I Love the Blues, She Heard My Cry

With his imaginative fusions of jazz and funk, George Duke took music as far into outer space as anyone else in the '70s, but the title of his 1975 album—I Love the Blues, She Heard My Cry—is a reminder that he was rooted in the primal forms of African-American music. Blues is a musical motif that runs through the album, though Duke feels no need to conform to the genre’s stereotypes. The songs are in turns ethereal, restive, and lascivious, with layers of keyboard that permeate the music like coats of multicolored liquid. Like his forbearer Jimi Hendrix—whose influence looms over this album—Duke believed blues was less about blues form and more about the ideals of truth and freedom. Thus, in their own way, “Someday,” “Sister Serene,” and “Prepare Yourself” are as bluesy as anything by B.B. King (though sonically, they're closer to George Clinton’s Funkadelic). “Rokkinrowl, I Don’t Know” is a hilarious sendup of the era's beefy hard rock bands, whose blockheaded guitar riffs entirely abused the blues tradition. In good fun, but with true sensitivity, Duke reinvested that hallowed genre with pure imagination.