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1977 Jazz-Funk Musical Adaptation of Dune

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.

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.” 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. 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.

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