George Duke The Best of the MPS Years 2LP

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. More than 40 years after their initial releases, the MPS albums still count as a fascinating and essential part of George Duke's life's-work and canon of the genre.