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Otis Taylor: Below the Fold |
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Reviews
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Tuesday, 01 November 2005 20:27 |
 Below The Fold
Otis Taylor is a remarkable blues artist who emerged full-blown several years ago in his maturity as a citizen, musician and composer. A series of albums including the seminal 'White African' established Taylor's unique approach to the blues as a way of dealing head-on with contemporary and historical social issues from a bedrock African American perspective, and he has earned wide recognition as one of those few modern blues artists who are committed to extending the blues idiom and adding something of their own creation to the tradition.
In the process Taylor has developed a sound that's all his own as well, surrounding his guitar, mandolin, banjo and harmonica with fiddle, cello, and trumpet along with organ, bass, drums and lead guitar. The ensemble chugs along in a country-blues mode replete with echoes of primitive marching bands and small-town street-corner
serenaders, providing an appropriate setting for Taylor's robust vocals and outspoken lyrics.
Otis Taylor's new album for Telarc Records, i Below The Foldi0 , is a compelling step further in the evolution of this fiercely idiosyncratic blues artist with something to say about the world we live in and what it means to him. Songs of African American life and love--"Boy Plays Mandolin," "Hookers in the Street," "Mama's Got a Friend," "Right Side of Heaven"--alternate with social anthems like "Feel Like Lightning" and "Your Children Sleep Good Tonght," wherein, the composer notes, "A man thinks about the women and children who died in the Ludlow Massacre in Colorado on April 20, 1914. Mine workers went on strike and after a six-month standoff the Colorado National Guard shot at and set fire to the tent community of the workers and their families. Two women and eleven children were killed."
"Government Lied," Taylor explains, refers to the atrocity when "In Belgium, in World War II, the Germans took black and white American soldiers out to a field and shot them. At the end of the war, the responsible Germans were hanged for killing the white soldiers, but the U.S. government said that the black soldiers were missing so they wouldn't have to account for them."
"Working for the Pullman Company," written with vocalist and bassist Cassie Taylor, draws on the composers' memories of waiting for their fathers to return home from their work on the railroad trains and Pullman cars of an earlier time. And "Feel Like Lightning" is Otis's tribute to the Freedom Fighters "In the American South in the 1960s, [when] it was dangerous for black people todemonstrate for civil rights, and they had to be strong and powerful to stand their ground."
These are the words of Otis Taylor, an extraordinary bluesman whose works stand apart from conventional contemporary fare and demand to be heard on their own terms in the carefully fashioned settings the composer has devised for them. Taylor continues to grow and develop as an artist and composer virtually without peer, and blues lovers would do well to give his music a serious listen.
--Detroit
August 15, 2005
(c) 2005 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
 OTIS TAYLOR
Below The Fold
Telarc CD-83627
Otis Taylor, vocals, acoustic & electric guitar, OME banjo, mandolin, harmonica
Cassie Taylor, vocals, bass
Ben Solle, cello
Futoshi Morioka, lead guitar
Ron Miles, trumpet
Greg Anton, drums
Rayna Gellert, fiddle
Brian Juan,organ
1 Feel Like Lightning
2 Boy Plays Mandolin
3 Hookers in the Street
4 Mama's Got a Friend
5 Working for the Pullman Company
6 Your Children Sleep Good Tonight
7 Didn't Know Much About Education
8 Went to Hermes
9 Government Lied
10 Right Side of Heaven
Produced & arranged by Otis Taylor
Recorded in Boulder, Colorado3.1.6139]]> |
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