Taj Mahal, Blues is walking and Jazz is talking!

BluesWax Sittin' In With

Taj Mahal

The Maestro Interview

Part One

By Don Wilcock

Taj Mahal

Don Wilcock for BluesWax: When you decided to make Maestro was that a conscious decision to celebrate the 40th anniversary or did it just happen by coincidence?

Taj Mahal: I actually wasn't thinking about it. There was a lot of things that came together. I mean it was like we hadn't done a record in a while and I wasn't happy with the music business at all and I was looking for a better deal if I was going to put music out. I wasn't making too much headway in terms of what I could actually see was coming across my plate, so I said if I'm recording another album, I want to have some of these ducks in a row. They're always talking numbers. I mean if you want to take - I'll make significant numbers, but at a smaller pace than right out of the box itself, whatever it is they're expecting.

BW: In line with that, I was surprised to have you tell Bill Wax on XM Satellite Radio that you called up Clive Davis and in essence he gave you carte blanche on that first album (Taj Mahal 1967). That shocked me.

TM: These are the early days. This wasn't later on. If I'd probably had a better legal operation, I'd own my own masters, too, or some version of that. As it is, I have my own publicist, but, no, I called Clive, said what I wanted to do. He said, "I don't think I should produce your stuff, but I'll send out some producers. Figure out who you like." Basically, they weren't gonna trust their money with an artist. They sent David Rubinson out. He and I clicked. We understood what we wanted to do. He ran the thing through the company and I did the music and put it together the way I wanted it to be. He left me alone with the music. I left him alone with the business and we both communicated with one another.

I think when you look back at what the product and project was and how it went from that raw first album to a little bit more sophisticated finished withNat'l Blues and then really finally distilled when it got down to the third album the Giant (Step/De Old Folk at Home) double album. Clive was a huge supporter of everybody that was in the record company. He went to everybody's gigs. I saw him everywhere. He was no slouch. He really is a music person and as far as I'm concerned, he's the last man standing. The rest of 'em are fuckin' suits, accountants, and a bunch of lawyers. They could be selling string, shoes, washing machines. Almost all of the albums I've been like totally the guy involved with everything every step of the album. I don't leave a whole lotta stuff to chance.

BW: Was there ever any pressure from any of the other labels to get you to be more focused or more niche-oriented?

TM: A couple different times they tried to do something, but they recognized I was a different type of man. My family is a long way from plantations. My father came out of the Caribbean. So, I wasn't that kind of cat. My parents weren't sharecroppers from Alabama, not that that's a bad thing. I just had the ideas I had and they really figured out, "I guess he likes what he's doing. He's got an audience for it." I mean even a lot of other artists said, "Man, what you're doing is great. All you need is just the one hit and that'll make everything work for you." They were always looking to get a hit. Fortunately, when I started, there was Blues this and Blues Rock and Funk Blues and all kinds of Folk Blues. They would have loved to have some hits.

"I don't care what they thought."

BW: How did it feel as a student at UMass to be singing Blues at a time when everybody thought Blues was a sub-genre of Folk?

TM: I don't care what they thought. You're suggesting that my mind is like everybody's around me. This was coming out of the culture I lived in, R&B, Jazz. It was all being played by the musicians that lived around me. I mean, at UMass we played the music. They were playing Folk music. I had an R&B band. I played with a jug band and I was learning how to play at that time, getting better at my fingerpicking, going out, listening to a lot of people that were happening at that particular time. Most of the other people I heard aside from the guys I learned from I heard on record. It was dance music. It was the music at the moment it was happening. All of those artists were living at that time.

I didn't hear Robert Johnson until I was at university and quite frankly, I wasn't all that impressed by him because the music I heard live from my friends was from people that were my own age or a little older. Listening to Robert I didn't get the experience that everybody else got out of it. It isn't that I don't think he's a great player and don't think now that he's a great player, but at that time I was [like], "Why are they making so much out of this guy? Here are all these real people that are around playing. Why don't they go and visit them?" And a lot of it is because those are the records they got and so that's who they know.

BW: Who were some of the people you were listening to live? Who were some of the musicians who inspired you?

TM: Jimmy Reed was dance music. So, you heard Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry. You heard Bo Diddley. You heard Paul Hucklebuck Williams. You heard John Lee Hooker, Jimmy Rushing, Big Joe Turner, you know. Nine Strings Big Joe Williams. I found all these people who were interested in the older Blues stuff. So, that was pretty nice, you know, but for me there was a clear thing. People on the eastern migration out of the south came north and brought a lot of that music with them, and that music was played pretty much late at night and not during the day. Late evening and even if you were lucky enough to get out and hear a band, towards the end of the night they would play a Blues or start out playing the Blues, or it would be Blues Swing.

BW: You told Bill Wax that Blues is walking and Jazz is talking. I thought that was an interesting statement. Do you want to elaborate on that?

TM: What I was saying is that Reggae gives you back your body, Jazz gives you back your mind, and Blues gives you back your soul, OK? And Blues is the walkin'. It's the walkin' Blues. The bass actually walks through there. That's what they [taught] the walkin' bass, but when you got down to Reggae, Reggae was talkin' to ya. A lot of Bob Marley songs you can totally remember from the bass line 'cause the bass line is a talkin' bass. I mean that was the great thing about [Bob Marley's bass player] Family Man [Aston Francis "FamilyMan" Barrett]. What a great bass line! One of the greatest bassmen in the world.

Taj Mahal's Maestro

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BW: Was that a thrill to play with Bob Marley?

TM: Of course! It was incredible to work with great people and Bob was really great to work with Family Man, his bass player. He was really exciting; an incredible musician. Somebody had to come out of the African Diaspora playing something that was making some sense to me, and Bob came along. He was making a lot of sense. We were contemporaries of each other.

BW: How did you and your daughter decide to collaborate on "Never Let You Go" on Maestro? How did that song develop?

TM: I had ukuleles for a long time. I been listening to them in a lot of different contexts and finally I heard the sound of one that had six strings on it that I really liked the sound of it. It had a harmony string on it. When I was working on the session with Los Lobos, I had "TV Mama." They listened to it and had some ideas of what they wanted to play. All I had was the ukulele part and I just showed them the chords and in very little time, in 15 to 20 minutes we had the tracks rolling. So, then we had this really great track and Steve Berlin put a couple of nice organ parts over it and we were really happy and everybody packed up, getting ready to get out. I'm thinking to myself, "Hey, man. What are you gonna do with this? You got moon, spoon, croon, soon, tune this, you know?" So, I thought about [my daughter]. I called her up and she said, "Yeah, okay. Send me the tracks." So, I sent her the tracks and she sent it back. The background vocals that are on there now are the ones she sent back originally. I replaced her voices 'cause I sung the melody over it that she's singin' on. Then she made some adjustments here and there. But I just thought she did a good job of writing it and it was all on her. I didn't say yea or nay. When it came back, that's what it was.

To be continued...

Don Wilcock is a contributing editor at BluesWax. You may contact Don at blueswax@visnat.com.

CD Review van www.humo.be

www.humo.be

Rosanne Cash - The List

Door (bp), 14/11/2009 - 11u00

Toptracks:

• Miss the Mississippi and You
• Motherless Children
• Sea of Heartbreak (ft. Bruce Springsteen)

Toen ze in de zomer van 1973 een tourbus deelden, stelde Johnny Cash vast dat zijn oudste, pas afgestudeerde dochter haar klassiekers niet kende. Hij trok zich een namiddag terug en overhandigde haar vervolgens een met veel zorg samengestelde lijst met de titel '100 Essential Country Songs'. Een half leven en een rijkgevulde solocarrière later acht Rosanne Cash de tijd rijp om een deel van die lijst met de wereld te delen.

'The List' is een dozijn liedjes van - of bekend in de versie van - artiesten en Cash-kameraden als The Carter Family('Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow'), Hank Williams('Take These Chains from My Heart'), Merle Haggard('Silver Wings') en Bob Dylan ('Girl from the North Country'). Koopt u 'm op iTunes, dan krijgt u er zelfs eentje extra: 'Satisfied Mind', in duet met Neko Case.

Een coverplaat dus, maar wát voor één! Van bij de eerste noten van 'Miss the Mississippi and You' doet Rosanne een gooi naar de sfeer en de klasse van 'Raising Sand', de magistrale samenwerking van Robert Plant en Alison Krauss. De traditional 'Motherless Children' is zinderend: doorleefd gezongen, van compassie doordrongen en al even gevoelig gearrangeerd. Twee nummers ver en het is meteen duidelijk: dit is het echte werk, geen 'Lotti Goes Country'. Gastrollen zijn er voor Bruce Springsteen ('Sea of Heartbreak'), Elvis Costello ('Heartbreak by the Number'), Jeff Tweedy ('Long Black Veil') en Rufus Wainwright ('Silver Wings'). Die helden blinken vooral uit door bescheidenheid, en dat geldt ook voor de hele plaat: hoe minder stroop, hoe harder de songs aan je gaan kleven.

Hier en daar had een beetje meer avontuur wel gemogen. 'Long Black Veil' en 'Girl from the North Country' worden bijvoorbeeld te braaf en met te veel respect nagespeeld: jammer, want die composities zijn zo sterk dat je al een bepruikte soundmixer moet zijn om ze om zeep te helpen. Ons eindejaarslijstjes zal 'The List' daardoor nét niet halen, maar op ons lijstje 'Cd's van de week' scoort hij hoog. En het is een geweldige gids voor als u nog eens muziek gaat kopen. Doe er uw voordeel mee.

Verve komt met sub-label

Platenlabel Verve gaat een sublabel opzetten, dat zich bezighoudt met het uitgeven van ‘limited edition’ uitgaves. Heruitgaves van klassiekers worden hiervan een belangrijk onderdeel. Verve is alvast de kluizen ingedoken en komt 9 november met heruitgaves van de muziek van Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday & Oscar Peterson. Het worden special edition boxen met boeken erbij en live-optredens die nog nooit eerder op cd zijn uitgebracht.

Ster toevoegenFavorietDelenDelen met opmerkingE-mailBehouden als ongelezenTags bewerken:

• Muziek

5 nov. 2009

Nieuws & Tips

Klokhuis vanavond over Benjamin Herman

- In TV-programma Het Klokhuis gaat presentatrice Lisa W

Lijkt me een interessante CD!

Dochter Johnny Cash eert vader

vrijdag, 20 november 2009 / door Harm Jan Dedden / Zonder categorie / tags:

De dochter van Johnny Cash, Rosanne, heeft een album uitgebracht met covers van de lievelingsnummers van haar vader. ‘The list’ heet het, met nummers van Merle Haggard en Bob Dylan. Rufus Wainright, Elvis Costello en Bruce Springsteen zingen ook mee op de plaat.

Leo Kottke, meester gitarist

By Walter Tunis

McClatchy Newspapers

In a recording and performance career that spans four full decades, Leo Kottke remains an original.

Onstage, he seemingly brings little with him outside of a pair of acoustic guitars — usually six- and 12-string models. But his playing is an assimilation of harmonic, stylistic and improvisational capabilities that merge into music that is as unparalleled as it is indefinable.

He matches such virtuosity with devilishly constructed but wonderfully skewed between-song stories. So one moment you're taken in by the earthy folkish warmth that he lends to longtime concert favorites like Tom T. Hall's "Pamela Brown" or his own masterful instrumental suite "Bigger Situation," and the next you're doubled over laughing as he reminisces about smuggling baguettes onto submarines while in the Navy so they could be used as filters for torpedo fuel.

"They still let me play," Kottke said by phone from Seattle. "That's the amazing thing. I had no idea I would still be doing this. I thought my career would be all over, at the most, in about 10 years."

When it was suggested that the key to career longevity might be his distinctive blend of instrumental daring and wildly off-center storytelling, Kottke hesitantly agrees.

"That may be part of it. There aren't many brands like me available to the consumer."

Lyle Lovett regularly opened concerts for Kottke in the mid-'80s.

"Even with all his virtuosity, the first thing I noticed about Leo was how intent he was in pushing ahead with his playing," Lovett said. "Guitarists everywhere were going out and buying 12-strings to try and play like him. But Leo was always looking for the next thing."

To say that chance had a role in bringing Kottke to the guitar and, more important, to the stylistic innovators that helped him forge a commanding voice on the instrument, is not an understatement. He took up violin at age 5 and moved on to trombone. He settled on the guitar, primarily because "it made me happy."

"It really hit me hard," Kottke said. "By the time I was 11, everything took a back seat to the guitar. There was never a real effort to turn all of it into a job. I knew that playing music was something I needed. And when I found the guitar, I finally discovered the instrument I needed. That was enough. It was more than enough. But to make a living playing it? Well, that's something I still can't quite get around."

This year marks the 40th anniversary of "6 and 12 String Guitar," the recording that largely introduced the world to Kottke. Two independent recordings preceded it, but "6 and 12 String Guitar" was released on the Tacoma label, an enterprise run by the guitarist who was a mentoring force for Kottke: John Fahey.

"I had heard a lot of the great Delta players, like (Mississippi) John Hurt and people like (Appalachian banjoists) Frank Proffitt and Obray Ramsey, and even some jazzers like (guitarist) Kenny Burrell. But they were all kind of discrete to me. John put them all together. And he did it at a pancreatic level. It was so organic that there was no self-consciousness whatsoever.

"But the other thing about John was that his whole effect was metaphysical. It was as if music was a metaphor. Usually music is just itself. It kind of overrides and subsumes metaphor. Not with John. He discovered this whole attitude, this whole realm that was out there. He was like Marco Polo."

Such stylistic innovation fuels Kottke's music as well. There have been all kinds of exemplary recording moments since "6 and 12 String Guitar," including the orchestral shadings of 1976's "Leo Kottke," the compositional calm of 1986's "A Shout Toward Noon," the playful pop experimentation of 1994's Rickie Lee Jones-produced Peculiaroso and the collaborative fire struck with Phish bassist Mike Gordon on 2005's "Sixty Six Steps." When asked whether he has a favorite recording, Kottke politely balked.

"The minute I think I have one, it turns out I actually hate it. Or the opposite happens. I used to be deeply ashamed of a record called 'Burnt Lips' (an extraordinary 1978 album of unaccompanied vocal and instrumental tunes). The last time I heard it, I thought, 'You know, this isn't so bad.'"

The constant for Kottke, though, remains concert performance. He considers stage work, after 40 years, a privilege. That assertion was instilled long ago, when the guitarist received a glimpse of an artist who had lost such a privilege.

"This was a long time ago. I played this old theater in Miami, a really nice, kind of miniature concert hall. From the time of the sound check until I was leaving the building that night, there was this one guy sitting in a folding chair. As far as I could tell, he was in his 80s. He never said anything. He never stood up. But he was there for the whole night. So I asked, 'What the hell is that guy doing there?' I was told he was the first act to ever play that theater. He was a tap dancer, but now he comes to every show and just sits there for the whole thing.

"So, yes, it is a privilege to still play. There is something very humbling in that for me."

___

downloaders zijn muziekkopers!

p2p is juist goed voor de verkoop van muziek

maandag 2 november - Door: Webredactie

Een nieuw Brits onderzoek toont aan dat mensen die illegaal downloaden en via p2p muziek delen, gemiddeld 77 pond (omgerekend zo'n 85 euro) per jaar uitgeven aan muziek. Dat is 33 pond (36 euro) meer dan mensen die zeggen geen gebruik te maken van p2p.

Mensen die via p2p muziek binnenhalen blijken dat in 42% van de gevallen te doen om te kijken of ze een band of artiest leuk genoeg vinden om er daarna legaal muziek van te kopen. 10% van de illegale downloaders zegt dankzij p2p veel meer muziek te kopen dan voorheen. Redenen om te stoppen met illegaal downloaden zouden zijn wanneer er een boete op zou staan of wanneer de prijs per track zou dalen naar 0,45 pond (ongeveer 50 cent).

Verrassend is de uitkomst van dit onderzoek niet. Zo werd in april van dit jaar uit een Noors onderzoek precies dezelfde conclusie getrokken en meldde TNO begin dit jaar ook al dat downloaden goed is voor de economie.

Muziek zoeken met Google

In an attempt to tap into the digital-music market dominated by iTunes, Google today unveiled a new song-searching system that will allow users to quickly stream a free track using LaLa or MySpace Music. Both Google and the record business hope the simple-to-use form of music search dissuades users from typing in, say, “Beyoncé” and “torrent” and turning up thousands of illegal song-download results. “The best way to address that [torrent-searching] situation is to provide a really great and comprehensive and fast, excellent music service,” says R.J. Pittman, a product management director at Google. “We really feel the way is to make it much better for people — and that’s going to have a positive impact on music industry.”

With the new system, Google users will find a large “play” button at the top of the results page when they search for an artist, song or album. They’ll also get one free stream, as well as “buy” links to LaLa, MySpace, Rhapsody, Pandora, iMeem and others. “Millions and millions of consumers search for music every day — they’re trying to get to music the best way they know how. And the best way they know how is Google,” says Geoff Ralston, LaLa’s chief executive officer. “ITunes is a great program, but it’s big and it’s heavy and it’s slow. You don’t live in iTunes all the time.”

Still, while the new Google service is likely to be more convenient for customers, David Pakman, a venture capitalist and former eMusic CEO, believes it is unlikely to generate any more income for LaLa, MySpace or the major record labels who provide the content. He says Google searchers probably won’t jump from streaming a song for free to actually buying tracks via LaLa. “Getting access to streaming music isn’t really that hard,” he says. “The problem is there’s just no business around it.”

One advantage for Google is the search giant didn’t have to make deals directly with the labels to get the music — they simply let LaLa and MySpace, who already have such deals, lay the groundwork. Labels, contending with another 20 percent drop in CD sales this year, according to Nielsen Soundscan, have been more aggressive recently to remake themselves in the digital age. “They have been supportive [of the Google deal],” LaLa’s Ralston says. “They understand there’s a new world out there.”

Steve Knopper