March 26, 1976 – Duster Bennett was born Anthony Bennett in in Welshpool, Powys, Mid Wales on September 23rd 1946. As a kid he was very interested in the blues and developed as an exceptional blues singer and multi-musician.
After moving to London, he became a session musician in the early 60s. His first solo album (one of five before his death) “Smiling Like I’m Happy” saw him playing as a one-man blues band whose virtuosity and co-ordination on drums, his Les Paul Goldtop guitar and harmonica was as riveting as it was unique, while he was backed by girlfriend Stella Sutton, the first and original Fleetwood Mac singer, on three tracks. His live sets combined his own compositions with Jimmy Reed-style blues standards often aided by friends Peter Green and Top Topham.
Emerging in the late 1960s from the art school music scene of Kingston-upon-Thames and Guildford, Bennett was a one-man blues band, in the style of bluesmen such as Joe Hill Lewis.
Between 1968 and 1970 he was played frequently on John Peel’s Top Gear, toured and eventually joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers as band member/solo act on a US tour in 1970. In the 1970s he drifted off into more mainstream material.
His haunting track Jumping at Shadows, was first covered by Fleetwood Mac and revived in 1992 by Gary Moore, who covered it in his “After Hours” album.
After performing with Memphis Slim, he died in a fatal road accident; tired at the wheel, his van collided with a truck on March 26, 1976. He was 29.
