Doug Blake blakenblue@rock.com
Professional guitarist for over 30 years. A Chicago-based jazz veteran, he has performed countless jobs both as sideman and leader, also supplementing his income as a private teacher. Reading music and improvising on both 6-string and bass guitar, his experience ranges from combo to big band, musical theater orchestra to oldies bar group, one-man-band instrumentalist to leader of saxophone-fronted ensemble performing his jazz originals. He also writes the lyrics for his own and other band members songs.
All of this has generated accolades including:
“Doug Blake is a jazz musician who seems to have a limitless musical vocabulary. His disc BURNING IN F & G is all over the map – in a good way. From the fast bop of the title cut to the slinky noir sounds of ‘Mark Of The Lash’ Blake is a great guitarist who plays with the grace of Django Rheinhardt and nearly perfect technical execution. And his cast of stellar session players captures a wide variety of moods with ease.”
Illinois Entertainer ‘97
“Gotta hand it to Blake the writer for a perfect Billie Holiday jazz tune… Blake’s compositions are gently swinging and sunny… refined and sophisticated… a wonderful slab of attitude that transports the disc far beyond the hundred tepid jazz albums released each month.”
Cadence Magazine ’97 and ’04
Also featured in TV and Radio documentaries (T.C.I., WDCB,WRRG) and live performance broadcasts (E.C.T.V., WLUW, WBEZ), his most recent honor is being listed in the ’05 and ’06 editions of “WHO’S WHO IN AMERICA” and ’07-’08 “WHO’S WHO IN AMERICAN EDUCATION.”
Doug’s musical education came more from private lessons than academia, though majoring in music at the local community college augmented years of study with former L.A. studio guitarist Milt Norman and several others, mostly in the 70’s. In 1976 he had been the featured soloist playing gospel in African-American churches in Delray Beach, Florida and by 1980 led a house band for the Aware Singles Group’s dances at the Chicago O’Hare Ramada Inn. Bars, restaurants, outdoor concerts and coffeehouses soon followed as well as assorted “jobbing gigs.” A few of these venues are: Don Roth’s, The Custer Street Fair, Bistro 1800, The Heartland Café, Caribou Coffee and The Beachview Lounge.
Hired for political fundraisers he has entertained Pat Quinn, Harold Washington, Paul Simon, and at Lincoln Day festivities.
His prolific work in music education has included Olsen’s Musicland in Palatine and Great Lakes Music in Mundelein, at Decoma and Tamarak Day Camps, and at Ridgeville, Wilmette and Waukegan Park Districts.
Musical theater orchestra experience has included shows for Devonshire Playhouse, St. Sebastian Players and P.M.L. Theater. Big bands have included the Jerry Dittman Orchestra, The Big Band Sound of Deerfield and the Dick Peterson Orchestra.
Finally, Doug has taken his 3 CDs of band BLAKE ‘N’ BLUE to stores coast to coast, and distributed them though the internet’s CD BABY both nationally and internationally.
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