​Duke Robillard and His All-Star Band (from the album Blast Off!

​Duke Robillard and His All-Star Band (from the album Blast Off!

​Duke Robillard and His All-Star Band (from the album Blast Off! available on Duke Robillard/Nola Blue Records) (by Danny McCloskey)
A true preservationist, Duke Robillard has curated Roots music for over a half-century since co-founding Roomful of Blues. On his new release, Blast Off!, Duke Robillard and His-All Star Band soundtrack an album of mostly covers from the past few decades from the American Songbook of Blues, Swing, Jazz, and R&B. Beginning on a true Blast Off!, the album song cycle begins with “When I Get Lucky”, a tune from Floyd Dixon (circa 1954) as a dirty groove lays the tracks for Tom Waits’ “Lowdown” and keeps swinging though the Eddie Jones-authored “Stand by Me”.  The horns take center stage for “Play Boy Hop” and dose “Confusion” with a Bourbon Street brew of sounds in Allen Toussaint cut.
Three band originals are included on the album when the Blast Off! title track strolls the universe on jangly reverbed guitar riffs and continues the interstellar swamp crawl on the Duke Robillard’s Blues guitar bites. Blast Off! includes the first time the Duke Robillard composition “Feel My Cares” is heard, the first song written by a then-seventeen-year-old player somewhere in Rhode Island. Count Basie shares his song, and his beat, to Duke Robillard and His All-Star Band’s version of “The King” as the group hushes the playing for the salvational tenderness of “Warm and Tender Love”. Blast Off!gives the band free range on the Jazz bounce of “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead (You Rascal You)” while Duke Robillard and His All-Star Band exit the album on the sweet Rock’n’Soul shuffle of “Look a There Look a There”.  (by Danny McCloskey)
 
Listen and buy the music of Duke Robillard and His All-Star Band from AMAZON
 
Head over to the Duke Robillard and His All-Star Band website for more information