Hear the Jazz-Funk Musical Adaptation of Dune by David Matthews (1977)

Even if you’ve nev­er read Frank Her­bert’s Dune, you may well have encoun­tered its adap­ta­tions to a vari­ety of oth­er media: com­ic books, video games, board games, tele­vi­sion series, and of course films, David Lynch’s 1984 ver­sion and Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s two-parter ear­li­er this decade. But before any of those came Dune, the jazz-funk album by key­boardist and band­leader David Matthews. Released in 1977 on the pop­u­lar jazz label CTI Records, it devotes its entire first side to a 20-minute suite osten­si­bly inspired by Her­bert’s nov­el, con­sist­ing of the pieces “Arrakis,” “Sand­worms,” “Song of the Bene Gesser­it,” and “Muad’dib.”

You’ll notice that the typog­ra­phy on the cov­er of Matthews’ Dune seems awful­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Star Wars, a film that had come out the very same year. It’s not exact­ly false adver­tis­ing, since the album clos­es with ver­sions of both Star Wars’ main theme and Princess Leia’s theme, sup­ple­ment­ed by the theme from Dou­glas Trum­bul­l’s Silent Run­ning and even David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty.” Accord­ing to jazz his­to­ri­an Doug Payne, the con­cept was the idea of CTI founder Creed Tay­lor.

Tay­lor had orig­i­nal­ly hired Matthews as CTI’s chief arranger, the lat­ter’s years of expe­ri­ence as James Brown’s musi­cal direc­tor hav­ing promised the poten­tial to imbue the label’s releas­es with dis­co appeal. In addi­tion to Matthews on the key­boards, Dune also fea­tures heavy-hit­ting ses­sion play­ers from the late-sev­en­ties jazz world like Randy Breck­er, Steve Gadd, Grover Wash­ing­ton, Jr., Hiram Bul­lock, and David San­born. Fans of obscu­ran­tist hip-hop may also rec­og­nize Matthews’ “Space Odd­i­ty” cov­er as a sam­ple source for MF DOOM’s “Rapp Snitch Knish­es.”

Much like Bob James, his fel­low mas­ter­mind of dis­co-inflect­ed jazz, Matthews has cre­at­ed a body of work that lives on a hip-hop gold­mine: his oth­er sam­plers include Method Man, Red­man, and The Noto­ri­ous B.I.G. But it was in Japan that he found his most enthu­si­as­tic lis­ten­er­ship. After leav­ing CTI in 1978, Payne writes, “Matthews went onto record a slew of records for most­ly Japan­ese labels under a vari­ety of guis­es includ­ing Japan’s num­ber one sell­ing jazz group, the Man­hat­tan Jazz Quin­tet.” If you vis­it Japan, you may well hear Matthews’ music play­ing in a local jazz bar.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Hans Zim­mer Cre­at­ed the Oth­er­world­ly Sound­track for Dune

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Con­tri­bu­tion to the Sound­track of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, that Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Space Jazz, a Son­ic Sci-Fi Opera by L. Ron Hub­bard, Fea­tur­ing Chick Corea (1983)

Great Mix­tapes of 1970s Japan­ese Jazz: 4 Hours of Funky, Groovy, Fusion‑y Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.