June 28, 2022

Taj Mahal - Taj Mahal (1968 / 2000 reissue)

King Taj
This album is 55 years old but sounds almost as if it had been recorded yesterday. Normal, it's Taj Mahal, and Taj Mahal, a man who knows about the blues, is timeless.
This self-titled debut album, recorded during the summer of 1967 and released in early 1968, became afterwards a classic of the 1960s blues revival. Mahal straight vintage blues sound was unlike almost anything else on the blues scene at the time. It was recorded with two prestigious guitar accomplices : teenage friend Ry Cooder on rhythm and the late Jesse Ed Davis, an authentic Native American, on lead. All three were already playing together in the Los Angeles-based blues-rock band The Rising Sons since 1964.

The band (without Cooder)
This album stands like a keystone in the effort to bring blues to modernity while fully preserving its roots authenticity. Solidly standing on his country-blues foundation, Mahal opened the path and later inspired artists like Corey Harris and Guy Davis, for example, in "restoring" external influences, primarily from West Africa through the Caribbean, that had been almost forgotten along the way.

This first recording is the first step of the renewed pride of Black-American culture (a giant step*, if I may dare) : in just eight songs Mahal states his vision of country-blues through a masterly demonstration. One can be sure he chose carefully the seven songs he covered in addition of his own "E Z Rider" (note that the shooting of the cult movie "Easy Rider", equally famous for its cult soundtrack, began in February 1968 in New Orleans and was released "only" in 1969).

Sleepy John Estes
One can easily guess the man has a knack for Sleepy John Estes with three songs from the Tennessee bluesman : "Leaving Trunk" which opens the album and is better known as "Milk Cow Blues", "Everybody's Got To Change Sometime" and "Diving Duck Blues". Next come homages to the great Piedmont style bluesman Blind Willie McTell with the ever famous "Statesboro Blues", to the no less great Sonny Boy Williamson II (aka Aleck "Rice" Miller) with "Checkin' Up On My Baby", and of course to Robert Johnson with the equally famous "Dust My Broom". Lastly, the final "Celebrated Walkin' Blues" could be considered as a multi-tribute to Son House who supposedly wrote the song and recorded it first in 1930, Johnson who recorded his version in 1936, and Muddy Waters who recorded one with some different lyrics titled "Country Blues" in 1941. Actually the song had been included to their repertoire by a fair amount of bluesmen after 1930. That might be the reason why Mahal (or the record label) chose to present it as a "traditional" arranged by himself.

To measure what Mahal brought with his "modernized" electric adaptations it is very interesting to compare his versions with the historic originals (see links below). If Mahal has obviously taken instrumental liberties, he has truly respected the spirit of the songs. That is the mark of a great artist, of a great connoisseur of the blues and of an intelligent man with an amazing musical maturity : he was just 25 ** during the recording sessions.

In giving a new coat of paint to pre-war country-blues, Mahal opened new audiences to the genre and caused a lot of people to discover through blues the richness of a culture that was next to them but about which they didn't know much.

This revisit is indeed all the more efficient that it's done in a very appealing musical manner : Mahal's adaptations are magically carried by his harmonica and vocals (he's really a powerful blues singer) on one side, and by Cooder's and Davis finely chiseled guitar work (and piano for Davis on some tracks) as well as that of the other musicians on the casting on the other. The result is not only rhythmically catchy but also full of the deep soul of the blues. Few have succeeded so greatly in such a challenge since. Didn't I hear somebody say  the word cult ?! ■


* "Giant Step" is Mahal third album, released in 1969.

** Born Henry St Claire Fredericks on May 17, 1942 in New York from a father of Jamaican descent who was a jazz pianist, composer and arranger, and a schoolteacher and gospel singer mother from South Carolina, Mahal moved to L.A. in 1964 where he soon formed The Rising Sons.
 
The originals
● Sleepy John Estes
→ "Leaving Trunk", actually better known under the title "Milk Cow Blues" : https://youtu.be/VU9kntOj22Q / https://youtu.be/CNiejH_kFW4
→ "Everybody's Got To Change Sometime" : https://youtu.be/eg9a71tQdMI / https://youtu.be/G3NAjwU4Km8 / https://youtu.be/MpyFQ3noq4M

Blind Willie McTell
● Blind Willie McTell, "Statesboro Blues" : https://youtu.be/fnWxZtI3ONY / https://youtu.be/sk4Js6Q58h8

● Sonny Boy Williamson II, "Checkin' Up On My Baby" : https://youtu.be/zlZpSGgvXZI / https://youtu.be/WkuS2Cw7y04 / https://youtu.be/mpyoeagugb0

● "Walkin' Blues" :
Son House
→ Son House original version, 1930 : https://youtu.be/Wl5BiHw74xU / https://youtu.be/SGcYxUoqVDY
→ Son House's  long version (live) : https://youtu.be/R7NfJL5lbIk
→ Robert Johnson's version, 1936 : https://youtu.be/BgXA-dEfnN8 / https://youtu.be/MEsQikthT3Q
→ Muddy Waters adaptation titled "Country Blues" recorded in 1941 by famous ethno-musicologist Alan Lomax :

 
Muddy Waters

Robert Johnson

Sonny Boy Williamson II

Sleepy John Estes













Jesse Ed Davis

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