Biography
Born in Rochester, New York, Marshall Styler grew up there as the grandson of a vaudeville pianist and began playing piano himself at age twelve. At fifteen he assembled his first group to perform jazz, but turned to rock and roll and the electric piano following the British Invasion. In 1967 he launched the psychedelic band Lincoln Zephyr, which toured as an opener for Jimi Hendrix. After a brief stay in California he returned to Rochester, where, under his full name Marshall James Styler, he formed the hard rock band Duke Jupiter in 1973 and served as its co-lead singer, chief songwriter, and keyboardist. Between 1978 and 1985 the group issued seven albums on major labels, yet only the 1984 release White Knuckle Ride reached the charts. Styler also wrote its two charting singles, “I’ll Drink to You” in 1982 and “Little Lady” in 1984. Meat Loaf recorded Styler’s song “Don’t You Look at Me Like That,” first heard on Duke Jupiter’s fourth album Duke Jupiter 1, for his own 1983 LP Midnight at the Lost and Found. Duke Jupiter disbanded in 1986, prompting Styler’s move to Austin, Texas, and his shift from rock to new age music. He issued his debut solo album, Camden Road, a collection of synthesizer instrumentals, in 1991. Bluefields appeared in 1995 as the first entry in a trilogy devoted, as he described it, to “my impressions of the people and places in Texas I have come to know and loved since crossing the Red River for the first time in 1986.” Mockingbird Station followed in 1996, and Red River Crossing completed the series in 1998; the three albums were later issued together as a box set in 2005. In the interim he released the Christmas album Silent Night in 1997. Jericho came out in 2003, The Twilight Concertos in 2004, and A Face in the Clouds in 2007. Also released in 2007 was the DVD Dreamaker, pairing his music with photographs by James Innes.
Albums
