Music
| Recommended 
Will there be a Grammy for the Duke?
01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 11, 2007
Duke Robillard is looking for his first individual Grammy win at tonight’s awards.
In nearly 40 years in the studio and on the road, Rhode Island guitar great Duke Robillard has played on several albums nominated for Grammy Awards, including Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind, Ruth Brown’s R+B and the Grammy-winning Go Tell It on the Mountain by The Blind Boys of Alabama.
But this is the first year he’s been nominated as a solo act. And he’s going to be there tonight (8 p.m., Channels 4 and 12) to find out whether he wins.
From a tour stop in Memphis last week, Robillard pronounced himself “very excited” to be headed to Los Angeles for the big night. “I hear rumors of a lot of great things that are going to happen there as far as musical performances,” he said, such as a potential Elvis Costello-Allen Toussaint match-up and the reunion of The Police.
Most importantly, of course, he wants to see whether Guitar Groove-A-Rama, his sprawling tour de force of rock and blues styles, takes the prize for Best Traditional Blues Album.
“I’m very excited about it because this particular album has been very well received by critics and fans alike,” Robillard says, “and I’m also not up against B.B. King or Eric Clapton or Buddy Guy, so I actually stand a chance.”
The other nominees are Tab Benoit with Louisiana’s Leroux, for Brother to the Blues; Dion, for Bronx in Blue; James Hunter, for People Gonna Talk; and Ike Turner, for Risin’ With the Blues.
In the platinum-plated world of the stars, Grammy nominations and wins are just another trophy for the case. But in Robillard’s world, such honors carry some weight. The gigs get better and somewhat more plentiful.
“Generally that does happen, from what I hear,” says Robillard, whose next area appearance is March 3, at the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River. “It boosts attendance and boosts record sales, and helps your career, whether you are nominated or win.
“I’m excited about that prospect, and personally, it also just means a certain acceptance within the pop-culture level. Whether you’re doing something that is involved with pop culture or not, it still puts you in the arena with people who are in one of those genres that are considered contemporary pop culture.
“So that’s a big step, and not an easy one to attain. So I’m excited about it, and it’s a very good time for me.”
Guitar Groove-A-Rama has been piling up critical praise and good sales numbers for Robillard, and he’s also happy that songs from the record are getting good play on satellite radio. “[It’s] a great help to someone like me, who plays music that is not in the mainstream of radio music.”
All of this has added up to give Robillard a certain amount of freedom to make his next project, something he’s wanted to do for a long time: a double CD (for the price of one disc) that spans all the genres he grew up with.
The working title, he says, is Duke Robillard’s World Full of Blues.
“Ever since I started listening to music as a very young child, I saw the relationship. I grew up listening to country music, from Hank Williams and then to the early rock ’n’ roll of Elvis and Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Fats Domino to hearing big-band music.
“And I saw the correlation of blues running through all of these styles. The tunes that I was drawn to were the ones that had blues progressions, or were blues in sound.”
The discs, Robillard says, encompass many different styles of blues — acoustic Delta blues, electric Chicago blues, the more sophisticated swing of T-Bone Walker, along with a Bob Dylan song, a Tom Waits song, organ combos and a few Robillard original R&B songs. “Everything that I do that touches on blues is in this CD. So I feel like it’s the definitive statement from me.”
The two-disc set is “a major thing I’ve been fighting with my record company for, to get them to let me do,” Robillard says. “Finally, with two CDs, I get to show what I’m really all about, which is all of these things. . . . They’ve allowed me to make the musical statement I want to make.”
Between Groove-A-Rama and the new record, it sounds as if Robillard is summing up, which implies that he’ll be winding up his career.
No dice, says Robillard, who’s fitting in the Grammy stop around trips to Chicago, Minneapolis and Moscow. “I’ve got other CDs that I’ve been working on [already] in the can to release after that.”
More music stories
Most Viewed Yesterday
Politics of religion: Kennedys and the Catholic Church
Lawyers to get $59 million from Station fire settlement
About 150 gather in Warwick for Tea Party’s first open meeting
Most active surveys
Who will win the PC-URI basketball game?
Will you skimp on Thanksgiving dinner this year? If so, where?
Would you trade Clay Buchholz and Casey Kelly for Roy Halladay?
Most e-mailed in the last 24 hours
Reader Reaction
You must be logged in to contribute. Log in | Register Now!
You are logged in as screenname | Log Out
You are logged in, but do not have a "screen" name. Create a Screen Name