Taj Mahal

タジ・マハール 1968年発売 『Taj Mahal』のアナログ盤。広くルーツ・ミュージックを伝承してきたタジ・マハールのソロ・デビュー・アルバムは、スリーピー・ジョン・エスティスらの1920/30年代のカントリー・ブルースを主な題材に、50年代ブルースのサウンドを基盤にした、タジ本人とライ・クーダーのエレキ・ギターが鮮烈に響き渡る骨太のブルース・ロック・アルバムだ。「ステイツボロ・ブルース」はオールマン・ブラザーズ・バンドの演奏に影響を与えたことでよく知られる。1968年作品

Living Blues - "...A first-rate album of blues/rock....Taj sticks to harmonica throughout...the album's strength are Taj's vocals which convey a passionate and natural blues intensity..." Entertainment Weekly - "...A breath of fresh air....exploding with high spirits...it might be Taj Mahal's best..." - Rating: A

Taj Mahal's debut album was a startling statement in its time and has held up remarkably well. Recorded in August of 1967, it was as hard and exciting a mix of old and new blues sounds as surfaced on record in a year when even a lot of veteran blues artists (mostly at the insistence of their record labels) started turning toward psychedelia. The guitar virtuosity, embodied in Taj Mahal's slide work (which had the subtlety of a classical performance), Jesse Ed Davis's lead playing, and rhythm work by Ry Cooder and Bill Boatman, is of the neatly stripped-down variety that was alien to most records aiming for popular appeal, and the singer himself approached the music with a startling mix of authenticity and youthful enthusiasm. The whole record is a strange and compelling amalgam of stylistic and technical achievements -- filled with blues influences of the 1930s and 1940s, but also making use of stereo sound separation and the best recording technology. The result was numbers like Sleepy John Estes' "Diving Duck Blues," with textures resembling the mix on the early Cream albums, while "The Celebrated Walkin' Blues" (even with Cooder's animated mandolin weaving its spell on one side of the stereo mix) has the sound of a late '40s Chess release by Muddy Waters. Blind Willie McTell ("Statesboro Blues") and Robert Johnson ("Dust My Broom") are also represented, in what had to be one of the most quietly, defiantly iconoclastic records of 1968. ~ Bruce Eder|