A tribute band concert being held in Welshpool Town Hall will be devoted to a famed blues musician from the Powys town.
Fleetwood Mac tribute band Fleetwood Shack are returning to Welshpool Town Hall on Friday, October 4, for a concert to honour and remember blues musician Duster Bennett, who worked with the original band back in the 1960s.
Born in Welshpool, in 1946, Duster emerged in the late 1960s from the art school music scene of Kingston-upon-Thames and Guildford, working as a one-man blues band in the style of bluesmen such as Joe Hill Louis, playing on drums, guitar and harmonica.
Burnett worked as a session musician in the early 1960s playing harmonica. Between 1968 and 1970 he played on John Peel's Top Gear, toured and eventually joined John Mayall's Bluesbreakers as band member and solo act on a US tour in 1970. In the 1970s, he drifted off into more mainstream material.
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His live sets combined his own compositions with Jimmy Reed-style blues standards often aided by friend Peter Green, founder of Fleetwood Mac.
While based in London in 1968, he released his first album. Titled ‘Smiling Like I'm Happy’, the album saw him playing as a one-man band, playing a bass drum with his foot and blowing a harmonica on a rack while strumming a 1952 Les Paul Goldtop guitar given to him in 1968 by Peter Green.
He was also backed by his girlfriend Stella Sutton and the original Fleetwood Mac lineup on three tracks. The album was well received and he remained popular on the local blues club scene. He recorded and released two other studio albums over the next six years, ‘Justa Duster’ in 1969 and ‘Fingertips’ in 1975.
His career was cut tragically short when he was killed in a car crash in March 1976. After performing with Memphis Slim in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Duster was driving home in a Ford Transit van in Warwickshire when he apparently fell asleep at the wheel and his van collided with a truck.
For the Welshpool concert the band will perform a Duster Bennett/Peter Green composition that they have learnt especially for the show.
The concert will begin at 8pm with doors open from 7.15pm and a licensed bar will be open throughout the night.
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