Otis Taylor's World Is Gone

Otis Taylor has received considerable acclaim for his various recordings over the years. Regularly his recordings are highly rated by DownBeat for example and he is a favorite of the DownBeat Critics’ Poll. His so-called ‘trance blues,’ employs simple repeated motifs over which he tells his stories (often in a topical vein) while he and his band members add musical embellishments. The music is generally evocative and haunting. 

His latest Telarc album is My World Is Gone, where he has a special guest, Native American guitarist Mato Nanji, along with Anne Harris on fiddle, Larry Thompson on drums, Shawn Starksi on bass, Brian Juan on keyboards and Ron Miles on cornet, on an album whose songs are centered on the travails Native American’s have suffered as their traditional world has vanished, probably never to return. Against the rhythmic core, Taylor sometimes on electric banjo, mandolin and guitar, Nanji on lead guitar, Harris and Miles add embellishments and solos that enhance the mood of the specific song. It is particularly a delight to listen to Ms. Harris wonderful playing. Those who have seen Taylor live with Harris in the band know the exuberance and excitement she visually contributes which can lead one to miss just how good a fiddler she is and how much her fiddle contributes aurally and not simply visually.

Otis Taylor at 2012 Pennsylvania Blues Festival

This is most directly addressed in the title selection and its a strength of Taylor and Nanji that this opening selection conveys the sorrow of old ways having passed and some of the consequences without the song becoming an overstated polemic. Harris’ fiddle enhancing the mournful tenor of Taylor’s vocal while Nanji adds tight guitar runs. A crisp walking groove permeates Lost My Horse, where a navaho loses his horse from having drank too much (I done lost my horse, I surely lose my mind) whereas Miles floating cornet adds to the atmosphere developed on Huckleberry Blues, where Taylor sings about being stalked by his female neighbor. Sand Creek Mourning is a stark number that recounts a US army massacre of peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians with Nanji’s guitar and Miles cornet adding to the gloomy feel instilled by the ostinato played by Taylor on banjo and rhythm section. 

Blue Rain in Africa has the haunting line about seeing the white buffalo on the television while there must be blue rain in Africa because that is what he saw on television. Nanji’s tonal coloring here is quite impressive. “Never Been To The Reservation” has a lyric about the man living in luxury oblivious to the hardships as he contrasts babies sleeping on to the grown to the gentleman drinking champagne and eating caviar. Coming With Crosses, is a somber recollection of a young man recounting his mother’s murder by cross-burning riders of the night, with Harris’ fiddle embellishments over the banjo centered accompaniment.

My Home Is Gone is one of Taylor’s most moving recordings with deceptively simple, stark and understated performances of his songs that convey the tragic times Native Americans have endured better than simple polemic lyrics would. It is certain to gather more acclaim to Otis Taylor.

For those living in the Washington DC area, he appears at Blues Alley with special guest Mato Nanji on April 3. Its part of a short East Coast tour that includes Chicago, New York City, Kentucky and Savannah, Georgia. 

I received a review copy from a publicist.  Here is Otis performing Blue Rain in Africa.

Otis Taylor's Gripping Clovis People

A new recording by Otis Taylor has become an event. He has produced some of the most original and intriguing of new artists associated with the blues with unusual musical settings and deep lyrical themes. He is one of the few blues artists to have DownBeat award 5 stars this century, and other publications have similarly given his music great acclaim. His music has been labelled trance blues, but it has precedent in the similar blues of John Lee Hooker (thinking about his slow dirges from early in his career as well as the swirling similar style of Robert Pete Williams. There are other examples in modern jazz as well as contemporary composed music (think of Steven Reich) that makes use of repetition musical elements and a droning sound.

Taylor’s most recent release is “Clovis People Vol. 3” (Telarc) and continues in the genre-busting vein of his earlier recordings. The title of the disc refers to the civilization known as the Clovis people, who walked the earth briefly about 13,000 years ago and then mysteriously disappeared. There have been only four or five sites of them found by anthropologists and one was recently located a 100 yards or so from Taylor’s home. "That's amazing to me," says Taylor. "There have only been four or five sites like this found all over the country. That means these people probably walked on my property. I went back to my musical past with these songs. That’s why I called it Volume 3. There really is no Volume 1 or 2. My music only goes back about ten years, but there's something about reaching back to an earlier time and revisiting the stories of the past from a new perspective that I find compelling."

For this volume he is joined by guitarist Gary Moore, who has been on previous recordings, pedal steel guitarist of the Campbell Brothers, cornetist Ron Miles and Taylor’s daughter, Cassie Taylor while he himself employs a variety of instruments and textures. The musicians are like paints, embellishing on the underlying groove with a burst of electric guitar or smear from a cornet enhancing the mood. Taylor’s vocals carry the same emotional weight as a field holler, as on the opening “Rain So Hard,” as he she describes his woman walking out after discovering his lies as it rained and snowed so hard while it sounds like a sitar being plucked as Miles adds a repeated trumpet riff to add to his repeated single note picking. “Little Willie,” opens with keen crying pedal steel as Taylor relates the story of Little Willie going to school and the “bad boys came and took his life away” leaving his mother to cry with the simple, emphatic accompaniment to Taylor’s haunting vocals . In contrast “Lee and Arnaz,” has a bit of a folk feel with the accompaniment (fiddle contrasting with Moore’s electric guitar commentary), with a message that there is no color there is no difference. The remaining of the album illustrates these same qualities. The music is mesmerizing, the songs powerful and the vocals by Taylor intimate, yet haunting. The result is another collection of thoroughly original and compelling performances from Otis Taylor.

For FTC purposes, I received my review copy from the publicist for the recording company.