Otis Taylor Albums (9)
'Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs'
Release Date 1/1/2009
Tracks 13
Label Telarc
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What The Critics Say
Otis Taylor doesn't suffer fools lightly, and his songs are full of defiant reclamations of history and tender vignettes of people struggling to survive in hostile cultural territory. Now he wants to talk about love. Taylor began his career playing bluegrass banjo, but switched to guitar (and the blues) in the late '60s, working in various bands and as a solo artist before walking away from it all 1978. He re-emerged a couple decades later in the mid-'90s with an utterly unique and modal-driven blues style that made full use of his gritty singing voice; his quirky songwriting skills; and his raw, driving guitar and banjo playing. Taylor really hasn't been idle since, and Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs is his tenth studio album in 14 years. Following on the heels of 2008's Recapturing the Banjo (which did exactly what its title says), this set finds Taylor turning his attention to love, but these aren't love songs in the normal sense, and more often than not these songs chart the course of love in dramatically unstable and even dangerous relationships. No moon and June stuff. Not even close. Much bleaker. The album opens with "Looking for Some Heat," and yeah, it's about love, but things don't end well at all. "Lost My Guitar," which is all about the loss of love in the truest sense, uses guitars and fatal car accidents as central metaphors. Nope, love isn't all roses in Taylor's view of things. And the sound of this album is different, too, with frequent use of solo cornet, giving these tracks a kind of dark, jazzy feel, particularly on cuts like "I'm Not Mysterious" that feature jazz pianist Jason Moran and Ron Miles' cornet. Irish blues-rock guitarist Gary Moore pops up on three cuts, and Taylor's daughter and bassist Cassie Taylor handles lead vocals on a few songs, including the striking and wonderful "Maybe Yeah." Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs ends up being an urgent, stubborn, and sometimes overly dark view of love in all of its unavoidable permutations. In other words, it's exactly the kind of album of love songs you'd expect from Taylor, one that is direct and as baffling as it is challenging. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Thanks to films like Deliverance and the rise of bluegrass since the mid-'50s, the banjo has come to be associated with white Appalachia in most people's minds, but the instrument actually has its origins in West Africa, arriving in the New World via the slave trade, and consequently became a dominant factor in early African-American song styles. A simple instrument with tremendous modal possibilities, the banjo, particularly in its five-string version, also has a much wider range of tones, approaches, and styles in its repertoire than most people only familiar with the slash-and-burn speed style of modern bluegrass are likely to realize. In this regard, the title of Otis Taylor's ninth album, Recapturing the Banjo, is quite literally a mission statement. Taylor has always featured the banjo on his various recording projects, but here he brings the instrument front and center and enlists the help of several other contemporary black musicians, including Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Corey Harris, Don Vappie, and Keb' Mo', to present the banjo in a clearer historical light. This is no archival museum album, however, and while it does encompass and illustrate several banjo styles, from the clawhammer work of Davis on the traditional "Little Liza Jane" to the delicate picking style of Keb' Mo' on his own "The Way It Goes" and the jug band approach of Harris and Vappie on Gus Cannon's "Walk Right In," Recapturing the Banjo remains very much an Otis Taylor release, full of the kind of driving, modal trance tunes that he has always done so strikingly well. The opener, "Ran So Hard the Sun Went Down," a Taylor original, is a case in point. With a massed banjo army of Hart, Harris, Vappie, and Taylor himself, and amended by Taylor's daughter Cassie Taylor on bass and backup vocals, the song races in modal fashion with a steam-engine drive not unlike some of the North Mississippi trance blues of R.L. Burnside and company. It's all pretty exhilarating. This isn't an album full of purist intentions, either, and there's plenty of lap steel and electric guitar included in Taylor's powerful take on the old chestnut "Hey Joe," for instance, which features a guitar lead that even pays homage to Jimi Hendrix's famous version. Another highlight is Hart's stripped-down (just Hart on banjo and Taylor on percussion) reading of another traditional song, "Deep Blue Sea," that takes the banjo well out of the parlor. Taylor has yet to make a disappointing album, and Recapturing the Banjo is yet another striking example of how he combines the past and the present in a powerful contemporary cultural statement that informs and instructs even as it keeps the feet moving. So don't expect "Orange Blossom Special." This is the banjo in its original habitat given a 21st century twist while still paying tribute to its African past, and that's quite an impressive hat trick indeed. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
'Definition of a Circle'
Release Date 2/27/2007
Tracks 12
Label Telarc
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What The Critics Say
Otis Taylor doesn't suffer fools lightly, and his insistent, hard-driving modal songs, full of defiant reclamations of history and tender vignettes of people struggling to survive in hostile cultural territory, are like nothing else on the contemporary blues scene. Imagine John Lee Hooker if he had grown up in the Appalachians and cut his teeth playing with a steam-driven mountain string band, then add in the fierce political commitment of a Peter Tosh, and you begin to get the picture. On Below the Fold, his third release for Telarc Records, Taylor stays well within the seam of his previous work, which is by no means a bad thing, and for the first time he actually adds drums (played by Greg Anton) to a few tracks, which is a bit like shoveling Sterno into the boiler, and cuts like the opening "Feel Like Lightning" literally explode down the track like a string band playing "Reuben's Train" on steroids. He calms things down a bit for the lovely "Boy Plays Mandolin," which features some beautifully spooky trumpet lines from Ron Miles. Arguably the most striking track here, however, is a song co-written with his teenage daughter Cassie Taylor (who plays bass on the album), "Working for the Pullman Company." Cassie came up with the melody and chorus when she was only five years old, and she handles the lead and harmony vocals on the song with impressive and wistful poise. Below the Fold fits easily into Taylor's emerging canon, and it has the same urgent, ragged beauty of his previous albums. He is unlikely to change the way he does things in the future, which is just fine, since his Appalachian griot approach is perfect for his musical and political agenda, and perfect for shaking up the complacency of the contemporary blues scene. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Otis Taylor's unconventional approach to the blues has made him one of the freshest and most innovative musicians to hit the genre in decades. A multi-instrumentalist, his driving, modal arrangements and defiant, politicized subject matter make most other contemporary blues artists seem like watered-down popsters. Imagine grafting John Lee Hooker and Peter Tosh together into a righteous, fire-breathing hybrid, and you get the picture. But Taylor is more than just a loud challenge to the blues status quo. He is also a striking and intelligent songwriter who knows how to draw on history, when to re-imagine it, and when to dole it out straight, and he drives his points home with the force of a laser-guided jackhammer. On Double V, his second album on Telarc, Taylor has also added a kinder and gentler approach to his arsenal, coming up with songs like the opening track, "Please Come Home Before the Rain," and the closer, "Buy Myself Some Freedom," that make their points with easy, beautiful melodies. The upbeat and breezy "Please Come Home Before the Rain" is nothing short of a modern classic, a love song of sorts, sung by Taylor in a gentle, bemused voice as he tells the story of a sailor reading a letter from his wife. The stark "Plastic Spoon" is a haunting depiction of what happens when poverty and old age converge, as the protagonists in the song are forced to eat dog food with a plastic spoon in order to have enough money for prescription drugs. This is an unlikely subject for a song, certainly, but it works, and it illustrates why Taylor is such a vital and interesting artist. The autobiographical "Mama's Selling Heroin" is another unforgettable track. It isn't subtle, it doesn't wrap things up in a bow, and it is absolutely chilling. Taylor's choice of instrumentation on these songs is as innovative as his subject matter, with an assortment of churning, driving banjos, mandolins and acoustic guitars, little or no percussion, and well-placed cellos, all of which (when you add in his frequent hums, moans, and spoken interjections) combine to make him sound like some postmodern Appalachian griot who wandered into a new age convention and shook the place down. Taylor's 17-year-old daughter, Cassie Taylor, plays bass and adds harmony vocals throughout Double V, and she takes center stage on the album's final track, singing the beautiful and wistful "Buy Myself Some Freedom" with élan, framed by perfectly placed and nuanced trumpet lines from Ron Miles. There is nothing on Double V that hasn't been foreshadowed on Otis Taylor's previous albums, and there are plenty of his patented, piledriving modal blues pieces, but he has also figured out that there are times when nothing can rattle your head like a spoonful of sweetness. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Otis Taylor can make people nervous. His take on the blues is defiant, angry, aggressive, and confrontational, owing as much to Peter Tosh as Charley Patton. Although he carries the dust of 1920s country blues in his mostly acoustic songs, his railings against social injustices are thoroughly contemporary. Taylor is an often pedantic songwriter, but he pulls it off by sheer bravado and conviction, and like a driver who blows through a stop sign, he's sure about where he's going. Truth Is Not Fiction follows the template of his previous three albums, with no drums (the rhythm comes from the sheer propulsion of Taylor's guitar, banjo, and mandolin playing) and a sort of Appalachian griot approach to things. One of the highlights is the strange Russian blues (complete with cello) of "House of the Crosses," a perfect example of Taylor's mix of rustic themes with cosmopolitan purposes. The full speed ahead rhythm banjo on "Babies Don't Lie" drills into your head like a freight train, and the ante is upped with double-barrelled banjos in both channels on "Shakie's Gone," making Taylor sound at times like Richie Havens on steroids. The album closer, a gut-bucket cover of the Big Joe Williams classic "Baby, Please Don't Go," seems oddly stuck in low gear, but overall Truth Is Not Fiction works well. Given his agenda, Taylor isn't for everyone, but he brings a fresh approach and a welcome shot in the ass to contemporary blues. ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide
'Respect the Dead'
Release Date 4/2/2002
Tracks 12
Label Northern Blues
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What The Critics Say
Otis Taylor might well be the best and most inspired of contemporary bluesmen. His White African album was a masterpiece -- which makes the task of following it doubly difficult. With Respect the Dead, however, he does a superb job -- the man is still very much on a roll. Kicking off with the stark, banjo-led "Ten Million Slaves," the intensity level never dips. It doesn't matter whether he's basing a song around a single chord, as he does on "Hands on Your Stomach," or simply using voice and harmonica on "Baby So," there's a remarkable urgency about his singing and lyrics, never more so than with "Black Witch," a tale of the American South that goes right back to Africa -- but the album returns and takes its tone to Mexico and racing for "Three Stripes on a Cadillac." The support, from Kenny Passarelli, Cassie Taylor, and atmospheric lead guitarist Eddie Turner, always serves to push the tension of the songs even higher. Taylor doesn't work within standard blues structures, and his lyrics stray far from the standard blues lines to encompass history and mythology. Where others seem content with the established limits, Taylor is pushing them further and further -- and in doing so, he's making some of the most exciting music around. ~ Chris Nickson, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Otis Taylor has a knack for interesting titles; Blue-Eyed Monster and When Negros Walked the Earth are among the CDs that the Denver bluesman recorded before White African. Taylor also has a knack for very dark and sobering themes -- this 2001 release, in fact, is full of them. On White African, Taylor's subject matter ranges from lynching in the Deep South ("Saint Martha Blues") to homelessness ("Hungry People") to being unable to afford health care for a sick, dying child ("3 Days and 3 Nights"). And Taylor doesn't try to sugarcoat his often disturbing lyrics with happy melodies. Greatly influenced by John Lee Hooker, the very soulful Taylor often favors moody, dusky, haunting grooves. So White African is as dark musically as it is lyrically. Over the years, dark humor has played a major role in the blues -- like country and hip-hop artists, bluesmen are known for finding a variety of humorous, clever ways to tell you how cruel and punishing life can be. But White African isn't dark humored; it's simply dark. This CD is also incredibly compelling, and it is enthusiastically recommended to those who don't expect lighthearted escapism from all of their music. ~ Alex Henderson, All Music Guide
'When Negroes Walked the Earth'
Release Date 1/1/2000
Tracks 12
Label Shoelace Music
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What The Critics Say
Otis Taylor earned acclaim in 2001 when his White African release got picked up for national distribution, but this previous disc could just as easily have been the one to bring him into the spotlight: It was every bit as deep, ambitious, and listenable as White African. Listening to the independently issued When Negroes Walked the Earth reveals that Taylor was already one of the most fully developed voices in contemporary blues -- an artist in the true sense of the word, intent on crafting his ideas into sharply realized songs and then into a full-fledged album. Everything seems purposeful; the skeletal arrangements lend emotional resonance to chilling songs like "500 Roses" and "12 String Mile," and the remarkable variety in Taylor's droning, single-chord structures rivals even that of John Lee Hooker. And lest anyone wonder whether a drumless trio can keep a groove, hearing album highlight "Cold at Midnight," driven to the brink of oblivion by bassist Kenny Passarelli's heartbeat pulse, should put all fears to rest. Taylor would return to many of the same lyrical themes later in his career -- references to violence, death, and the paradoxes of African-American history are frequent -- but When Negroes Walked the Earth covered these topics just as powerfully as his subsequent, more widely distributed work. ~ Kenneth Bays, All Music Guide
