George Duke - The Best of the MPS years

2022 European CD collection. The Best Of The MPS Years presents you all the classics and highlights of George Duke’s time at the Black Forest label on one album.

A curious happenstance in 1966 triggered the partnership between MPS head Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer and George Duke. Brunner-Schwer was in San Francisco to record the Art van Damme Quintet. After finishing the recording session one evening, he and his team strolled over to a club called the Jazz Workshop. Les McCann was supposed to be playing, but this particular day was his day off. Instead, a 20 year old pianist, still involved in his studies, was performing with his quartet. The music’s freshness so enthralled the German that he set up a recording session on the spot. This encounter between George Duke and Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer in sunny California was both accidental and noteworthy. It turned out to be the jazzy prologue to future events: five years later the American began his fusion-infused sessions for the man from Germany’s Black Forest. The six albums of this series still count as a fascinating and essential part of George Duke’s life’s-work and canon of the genre.

Tracklist:

    Au Right
    Funny Funk
    That’s What She Said
    The Opening
    For Love
    Feel
    Capricorn
    Dawn
    Seeing You
    Someday
    Feels So Good
    Love Reborn
    Uncle Remus
    Love
    Cora Jobege
    Foosh
    Theme from the opera “Tzina”
    North Beach