2008 recording, Dukey Treats, he reminded his fans and the music press of exactly what made the good old stuff so good. DownBeat called it “a wild and crazy album, especially if you’re nostalgic about the guitar-scratching, double-clutching rhythms of James Brown and George Clinton and the bedroom ballads of Stevie Wonder and Aaron Neville.” The Philadephia Enquirer called it simply “a valentine to funk.”

Duke returns to that same wellspring for Déjà Vu, his new recording on BPM/Heads Up International, a division of Concord Music Group. Set for release on August 10, 2010, the album revisits the synthesizer sound that characterized some of his most memorable recordings from the golden age of funk and soul.

Longtime Jaco Pastorius Associate, Larry Warrilow, Passes

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Jaco Pastorius, Jazz, Larry Warrilow

Lawrence “Larry” David Warrilow, a prominent member of the South Florida music scene, died peacefully, at home on Tuesday, May 18. He was 64 years old. Larry’s music career began in the 1960’s while at Florida State University. He gained notoriety with The Peter Graves Orchestra as a guitarist and arranger at Joe Namath’s legendary night club, Bachelors III, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The band had a 5-year run, that included notable musicians – Pat Metheny, Mark Colby, Danny Gottlieb, Mark Egan, Dan & Neal Bonsanti, Whit Sidener, Jerry Coker and Ron Tooley. It was the addition of bassist Jaco Pastorius, pianist Alex Darqui, and drummer Bobby Economou that made a lasting impact. Larry’s collaborations with Jaco, on countless musical projects, gradually developed into a relationship not unlike that of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn where it was often difficult to tell where one began and the other left off.

THE IRIDIUM CONTINUES TO HONOR LES PAUL WITH ROOM DEDICATION BY JEFF BECK

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JEFF BECK, LES PAUL, Rock Music

AND LES PAUL MONDAYS WITH THE WORLD’S GREATEST GUITARISTS

Very Special Shows with JEFF BECK and The Imelda May Band
June 8 and June 9
Join the Iridium Facebook Application
To Enter A Lottery For a Chance to Win Free Tickets

Les Paul Guitar Mondays Continues
with Special Guests
LARRY CARLTON, ERIC JOHNSON,
CHRIS BARRON (The Spin Doctors), ALBERT LEE
& Many More

New York, NY – Nearly a year after legendary guitarist and innovator Les Paul’s passing, the Edison of the electric six-string’s light continues to shine on with Les Paul Mondays, an ongoing concert series dedicated to memorializing Paul’s lasting legacy at the Iridium, where he maintained one of New York’s longest-running gigs right up to his final days. Starting in 1995, when Paul began his tenure at the subterranean Midtown West restaurant and club, virtually every major guitar god at one point or another humbly shared the stage with the man behind the eponymous solid-body Gibson guitar—Slash, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, as well as innumerable others. But now that Paul is gone, they’re returning to honor his memory.