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Taj Mahal: Taj Mahal

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Columbia/Legacy Records
Released: 1968
Time:
 32:55
Category: Blues, Electric blues
Producer(s): Bob Irwin, David Rubinson
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.tajblues.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Leaving Trunk (Sleepy John Estes) - 4:51
[2] Statesboro Blues (Blind Willie McTell) - 2:59
[3] Checkin' Up on My Baby (Sonny Boy Williamson) - 4:55
[4] Everybody's Got to Change Sometime (Sleepy John Estes) - 2:57
[5] EZ Rider (Taj Mahal) - 3:04
[6] Dust My Broom (Robert Johnson) - 2:39
[7] Diving Duck Blues (Sleepy John Estes) - 2:42
[8] The Celebrated Walkin' Blues (Traditional) - 8:52

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Taj Mahal - Guitar, Music Arranger, Harp, Vocals, Slide Guitar, Liner Notes

Ry Cooder - Rhythm Guitar & Mandolin
Bill Boatman - Rhythm Guitar
James Thomas - Bass
Gary Gilmore - Bass
Sanford Konikoff - Drums
Charles Blackwell - Drums
Jesse Ed Davis - Lead Guitar

Bob Irwin - Producer
David Rubinson - Producer
Vic Anesini - Mastering
Stanley Crouch - Liner Notes
Howard Fritzson - Art Direction
Lily Lew - Packaging Manager
Don Peterson - Photography
Guy Webster - Photography
Baron Wolman - Photography

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Taj Mahal's debut album was a startling statement in its time and has held up remarkably well. Recorded in August of 1967, it was as hard and exciting a mix of old and new blues sounds as surfaced on record in a year when even a lot of veteran blues artists (mostly at the insistence of their record labels) started turning toward psychedelia. The guitar virtuosity, embodied in Taj Mahal's slide work (which had the subtlety of a classical performance), Jesse Ed Davis's lead playing, and rhythm work by Ry Cooder and Bill Boatman, is of the neatly stripped-down variety that was alien to most records aiming for popular appeal, and the singer himself approached the music with a startling mix of authenticity and youthful enthusiasm. The whole record is a strange and compelling amalgam of stylistic and technical achievements - filled with blues influences of the 1930s and 1940s, but also making use of stereo sound separation and the best recording technology. The result was numbers like Sleepy John Estes' "Diving Duck Blues," with textures resembling the mix on the early Cream albums, while "The Celebrated Walkin' Blues" (even with Cooder's animated mandolin weaving its spell on one side of the stereo mix) has the sound of a late '40s Chess release by Muddy Waters. Blind Willie McTell ("Statesboro Blues") and Robert Johnson ("Dust My Broom") are also represented, in what had to be one of the most quietly, defiantly iconoclastic records of 1968.

Bruce Eder - All Music Guide



Taj Mahal's been chasing the blues around the world for years, but rarely with the passion, energy, and clarity he brought to his first three albums. Taj Mahal, The Natch'l Blues and The Real Thing are the sound of the artist, who was born in 1942, defining himself and his music. On his self-titled 1967 debut, he not only honors the sound of the Delta masters with his driving National steel guitar and hard vocal shout, but ladles in elements of rock and country with the help of guitarists Ry Cooder and the late Jessie Ed Davis. This approach is reinforced and broadened by The Natch'l Blues. What's most striking is Mahal's way of making even the oldest themes sound as if they're part of a new era. Not just through the vigor of his playing--relentlessly propulsive, yet stripped down compared with the six-string ornamentations of the original masters of country blues--but through his singing, which possesses a knowing insouciance distinct to post-Woodstock counterculture hipsters. It's the voice of an informed young man who knows he's offering something deep to an equally hip and receptive audience.

Soon, Mahal turned his multicultural vision of the blues even further outward. The live 1971 set, The Real Thing, finds him still carrying the Mississippi torch, while adding overt elements of jazz and Afro-Caribbean music to its flame. But it's overreaching. His band sounds under-rehearsed, and the arrangements seem more like rough outlines. Nonetheless, these albums set the stage for Mahal's career. (For a condensed version, try the fine The Best of Taj Mahal.) Today, he continues to make fine fusion albums, like 1999's Kulanjan, with Malian kora master Toumani Diabate, and less exciting but still eclectic recordings with his Phantom Blues Band.

Ted Drozdowski - Amazon.com
 

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