Cornell Dupree, 1942–2011

Until Cornell Dupree came on the scene, legendary Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler would hire three or more guitarists for a recording session. That led time and again to “a hellacious mess as the three guitarists got in each other’s way,” Wexler said. That changed when Dupree appeared: “One man playing rhythm and lead at the same time took the place of three.”

Born in Fort Worth, Dupree first took up the saxophone, said The Washington Post. But he traded it for a guitar after seeing Johnny “Guitar” Watson perform. Before long, he “started sitting in with older R&B musicians,” and in 1961, saxophonist King Curtis hired him. One of his bandmates was a hot young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix, with whom he often jammed until dawn. But where Hendrix was a born showman, Dupree was, in the words of writer and musician Josh Alan Friedman, “the ultimate unshowoff.”

That indifference to the spotlight, along with his versatility and skill, made Dupree the ideal session musician, said the Los Angeles Times. Although his playing was rooted in tough, urbanized Texas blues, “he quickly developed a style of his own, investing solo lines with subtle harmonic references and bringing rhythm passages to life with buoyantly propulsive accents.” His sassy, sliding introduction energized Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” and his rhythmic plucking lent crucial support to the horns on Mariah Carey’s “Emotion.” When Miles Davis swerved away from his noisy mid-1970s funk workouts to record the brassy, swaggering “Red China Blues” on Get Up With It, Dupree’s choppy chords anchored the tune.

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Although he played on hundreds of well-known hits—he was nicknamed “Mr. 2,500” in reference to the number of dates he had played on—wide fame eluded him. But Dupree was content with the respect of his peers. “Regular people don’t know who he is,” said his son, Cornell III, “but there’s not too many musicians who don’t know him.”