What am I listening to? : TAJ MAHAL - JOHNNY TOO BAD/ TAKE A GIANT STEP Live at Ultrasound Long Island NY 1974

Extraordinary live set from the Taj here . . . . . .wondrous arrangements check out Johnny Too Bad Written by the Slickers: Trevor "Batman" Wilson, Winston Bailey, Roy Beckford and Derrick Crookss

The Slickers sang it on the Harder They Come soundtrack which is where I first heard this classic reggae) 

or Take A Giant Step (Gerry Goffin and Carole King - yes really!) I thought it was his song! AWESOME!

Take a Giant Step 

Johnny Too Bad If you listen to anything today make it THIS!

How many songs can you name that have kalimba solos!? only the Taj!

Live at Ultrasonic Studios 1974! We listed this one from Heavybootz the other day and if you want it go there!

Taj Mahal here . . . . . .

HEAVYBOOTZ | THE MAESTRO :Taj Mahal from Ultrasonic Studios, Long Island ’74 +

Taj Mahal - 1974-10-15 - Long Island, NY

check out Heavybootz as the good Dr THC has posted another Taj set too from his set at Telluride back in 2001

Taj Mahal

Ultrasonic Studios, Long Island, NY

1974-10-15

01 Going Up To The Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue

02 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl

03 Black Jack Davey

04 Why Did You Have To Desert Me

05 Further On Down The Road 

06 Stealin'

07 Instrumental

08 Johnny Too Bad

09 Take A Giant Step

here . . .

Maestro! Taj Mahal - Farther On Down The Road (You Will Accompany Me!) 1968

Taj Mahal - Farther On Down The Road (You Will Accompany Me) (1968)

Brilliantly soulful and warm.

I don’t remember any old cold days

I know let’s start the week with some Taj! Sunny and bright here and finally water then it might usually be! 😎

Taj Mahal LIVE Mystic Theatre, Petaluma, CA 2001-12-03 | soundaboard

This is really nice. Fine fine quality and a great performance. Now Taj is, or can be, somewhat frustrating if only that he never seems to play the same song the same way twice. This may be true of Bob Dylan but Taj for me is someone I come to expect when covering traditional songs like Corrina, Cakewalk Into Town, Fishin’ Blues or My Creaole Belle and especially a standard like Stagger Lee (which I collect versions and covers of extensively) to do it like I heard it on the record (sic!) so the variation can be ( I say can be) annoying if you rely upon him to sing it how you know it. However he os great man and while something of an iconoclast these are wonderful songs from a delightful and special evening where the grounds my shift under your feet but if you give in to it you WILL dig it! 

LIVE  

Mystic Theatre, 

Petaluma, CA  

2001-12-03

with multiple sources (you pays your money, or not actually, and you takes your choice) this is in high quality FLAC format

Fishing Blues - Taj Mahal 1993

From around the Internet :: TAJ MAHAL on Music

 

Taj Mahal at home in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles, December 1968. by Baron Wolman

Taj Mahal: 

I really literally don’t recall a day in my life up to now that I have never listened to music or heard music or thought about music or had music in some kind of way. Danced to it, watched dancing, got involved in it, played music. 

As an elder musician I’m not against what the young kids play. A lot of people think that they have to have an opinion about it, and we know what we have to say about opinions. You know, I mean the thing is to me it’s like bebop, you know? Everybody didn’t like bebop either. I also think it’s kinda funny now, talking to or listening to rappers that are now 42 and 46 and 50 talking about the youngsters that are coming along now. Saying, “Gee whiz, that sounds pretty much like what everybody was saying about you guys when you started.” 

The only ones that I know have said something really smart, right, at this point, has been David Banner. David Banner was really sharp about it. Said, “Hey. We birthed them, but we didn’t show them the way. We didn’t give them nothing to work with, so they’re doing what they can with what they got.” So we were chasing the money, and while we were chasing the money, we didn’t take care of handing the torch off to them.

Berklee Online Interview 

Taj Mahal Quartet :: LIVE Trumansburg NY 2019-07-19 - soundaboard

 Mo' TAJ!

this is fun!

                                                      

Trumansburg NY USA

2019-07-19

SET LIST

01. intro

02. Good Morning Miss Brown

03. Done Changed My Way Of Living

04. Cakewalk Into Town

05 Fishin' Blues

06. When You Fill Out The Card

07. Queen Bee

08. Bring It With You When You Come

09. Roscoe's Mule

10. crowd

11. C.C.Rider

12. Checking Up On My Baby

13. Broken Piano Blues

14. Sleepwalk

15. Band intros

16. Lovin' In My Baby's Eyes

17. Stagger Lee

18. Take a Giant Step

19. Everybody is Somebody

20. outro and crowd

 

The New Adult Bookstore Motel, Records & Liquor: various items from the thrift store, dollar a piece! (Jobe goes shopping)

 I need to get on over to the Library Bar and Grill!

It's next door to the Bookstore and the Motel where you can find allsorts, books, second hand vinyl and refreshments and even crash if you need . . . . . . . . 

You know it!

Motel and Bookstore - Voodoo Wagon

TAJ - Six Days On The Road

 

Taj - Lovin' In My Sweet Baby's Eyes

Richard Thompson - Turning of The Tide

Richard Thompson Beeswing - for Anne Briggs)

 

"Beeswing"

I was nineteen when I came to town, they called it the Summer of Love
They were burning babies, burning flags. The hawks against the doves
I took a job in the steamie down on Cauldrum Street
And I fell in love with a laundry girl who was working next to me

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said "As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

Brown hair zig-zag around her face and a look of half-surprise
Like a fox caught in the headlights, there was animal in her eyes
She said "Young man, oh can't you see I'm not the factory kind
If you don't take me out of here I'll surely lose my mind"

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
So fine that I might crush her where she lay
She was a lost child, she was running wild
She said "As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

We busked around the market towns and picked fruit down in Kent
And we could tinker lamps and pots and knives wherever we went
And I said that we might settle down, get a few acres dug
Fire burning in the hearth and babies on the rug
She said "Oh man, you foolish man, it surely sounds like hell
You might be lord of half the world, you'll not own me as well"

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing
So fine a breath of wind might blow her away
She was a lost child, oh she was running wild
She said "As long as there's no price on love, I'll stay
And you wouldn't want me any other way"

We was camping down the Gower one time, the work was pretty good
She thought we shouldn't wait for the frost and I thought maybe we should
We was drinking more in those days and tempers reached a pitch
And like a fool I let her run with the rambling itch

Oh the last I heard she's sleeping rough back on the Derby beat
White Horse in her hip pocket and a wolfhound at her feet
And they say she even married once, a man named Romany Brown
But even a gypsy caravan was too much settling down
And they say her flower is faded now, hard weather and hard booze
But maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains you refuse

Oh she was a rare thing, fine as a bee's wing

And I miss her more than ever words could say

If I could just taste all of her wildness now

If I could hold her in my arms today

Well I wouldn't want her any other way

Songwriters: Richard Thompson

One of the finest songs ever written . . . . IMO

 Townes Van Zandt - Tower Song (for my friend Phil) another fine fine song written by a master) Live version

UPDATE: Oh and there's more . . . . . 

with a Taj compilation 'Blue Light Blues' pre-90s selection par excellence with master tracks on it and one of the most breathtaking harmonica solos I have ever heard not from Taj but the extraordinarily gifted John Popper on She Caught the Katy ( a Taj Mahal penned song and there was me thinking it was a blues standard!!)

Awesome dollar a piece bargain buckets abounding!

Taj Mahal and Mississippi Fred McDowell

Taj Mahal - She Caught The Katy live (with band)

and also Jobe found in the bargain bins Pinetop Perkins, Phil Ochs, Traffic's John Barleycorn, Big Bopper, even Prince's Sign of The Times! go on over you know you want to and take something outta the library!

THE RISING SONS::Ry COODER, TAJ MAHAL early beginnings

Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.

The Rock and roll band "Rising Sons" featuring Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder, Gary Marker, Jesse Lee Kincaid 

Ry Cooder: 

“Everyone was looking for the next Byrds. So Taj and I formed a band, because that’s what you did.” Except that this band, given the pair’s propensities, was unerringly off-target. The singer sounded like a 50-year-old bluesman, the guitarist played electric slide, an approach then unfamiliar to most rock ears, and both swore by a genre thought to be long dead, to the extent that anyone knew it had ever existed. Signed by Columbia Records, the Rising Sons, as they called their quintet, represented Taj and Cooder’s attempt to set their beloved Mississippi Delta, Texas and Piedmont blues to a rock ’n’ roll beat.

“All we wanted was to play some blues with rhythm, with drums and bass,” Cooder says. “Which wasn’t what the record company was interested in, at all. So the whole thing fizzled out, and that’s the long and the short of the Rising Sons.” Some of the band’s music was first-rate electric blues; the rest was pretty sterile pop-rock. Columbia issued a single in 1966, comprising covers of Mississippi John Hurt’s “Candy Man” and Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman,” and shelved the other 20 songs. (They were finally released in 1992.)  

by Tony Scherman

Ry Cooder: “People tried to teach me to read the page and understand theory,”  

“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be taught. I think there was something about me that resisted being taught anything.I didn’t like school, I didn’t like the teachers, I didn’t like the whole set-up. I wanted to do it myself. So I found that I could. The only thing is – it takes longer. If you’re going to go on your own, it’s going to take you awhile.

 The Rising Sons - Dust My Broom (Johnson)

THE RISING SONS: The Story of Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder

Reflections On Taj Mahal . . . .

Taj Mahal performs on stage at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana on May 08, 1983. 

(Photo by the legendary David Redfern/Redferns)

Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (born May 17, 1942)

Taj Mahal: I really literally don’t recall a day in my life up to now that I have never listened to music or heard music or thought about music or had music in some kind of way. Danced to it, watched dancing, got involved in it, played music.

As an elder musician I’m not against what the young kids play. A lot of people think that they have to have an opinion about it, and we know what we have to say about opinions. You know, I mean the thing is to me it’s like bebop, you know? Everybody didn’t like bebop either. I also think it’s kinda funny now, talking to or listening to rappers that are now 42 and 46 and 50 talking about the youngsters that are coming along now. Saying, “Gee whiz, that sounds pretty much like what everybody was saying about you guys when you started.” The only ones that I know have said something really smart, right, at this point, has been David Banner. David Banner was really sharp about it. Said, “Hey. We birthed them, but we didn’t show them the way. We didn’t give them nothing to work with, so they’re doing what they can with what they got.” So we were chasing the money, and while we were chasing the money, we didn’t take care of handing the torch off to them.

- Berklee Online

Sounds about right,  . . . . . Taj Mahal holds a special place in my heart and a special place in the history of music, blues music of course but he was/is much broader than that. Show me a blues player who can feature a conch shell on his early albums of blues music? I defy you!

I first discovered Taj Mahal via the 'Rock Machine Turns You On' compilation album in 1968 like so many Brits of a certain age and loved that Statesboro Blues sound but it took my brother to rekindle my interest later on. My Steve was not easy to compartmentalise himself, steeped in Northern English Folk Music, the first song I heard him sing ever was at a folk club fingerpicking The Fields of Peterloo about the Manchester massacre! He had a sort of 'straight' interest in bands like The Shadows too but we discovered Dylan together and his art interested me too, as it was the subject of my degree, I thought I knew it all, but his taste threw me at times finding his interest in Picasso and Marc Chagall to Jean Dubuffet was nothing if not eclectic and Taj Mahal cropped up in his record collection which inevitably piqued my interest.

Now Taj is back with his old friend and stalwart companion from The Rising Sons with Ry Cooder and their tribute to Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee which always fascinated and they featured strongly in my brother's record collection too (although he died before discovering the two had ended up not speaking for years afterward such was their level of hatred for each other!) 

The above statement says and summarises what so many of us hold to be true, not a day passes without a delve into music, were I to go deaf I think I might reach for the shotgun!

STATESBORO BLUES (LIVE)

Taj Mahal - 'Good Morning' Miss Brown' Bloody Sunday Sessions

The first time I heard the man . . . . 

A favourite 'Corrina Corrina' made all his own . . . . . . . 

RY COODER 75TH BIRTHDAY!

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAESTRO!

THERE IS ONLY ONE!

RY COODER ON HIS BIRTHDAY

THE GUVNOR!

THE PRODIGAL SON

LITTLE VILLAGE - SHE RUNS HOT FOR ME - (Johnny Carson Show)

Photo by Karen Miller

Happy 75th birthday to the great Ry Cooder!

"Rock as it is known today just doesn’t interest me at all,” said Ry Cooder to The Guardian in 2011. “I hate commercial music. If I hear that money in it, all that winking and nodding… It kills me.”

“People tried to teach me to read the page and understand theory,” he once said. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be taught. I think there was something about me that resisted being taught anything.I didn’t like school, I didn’t like the teachers, I didn’t like the whole set-up. I wanted to do it myself. So I found that I could. The only thing is – it takes longer. If you’re going to go on your own, it’s going to take you awhile."

Buy or stream now here: http://found.ee/RYtps

THE MOULE BANDE RYTHM ACES - GET RHYTHM 

TAJ MAHAL/RY COODER - STATESBORO BLUES

CHICKEN SKIN REVIEW - DARK END OF THE STREET

from Susan Titelman - with singer Manuel ‘Puntillita’ Licea  of Buena Vista Social Club

Pre-order the new album with Taj Mahal at https://tajmahalrycooder.lnk.to/GETONBOARD/