The Natch’l Blues 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
Customer Review: The Real Blues
You cannot go wrong with this album. Just as the Stones were adding unadultrated blues to their rock, Taj Mahal was taking the blues and adding just enough rock flurishes to modernize the music.
But make no mistake, this is real blues, played by crack session players–even Muddy and the Wolf were using top flight rock guys at this point– and sung by a man with a passion and knowlage of the music. There is tough mean southern blues, more jazzy pieces, and polished semi-ballads, all injected with 100% blues roots.
It is raw and polished, viceral and sophisticated at the same time. A great record if you are a blues purist, or just a lover of good music.
Customer Review: Essential Taj Mahal
I first heard this album when I was nineteen years old and looking for to hear something that would inspire me as a musician and human being. It’s a shame that in this age of MP3 downloads you miss out on the album cover art and exquisite liner notes … “songs of Mother Euphrates…” and this description “this album is the product of a number of musical friends, some of whom do not use music to create their song”. This album is life-affirming, community building universal language at its best. And on top of that, very hip, very cool, and very funky. Anyone who thinks they dig modern blues, Americana, musicology or rhythm and blues in general should have a copy of this classic.