Duke Tumatoe

Duke Tumatoe, born William "Bill" Severen Fiorio in 1947, is an American blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. He has gigged with Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, B.B. Kingm Willie Dixon, Buddy Guy, John Fogerty, and George Thorogood. He was a founding member of arena-rock giants REO Speedwago. He has released fifteen albums as the bandleader of Duke Tumatoe & The All-Star Frogs and Duke Tumatoe & The Power Trio. His 1998 live album I Like My Job was produced by John Fogerty. He typically plays more than 100 dates per year. 

Duke Tumatoe was born in June 1947 in Chicago. His father was a first-generation Italian whose family hailed from San Bonifacio, Italy, a northern Italian town outside Verona. He grew up in Beverly, a neighborhood on the Southwest side of Chicago. 

The South Side of Chicago was also the birthplace of urban, electric blues, which was a huge influence on Tumatoe. As a teen, he often visited the legendary market at Maxwell Street to hear live blues. He learned to play drums at age 14 and guitar a year after that. In 1965, Tumatoe enrolled in college at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and founded a short-lived band called Lothar & The Handpeople. This band was named by CBS News Correspondent and Emmy Award winner Bill Geist, a classmate of Tumatoe's.

In 1967, while living in Champaign, IL, Tumatoe was an original member of early REO Speedwagon, alongside Neal Doughty and Alan Gratzer. The band started as a soul band, inspired by Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, and The Doors. In 1969, the band decided to take a more straightforward rock and roll approach, so Tumatoe, who wanted to play blues music, left the group to pursue his own musical endeavors.

In 1969, Tumatoe founded Duke Tumatoe & The All Star Frogs. The band featured guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards. They toured for thirteen years and released three albums. The All-Star Frogs featured keyboardist James Mitchell Hill, whose playing has been compared to Booker T. Jones. Hill continues to play with Tumatoe through the present day.

In 1983, Tumatoe disbanded The All-Star Frogs. He had moved to Indianapolis and was looking to form a group closer to his new home. The new group consisted of guitar, bass, drums, and keys, though certain lineup changes featured two guitarists and no keys. The Power Trio performed an average of 200 dates per year. They have released twelve albums to date. 

Shortly after moving to Indianapolis in 1980, Tumatoe befriended Tom Griswold of The Bob & Tom Show, a nationally-syndicated radio program that fuses comedy and music. In 1985, Tumatoe was looking for a way to promote a local blues club called Uncle Slugs and Griswold suggested he write a song about the city's new NFL team, the Indianapolis Colts, which has formerly been the Baltimore Colts. The result was the tongue-in-cheek "Lord Help Our Colts", a catchy twelve-bar blues jingle with a static chorus and verses that could easily be updated to recap each game. To date, he has sung more than 800 versions over the past thirty years. 

Tumatoe performed the songs weekly on air, and through they were a hit with fans, some of the player and coaches took umbrage to his lyrics, especially when Tumatoe couldn't resist taking a dig. On a few different occasions, Tumatoe barely avoided physical altercations initiated by drunken quarterbacks or angry coaches.

Tumatoe is a self taught guitarist who learned to play by watching Chicago's blues legends. His guitar playing has been described as "B.B. King played through Jimi Hendrix (with a touch of Andy Gill)."