Reach for It
Keyboardist Duke, after stints with Billy Cobham, Cannonball Adderly, Jean-Luc Ponty, Frank Zappa (to stunning effect), and Don Ellis's big band, graduated with this varied 1977 program to jazz-fusion star status. The recording features popish jazz grooves with plenty of spikes inlaid, including rock-solid and heavy fusion, '70s funk, love-lorn ballads, and sections of bristling ensemble playing. One can hear what it was that Zappa liked in the eclecticist Duke: raw-nerved electronic keyboards with shifting rhythms and a sense of the funk, fun, and burlesque that Zappa relished. Especially deserving of mention among Duke's band members are searing guitarist Charles Icarus Johnson, thudding bassist Byron Miller, and drummer Leon Ndugu Chancler--propulsive, rapid-fire, time- and shape-shifting. But they all got the funk.--Peter Monaghan