Cornell Dupree

Having logged more than 2,500 studio dates across his career, guitarist Cornell Dupree concentrated his efforts chiefly on R&B and blues yet moved with equal assurance through jazz, especially its funky fusion and soul-jazz variants. Born in Fort Worth, TX, in 1942, he joined King Curtis’ R&B ensemble at twenty and quickly established himself as a session player. Among his early credits was Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia,” and he subsequently appeared on releases by Lou Rawls, Paul Simon, Barbra Streisand, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Roberta Flack, Joe Cocker, Michael Bolton, Mariah Carey, and numerous additional artists. From 1967 to 1976 Dupree toured with Aretha Franklin’s band, a period during which he also contributed to numerous jazz-funk sessions later prized by rare-groove and acid-jazz listeners. His debut date as a leader arrived with the 1974 album Teasin’, followed by Saturday Night Fever in 1977 and Shadow Dancing in 1978. Concurrently he belonged to the studio-musician fusion supergroup Stuff, which signed to Warner Bros. in 1975 and issued four albums; the ensemble reconvened intermittently through the 1980s and gave rise to the mid-1980s offshoot the Gadd Gang, of which Dupree was likewise a member. Some of his strongest jazz work surfaced in the late 1980s and early 1990s, beginning with the Grammy-nominated Coast to Coast in 1988 and continuing through the well-received funky outings Can’t Get Through (1991), the live Uncle Funky (1992), and Child’s Play (1993). His most straight-ahead jazz statement, the 1994 album Bop ’n’ Blues, stands among his finest achievements.