Her Grace The Duchess

We are a 9 piece soul band from SF fronted by 3 singer/dancers, driven by a 3 piece rhythm section and royally adorned by our 3 piece horn section. We play originals and covers. Here's what we think about some of the songs we decided to cover.



Break In The Road: We had to do that one. Has it ever been harder to find the one? I mean seriously, where's the one? It's insane. Betty Harris's powerful shout might be a tall order and sure you can say that it's awfully bold to even to try to follow Zigaboo Modeliste on this pinball machine of syncopation, but history favors the bold and so does the dance floor.



River Deep Mountain High: There's a reason why Phil Spector sank thousands of dollars and wagered his career on this song. So what if everyone and their mother has done it at one time or another, it's a compositional masterpiece so quit complaining and be happy you know the words.



Rock Me Again and Again and Again-This is one of a handful of songs that you literally HAVE to dance to when you hear it. Try to not dance to this song, it's impossible. Plus the lyric "Rock me baby make my face get soakin wet, rock me babe, bout to work me to death"



Buttered Popcorn -What is it about novelty songs? Songs about potato chips or baboon eyeballs and baking soda coolers. It's as though by the end of the 50s the sheer number of songs flooding the jukeboxes of the world achieved some sort of critical mass and they were just running out of things to sing about. And the weirder things got the cooler the songs became. This gem of nearly-double entendre features the lyrics "greasy, sticky, gooey, and salty" all in one place.



I. Miller Shoes- Betty Davis doing I. Miller Shoes is the scariest fucking thing ever. You can keep all your Incest Cattle, Nick Cave, Impaled Nazarenes, your Gyorgi Ligeti-Apocolypses of St John Of The Cross. Current 93 Shmurrent 93, that's not scary! Betty Davis is scary. A downbeat like an ax murderer that keeps chopping long after your corpse is nothing but hamburger is scary. Here's the thing about this beat: it's an evil 1970's super hard funk that has nothing to do with the James Brown feel and nothing to do with the Isley Brothers feel and nothing to do with disco. It's closest relative is probably "Got Me Floating" by Jimi Hendrix but this song is MEAN! Nothing about it is floating.