Van Duke hebben we 4 songs gekozen, nu uit het album La Palette Bleue, al was een keuze maken ook deze keer niet echt gemakkelijk. Deze CD is heel gevarieerd en heeft geen zwakke songs, een aanrader dus.

En omdat het nieuwjaar is kozen we eerst voor het toepasselijke "I Don't Want To Say Best Wishes", speciaal voor haar.

Als tweede voor "I May Be Crazy", en daar zal ook wel iets van aan zijn.

Als derde "Goodman", en dat klopt ook volledig.

En tot slot nog "Fishnet" omdat we het ook eens goed willen laten swingen.

European Edition Cover Art

US Edition Cover Art

Duke Robillard fans, don't panic : before you start looking for "La Palette Bleue" at your record store, anxiously thinking that you have missed a Duke Robillard album, there is something you should know. "La Palette Bleue" is the name under which Duke Robillard's "New Blues For Modern Man" was released in France, and a few other European countries such as Belgium. "La Palette Bleue" contains 13 tracks, while "New Blues For Modern Man" contains only twelve - it misses the song "I May Be Crazy". The tracks are mainly originals, except for Bob Dylan's "Love Sick", and a rocking cover of Charlie Patton's well known "Pony Blues".As the French title suggests, the album covers a wide palette of Blues styles : heavy-beat rocking acts, such as "Pony Blues" and "Jumpin' Rockin' Rhythm", and slow (yet passionate) Blues tunes, like "Don't Fool With My Love" and "Hurt Me". The album is fed with various inspirations, with tracks like "Big Bottom Blues", a laid-back jazzy instrumental, "I May Be Crazy", an up-tempo jazzy song, and the well-crafted "You're The Only One", that has a Mexican flavor."La Palette Bleue" was recorded live in the studio, in only a few takes, which gives a spontaneous, energic feeling to it. Duke Robillard's playing is as powerful as ever, and he sings with an assured growling voice. The entire band's live performance on this record results in one of the most energic Jump Blues in Duke Robillard's catalog.

A true road warrior, he’s still out touring, playing as many as 250 dates a year. And still proving, night after night, that his true talent is bringing people out to hear the music, appreciate the show, and dance to the blues.

Always ahead of his time, Duke’s first band pre-dated the renewed interest in jump blues by more than a decade – and almost 20 years later, in 1986, when he recorded with jazz sax master Scott Hamilton, he recorded a collection of classic big band tunes from the ’30s and ’40s, thus skillfully pre-dating the neo-Swing craze of the mid ’90s.

Roomful of Blues – which still continues to record and perform – gave Duke his first exposure to a wide public, and when he left after a dozen years, he played briefly with rockabilly king Robert Gordon, then cut two albums with the Legendary Blues Band (a sterling collection of former members of Muddy Waters’ band). He led his own band until 1990, then replaced Jimmy Vaughan in the Fabulous Thunderbirds.

In 1993, as he was about to sign a world-wide recording deal with Virgin/ Pointblank, he met Holger Petersen, head of the Canadian independent label Stony Plain, at a folk festival in Winnipeg. In conversation, he mentioned he wanted to record a complete album of blues, without the r&b and jazz influences of his work to date.
Petersen was interested; Virgin gave the go-ahead, and the resulting album, Duke’s Blues, earned rave reviews. It was so successful, in fact, that Virgin soon licensed the record from Stony Plain and released it around the world (except in Canada, where it continues in the Canadian company’s catalogue).
Blue Mood is Duke’s sixth solo album for Stony Plain and follows his critically acclaimed 2003 release, Exalted Lover, which featured duets with country music star Pam Tillis and blues guitar goddess Debbie Davis. Billboard called it “an oak-solid work from a master bluesman.”
In addition to his own albums, Duke has produced (and played on) a number of projects for Stony Plain, including two albums with the late Jimmy Witherspoon, three with Kansas City piano king Jay McShann, comeback CDs for Billy Boy Arnold and the late Rosco Gordon, a swinging confection with the Canadian band The Rockin’ Highliners, and two superb albums of guitar duets with the jazz legend Herb Ellis. In August of 2004, Duke will be part of a great new CD coming from Stony Plain called New Guitar Summit, which teams him with fellow axe slingers Jay Geils and Gerry Beaudoin for an album of swing jazz.
As if this growing catalogue was not enough, he has found time to share studio gigs with Bob Dylan (the Daniel Lanois-produced Time Out of Mind sessions), Ruth Brown, the late Johnny Adams, John Hammond, Pinetop Perkins, and Ronnie Earl, among many others. He now has his own 24-track studio in his home, and he has become deeply involved in graphic design and photography as well as record production.
Duke Robillard is a man in command of a full range of creative talents — unique in the blues, and rare in the music industry as a whole. He is, in fact, a complete artist at the height of his powers.