Around noon on a Sunday at Philadelphia Java near South Street on Fourth, Curtis and I discussed the Dukes, and, in the interest of full disclosure, our crazy antics on the Ambler Campus radio station, where he was the Jazz Fusion King, and I was the Gold Miser of Rock and Roll! "It was St. Patrick's Day and I had just gotten out of a jazz trio. I answered an ad in the City Paper and I knew that I would get better gigs and better pay," he says with honest humor.
"The band actually started around 1984 and our lead singer died from cancer in 2000. For a while our harmonica player started singing. John is an original member still with the group and so is Ray, with Bob joining in around 1986.
"Arlyn Wolters was originally from Philly but singing in New York when she moved back in 2003 approximately, and she changed the dynamic because the Dukes were always a guys' guitar band," Curtis explains. "She allows us to do material that we wouldn't have considered before, like Aretha Franklin and Susan Tedeschi; a lot of blues bordering on soul with a fresh point of view."
The Dukes are not really a cover band, as anyone attending their show at Steel City Coffeehouse June 17 will quickly notice. Curtis relates, "We had half originals and half other people's music on our last record. We like to take lesser known Muddy Waters or Otis Rush and "dukify the songs." Curtis has an example. "Once, we opened for Terry Evans who had a song, "Shakespeare," which was mid-tempo and guitar/piano base. We asked him if we could do the song, and he said he wasn't doing that one anyhow. We made it faster, rockin', with energy," Curtis said.
The biggest issue in blues today is the matter of authenticity. Curtis feels the Dukes of Destiny have that base covered. He relates, "You look at the ages [in] our band and some of [the members] are in their fifties. John would hitchhike to New York to see these artist decades ago. It is real for them. Younger people simulate records. They sing 'Woke up in the morning'; how many blues artists wake up in the morning? The older people understand it. The state of blues is not very good because not many people are feeling blues. The story-telling aspect of it has been lost."
Additionally, the Dukes have an interesting take on getting the music to the fans. He explains, "We have done three records since 1993. We are about live performance and we go into the studio when we can afford it. We burn some CDs so big fans can take it home or we can make money, but it's another thing to make a disc every six months. You can't get overexposed," Curtis points out.
Curtis attended a magnet school (Masterman) in Philadelphia, which dealt with laboratory science and experimentation. He planned to play trombone in a school orchestra because all the cute girls played the reed instruments situated right in front of the trombone players. But when he heard Stanley Clarke, he began to take music seriously and he often fronts jazz-fusion combos. With the Dukes, he usually stays in the comfortable background, singing lead on occasion before crowds numbering into several hundred at a time. Primarily playing in the Delaware Valley, the Dukes put energy into a blues scene that has often had more pretension than promise.

If You Go:
Dukes of Destiny
will appear,
with opener Melody Gardot,
at Steel City Coffeehouse,
203 Bridge St., Phoenixville,
Saturday, June 17, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $10 in advance;
$12 at the door
Info: 610-933-4043,
www.steelcitycoffeehouse.com,
or www.dukesofdestiny.com.