Taj Mahal - 1968 - Taj Mahal (2015 HDtracks) [[email protected]]
Artist: Taj Mahal
Title: Taj Mahal (2015 HDtracks)
Format: 8 × File, FLAC, Album, Reissue, Remastered, 24bit 96kHz (HDtracks)
Producer: Bob Irwin, David Rubinson
Release Date: 1968, (2015 HDtracks)
Recorded: August 1967
Label: Columbia Records
Genre: Blues, Electric Blues, Country Blues, World Music
Duration: 33:07
Taj Mahal:
Wikipedia:
Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (born May 17, 1942), who uses the stage name Taj Mahal, is an American blues musician. He often incorporates elements of world music into his works. A self-taught singer-songwriter and film composer who plays the guitar, piano, banjo and harmonica (among many other instruments), Mahal has done much to reshape the definition and scope of blues music over the course of his almost 50-year career by fusing it with nontraditional forms, including sounds from the Caribbean, Africa and the South Pacific.
Mahal grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. Raised in a musical environment, his mother was a member of a local gospel choir and his father was an Afro-Caribbean jazz arranger and piano player. His family owned a shortwave radio which received music broadcasts from around the world, exposing him at an early age to world music. Early in childhood he recognized the stark differences between the popular music of his day and the music that was played in his home. He also became interested in jazz, enjoying the works of musicians such as Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk and Milt Jackson. His parents came of age during the Harlem Renaissance, instilling in their son a sense of pride in his Caribbean and African ancestry through their stories.
Taj Mahal:
Wikipedia:
Taj Mahal is the debut American blues album by Taj Mahal.
AllMusic Review by Bruce Eder:
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.
Tracklist:
01. Leaving Trunk - 4:52
02. Statesboro Blues - 3:00
03. Checkin' up on My Baby - 4:56
04. Everybody's Got to Change Sometime - 2:58
05. E Z Rider - 3:05
06. Dust My Broom - 2:40
07. Diving Duck Blues - 2:43
08. Celebrated Walkin' Blues - 8:53
Personnel:
Taj Mahal - Guitar, Music arranger, Harp, Vocals, Slide Guitar
Ryland P. Cooder - Rhythm guitar and Mandolin
Bill Boatman - Rhythm guitar
James Thomas - Bass
Gary Gilmore - Bass
Sanford Konikoff - Drums
Charles Blackwell - Drums
Jessie Edwin Davis - Lead guitar
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