1976 · Album
Liberated Fantasies
Recorded 1976 at Paramount Recording Studios, Hollywood, California · MPS Records · Engineer/Mixed by: Kerry McNabb
Ndugu's Time: The Heartbeat of Liberated Fantasies
Leon Chancler's drumming transforms Duke's keyboard explorations into something urgent and alive.
The first thing that catches you on Liberated Fantasies (1976) is the drumming. Leon "Ndugu" Chancler isn't just keeping time here — he's pushing the whole record forward with a restless energy that matches Duke's searching approach to each track. Chancler had played with everyone from Herbie Hancock to Weather Report by this point, and you hear that experience in how he listens, how he responds to what Duke is doing without ever stepping on it. He's the spine of this album.
Duke recorded this at Paramount in Hollywood with Kerry McNabb handling the technical side, and the band he assembled — including Alphonso Johnson on bass, Napoleon Murphy Brock singing, and Daryl Stuermer on guitar — had real chemistry. But Chancler's the reason the music breathes the way it does. He's precise enough to serve Duke's keyboard lines, flexible enough to follow Moreira's percussion experiments, and inventive enough that you never feel like you're hearing the same groove twice. This was Duke's final album for MPS Records, and it feels less like a farewell than a marker of where he was heading next.
The record isn't a revelation — AllMusic gave it three and a half stars, which feels about right. It's solid, interesting, sometimes loose in ways that work and sometimes in ways that don't. But Chancler keeps it grounded. Without his presence, these sessions would feel a lot more scattered.
Who's playing
Where next?
More by George Duke
All 29 albums →
