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BiTS INTERVIEW: Duke Robillard

Michael John "Duke" Robillard (born October 4, 1948) is an American
guitarist and singer. He founded the band Roomful of Blues and was a

member of the Fabulous Thunderbirds. Although Robillard is known
as a rock and blues guitarist, he also plays jazz and swing.

Although a member of bands, Robillard has simultaneously pursued a

solo career in which he toured and recorded solo albums in other
genres. He formed a duo with jazz guitarist Herb Ellis and the swing

trio New Guitar Summit with Gerry Beaudoin and Jay Geils.

Ian McKenzie spoke to him on the telephone.

BiTS: Hi Duke, it sounds like we've got a great
By robbiesaurus from Smithtown, NY, USA
connection here. Let’s make a start. What I want
- Duke Robillard, CC BY-SA 2.0,
to do is talk to you a little bit about your
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p
background, how you came to be a guitar player
hp?curid=19412715
in the first place, and then about the new album.
Is that okay?

DR: That's fine.

BiTS: So let's start at the beginning. What age
were you when you started to learn to play the
guitar?

DR: Ah, six or seven years old.

BiTS: And why was that?

DR: Well, because two of my brothers had guitars
and one of them played and the other one just had
a Martin guitar that he was collecting at the time.
My uncle played bass in a country and western
band, so I had music around me, and so I just took
to the guitar immediately.

BiTS: Are you one of those Americans that was
inspired around the time of The Beatles?

DR: Well, I was, but I started before that because
my brother had collected all the great rock and roll
records of the beginning of rock and roll – the mid-50s. Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard.
Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis. All of those people were influential on me because I was very young
and impressionable, and I just fell in love with that music as soon as I heard it. That was it. I
decided I was going to be a guitar player when I was six and I wasn't allowed to have a guitar by