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Artist
Al Basile
12+ albums
bluesbluesrockBlues artistRythym and Blues
about
Originally a poet and fiction writer, Al Basile was the first to get a master's degree from Brown University's Creative Writing program; he also wrote musicals as an undergraduate. Meeting Duke Robillard in 1969 changed his artistic direction for life. He began his performing career in 1973, hired by Duke as the first trumpet player for Rhode Island's premier jump band Roomful of Blues, and played with such blues and jazz greats as Cleanhead Vinson, Red Prysock, Helen Humes, Joe Turner, and Johnny Shines. Leaving in 1975 to devote himself to teaching, singing, and songwriting, he was reunited with Duke Robillard, Roomful's founder, in the late eighties, His songs and playing have continued to appear throughout the nineties on Robillard's records for Rounder, Stony Plain, Pointblank, and Shanachie. Songs he has cowritten with Duke have been used on television's Homicide: Life on the Street and the feature film Blood and WIne. Ruth Brown recorded one of Al's songs on her Handy Award winning 1997 release R&B=Ruth Brown, and was the first project with a song by Al to be nominated for a Grammy. The second came last year on Duke's Guitar Groove-a-Rama featuring Al's tune "This Dream (Still Coming True)" was nominated for Best Traditional Blues Album of 2006. Al began his own solo recording career in 1998 with the well received Down On Providence Plantation and followed that up with 2001's Shaking the Soul Tree. Both discs were roots projects produced by Robillard and with him and
