Customer Reviews

Taj Mahal

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One of the most prominent figures in late 20th century blues, singer/multi-instrumentalist Henry St. Clair Fredericks played an enormous role in revitalizing and preserving traditional blues.
His self-titled debut album was recorded in August 1967, and came out just as several established blues stars ventured into psychedelia and rock n' roll at the insistence of their record companies.

But not Taj Mahal. These arrangements may be updated when compared to what Robert Johnson or Willie McTell did thirty-five years earlier, but it's still the blues, genuine, mostly acoustic blues, dominated by harp and howling slide guitar.
These lean, stripped-down arrangements were alien to most record producers at the time, and they are part of the reason why this album holds up so well.
The best of these eight songs count among the best, catchiest, grooviest blues I have ever heard, and I have heard a lot!
Taj Mahal vocals are powerful and confident, he has a great sense of timing and melody, and he is backed by a magnificent band which includes lead guitarist Jesse Ed Davis and the multi-talented Ry Cooder.
(A facsimile of the original LP artwork is included, giving their names as "Jessie Edwin Davis" and "Ryland Cooder". Taj Mahal calls his band "a son of a Texas sharecropper, a Hungarian Jew, a wild-eyed Irishman, and a crazy Swamp Spade!")

Taj Mahal's hard-hitting renditions of "Dust My Broom", "Leaving Trunk" and "Statesboro Blues" are nothing short of magnificent; powerful, strongly rhythmic songs, perfectly arranged. And the nine-minute version of Son House's "Walkin' Blues", which sees Taj Mahal playing both harp and rough, gruff slide guitar, is simply awesome.
The whole record is a compelling amalgam of stylistic and technical achievements, filled with blues influences of the 1920s and 30s, but also making use of stereo sound separation and state-of-the-art recording technology.
One of the best blues LPs of the 60s.

It's hard to believe that 40 years have elapsed since Taj Mahal recorded his self-titled album. I can honestly say that Taj's debut album DID change my life because he opened the world of delta blues to me and transformed me from a suburban garage rocker into a fanatical avid collector of worn out 78 rpm of Mississippi blues recorded in the 1920s and 1930s. I learned most of my blues chops on guitar from listening to this album over and over.

Technically this isn't Taj's first album but it's the first album that most music fans heard Taj Mahal on. Both "Giant Step" and "De Ole Folks at Home" were released earlier and combined into a second release after the success of this self titled album.

Taj's album led me to appreciate the significance of blues players like Robert Johnson, who was a forgotten and obscure figure in the world of popular music before Taj Mahal. It was the first time I ever heard anyone play an open tuned guitar in the blues bottleneck style. I remember using a screwdriver and a newly purchased book of open tunings for guitar to imitate Jesse Davis' trademark southern fried guitar sound. A year later everyone from Duane Allman, Eric Clapton to Taj's own session player Ry Cooder had albums out playing bottleneck blues in the vintage style of Robert Johnson.

Nobody, not even John Fahey or Paul Butterfield did more than Taj Mahal to expand the audience for authentic blues to a crossover audience of suburban white kids who were living in the psychedelic renaissance of such great bands as the Doors, Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience when Taj's debut was released.

Most extraordinary is the success of Taj Mahal's self titled album had a ripple effect on the careers of many obscure blues players who able to quit their day jobs and start gigging again, because of the reawakened interest in Mississippi blues.

The late Walter "Furry" Lewis, a Memphis based blues guitarist once told me that Taj Mahal was responsible for his return to active gigging in the early Seventies. Furry with some help from fans managed to get put his battered Martin guitar out hock at a local pawn shop and Furry's second career began as he was pushing 80 years of age. Taj wasn't the only musician to bring the blues to a younger rock and roll audience but Taj was significant because he was one of the few younger black musicians who still played blues in 1967.

The reason why you can still find an old Blind Willie Johnson or Charley Patton album still in issue at Amazon is because players like Fahey, Al Johnson, Paul Butterfield and Taj Mahal stubbornly refused to let the blues tradition wither away and die in the late Sixties and early Seventies.

Taj specifically designed his first album appeal to a broader rock music audience without compromising the integrity of the vintage blues he was playing. He took blues out of the hands of the archivists and breathed life back into it with his charismatic performances.

At the time of this album's release I saw the Taj Mahal Band perform a few times and it was a juggernaut of a band with a sledge-hammer drum and bass sound designed to appeal to rock music fans. Even as Taj experimented with his hybrid rock and blues fusion, he never strayed far from his authentic roots in Mississippi, Georgia and Texas country blues.

For instance, a San Francisco hippie fan of Big Brother and the Holding Company or the Grateful Dead could readily appreciate the elements of both rock and roll and blues in Taj Mahal's music. As a result, Taj's music helped to open the doors of the both the Fillmore and Avalon to some of his elders B.B. King, Albert King and Muddy Waters.

Part this album's appeal is Taj's magnificent full throated mastery of blues harmonica but equally important is guitarist Jesse Davis' blues drenched slide guitar and lead guitar playing. Jesse only stayed with the Taj Mahal band for two short years but the exuberance and the sheer joy of their collaboration can be heard on songs like "Leaving Trunk" and "Statesboro Blues." It's hard avoid the impulse to dance to these songs because the slow blues tempo is revved up to a mid-tempo shuffle.

Kiowa native American guitar Jesse Davis was the glue that held the funky blues sound of the band together. Davis began his career playing the unlikely gig as country music star Conway Twitty's guitarist. Davis' versatility and mastery or roots music earned him a reputation as a top gun Fender picking session guitarist. Following Davis' departure from the band Taj moved on to a sparse acoustic sound that had a wide sweep of influences as diverse as blues, ragtime, jazz country music, Brazilian, African music, reggae and other global folk music.

Taj was never quite as electrifying on stage as he was with Jesse Davis at his side. After Davis' departure, Taj's solo live shows were a showcase of his own stylistic diversity and his virtuosity on a dozen musical instruments. Both Taj and Jesse were college graduates with an academic interest in blues but when they hit the stage together, both Taj and Jesse played with the blackheart soul of the man who met up with the devil at the crossroads and signed on with Satan to play the blues. Unfortunately Jesse's demon was alcohol and the firewater finally consumed him in 1988.

When all is said and done this early self-titled album by Taj Mahal will be the most significant of his long career. Taj didn't accept the conventional wisdom and stood up and demanded his music be listened to on it's own merits. Taj Mahal's debut album was a blast of fresh air in the psychedelic jungle that was popular music in 1968. 40 years later, this well worn relic of an album sounds more inspired and authentic than any the bling-bling jive by any rapper in the current jungle of hip hop music.

This reissue is a good one. The music displayed here is a "roosty" sound that Clapton was seeking after he left the big ol' Marshall sound. Taj, the Band, Dave Mason, Delany & Bonnie..... & the closest he got to it was with the Dominos. Ry Cooder seems to get most of the PR for the guitar work on this album, but the real star is Jesse Ed Davis. He answers Taj's vocals & harps on these tracks from the opening track. While the trend of the day was to play LOUD, the playing of players such as Davis & Robertson was a welcome addition to the music scene. And yes, the Statesboro Blues later influenced a young Duane Allman to pick up a Coricidin bottle....if you are into Taj's "blues" work, this is the place to start.

Taj's first was one of his best. This is just basic electric blues, powered by the fresh enthusiasm of Taj, Ry Cooder, the now departed Jessie Ed Davis on lead guitar, and other young bucks. The Allman Brothers used Taj's arrangement of "Statesboro Blues" for their live version -- I wonder how many Allmans fans realize that? This album has the energy, punch and optimism that filled the air in 1967. It fits perfectly with the first, self-titled album by Chicago's Butterfield Blues Band, and with the self-titled album by Chicago's Siegel-Schwall Band released by Wooden Nickel in 1971 (see my review). These albums still sound fresh today!

The only Taj Mahal album I love more than this one is HAPPY JUST TO BE LIKE I AM, from 1971, which has more of a country-blues emphasis, along with an awesome horn section and Taj's first foray into world-music with "West Indian Revelation." Let's get that reissued right away, Columbia Legacy!!!

If you're here, you've done your research or have found how difficult it is to locate this title. This and Na'chal Blues are his two best original works, until he started winning grammies. His rendition of 'Easy Rider' is the best these ears have heard, with Johnny Winter a strong second. His 'Walkin Blues' is outstanding, a must if you have not heard his version before. If you need more than 1 man's opinion, see what the AMG says--they agree!

This album is a major link between the worlds of historic blues and mainstream rock'n'roll. It's blues with a rock tinge, rather like early Rolling Stones could be considered rock with a blues influence. Taj Mahal mines the historic blues-song archives and the arrangements are tight, driving, and above all, danceable as hell (keep in mind that the blues aren't just some depressed guy sitting around crying into his guitar -- they are party music, and that function is as important as personal expression). Taj has some incredibly skilled musicians in his bands, and they support him with lively, almost fiery playing that complements the effort that Taj puts forth very well.

This album introduced me to the blues in 1968 and I have researched, played, sung, and loved the blues ever since. I still have the vinyl disk, worn and crackly. To have the music as clear and fresh as it is here is a godsend.

It's a lot of fun to get into the background of such music, hear its roots, and later hear (and understand) its offspring. But the best thing about this album -- it's just plain fun to hear.

When I first heard Taj Mahal's debut album in the late 60's, I was simply astounded at the sheer quality of this music. There is not one bit of filler on this album, which remains an incredible listen nearly 40 years later. This album, more than any other album I ever bought, had the biggest influence of my life. Prior to this album, I had never been into pure blues. But, this album changed that forever, as I now have a personal music library filled with dozens and dozens of great blues albums. Backed by some great musicians, including guitarists, Ry Cooder and Jesse Ed Davis, this album never lets up, from the opening song "Leaving Truck" to the closing number "The Celebrated Walkin' Blues". This album changed my musical horizons and remains one of my most treasured albums. Taj Mahal made a lot of great albums, but he never made one better than this.

I would urge any blues cd collector to posses this album; with his raspy voice, hard guitar playing and mezmorizing harp playing, each and every song is solid. I especially like 'Leaving Truck' and "Checkin Up on my Baby' but they are all good on this cd. Even the linear notes and photos on this reissue are interesting.

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The years have been far more kind to Taj Mahal's quietly electrifying Columbia solo debut than even his most dedicated listeners might have allowed when it hit the racks in late 1967. (He had earlier released a single for Columbia as the leader of Taj Mahal and the Rising Sons---an interracial band featuring Ry Cooder---but their album didn't appear until Legacy issued the material in 1993.) Two years later, English blues crusader John Mayall would make a kind of fetish out of "blues without bashing"; Mahal (born Henry St. Clair Fredericks) was playing the blues without bashing before Mayall got the a-ha, and he didn't eliminate a grooving rhythm section to prove it. There's no overdriven guitar schtick, no feedback-frenzied riffing or power chording, no hydraulically exploding drumming, no vocal histrionics. It's a very far cry from the British and American blues acolytes of the time (and even now) who seem to have been using the blues as a stepping stone toward bigger and louder but not very close to better reimaginings of the vintage blues Mahal makes his own.

Mahal here has a fine holler of a voice already, but he's not turning it loose to bludgeon his listeners. He was also perhaps the finest young American slide guitarist before Duane Allman unsheathed his Coricidin bottle at last within a few years, he knitted seamlessly with his then-regular lead guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, and his rhythm section---while not even close to a pyrotechnic power plant---sets a bottom the vaunted Stax and Muscle Shoals rhythm sections would have applauded for what the critic Dave Marsh, speaking explicitly of the latter, called keeping an even keel while cutting the deepest and widest groove they can find.

His take on "Statesboro Blues" deserved to become the standard take the Allman Brothers Band's take became a few years later; his reimagining of Sleepy John Estes's "Diving Duck Blues" (from which Muddy Waters borrowed a lyric fragment to help forge his "Rollin' and Tumblin'") is practically a textbook exercise in forging blues-rock without letting the rock bury the blues alive; he shuffles the Sonny Boy Williamson chestnut "Checkin' Up on My Baby" with an aplomb missing from Mayall's horn-riffing take in the same year (to close "Crusade") and a few extra lyrics, not to mention a soaring harmonica introduction and some very Al Jackson, Jr.-like trap work.

Come to think of it, Mahal is using almost half the album to trumpet Estes, taking on two other Estes numbers, "Leaving Trunk" (with some fine, dry harmonica work and slice-off-the-husk rhythm guitar) and "Everybody's Got to Change Sometime" (with a nifty nod to Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor" by way of the climb-walking bass lines) as if he found himself with their ownership. Otherwise, he brings about an energetic take on "Dust My Broom," giving the writing credit to both Elmore James (who reimagined it most famously in the first place) and Robert Johnson (who wrote it in the first place) and avoiding the slide guitar cliches that have turned the song into an unfortunate dead horse, Mahal and band's restraint absolutely gripping. And, he turns Johnson's "Walking Blues" into an extension that doesn't lapse into boredom, wringing more emotion out of just a harmonica, an unaccompanied electric guitar (at least, until guest buddy Ry Cooder kind of sneaks in with a sympatico mandolin), and his plaintive husk of a voice for the first two choruses than most reinterpreters could or did with full bands and high volume; when the band eases in, they don't overpower but embrace him.

There's only one original number on the set. And it's a gem---"EZ Rider" works a soul groove beneath Mahal's rural-fed blues without smothering them. It might have been aimed as a possible single and, if thus released, might have provided a smooth calling card for the album, though even in freewheeling 1967 Mahal's throaty-deep harmonica (almost nodding to Paul Butterfield's from-the-chest style in one or two passages) might have kept it from being more than a cult hit.

Work like this is what assured Taj Mahal of a long and productive career. But work like this is also why his devotees can't figure out why he has been a cult favourite for the most part while more preening, stylised, self-conscious incendiaries took the gravy his unassuming blues stews deserved. He'd get a lot more adventurous as the years went on, but he rarely got as elementally powerful as this.