Guitarist Les Dudek built an extensive career performing alongside major figures in rock and pop, among them Stevie Nicks, Steve Miller, Dave Mason, Cher, Boz Scaggs, and the Allman Brothers Band, while also releasing his own solo projects. Born August 2, 1952, in Rhode Island, he took up the guitar at age eleven after hearing Elvis Presley and the Beatles, then began slipping into clubs three years later to perform with local groups. During his teenage period he absorbed the styles of blues greats Freddie King, Albert King, and B.B. King along with contemporary blues-rock players such as Paul Butterfield and Steve Miller.
By the early seventies Dudek had settled in Florida and joined the little-known band Power, whose keyboardist knew Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts. A close friendship developed between Betts and Dudek, prompting plans for a side project alongside Betts’s Allman commitments. Although the pair recorded demos, the effort ended once work began on the Allman Brothers’ Brothers and Sisters. Dudek nevertheless contributed to those sessions, adding guitar parts to “Ramblin’ Man” and co-writing “Jessica,” on which he also performed.
Following that association, Dudek spent five years in Boz Scaggs’s band and appeared on the 1976 album Silk Degrees. His longstanding admiration for Steve Miller blossomed into a personal friendship that produced a co-headlining tour; each night Dudek performed with both Scaggs and Miller. Miller later recorded several of Dudek’s songs, including “Sacrifice” on Book of Dreams, and Dudek played on Fly Like an Eagle. An acoustic tour featuring only Dudek and Miller was canceled at the final moment, returning Dudek to Scaggs’s road schedule. Amid these engagements he secured a solo contract with Columbia Records and issued four albums from 1976 to 1981: the self-titled debut, Say No More, Ghost Town Parade, and Gypsy Ride. He also formed the DFK Band with keyboardist Mike Finnigan and guitarist Jim Krueger, releasing one self-titled album in 1979.
In the early eighties Dudek joined Cher in the short-lived rock group Cher & Black Rose, which dissolved amid label difficulties. Cher soon shifted focus to acting and secured Dudek a small role in the 1985 film Mask; the pair also recorded a demo for the soundtrack that remains unreleased. That same year Dudek contributed to Stevie Nicks’ Rock a Little and served as guitarist for the supporting tour. The nineties found him revisiting blues material on Steve Miller’s 1993 release Wide River and on his own fifth solo album, 1994’s Deeper Shade of Blues.
