TAJ MAHAL
''IN PROGRESS & IN MOTION 1965-1998, DISC ONE''
OCTOBER 13 1998
203:22
**********
DISC ONE (65:25)
1 You're Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond 06:15 (Blind Willie Johnson)
2 Corrina 04:26 (Jesse Ed Davis, Taj Mahal)
3 Checkin' Up On My Baby 05:39 (Sony Boy Williamson II)
4 Leaving Trunk 06:24 (Sleeping John Estes)
5 Buck Dancer's Choice 03:09 (Traditional)
6 Going Up To The Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue 03:32 (Taj Mahal)
7 She Caught The Katy & Left Me A Mule To Ride 03:26 (Taj Mahal)
8 Ain't Gwine Whistle Dixie (Any Mo') 01:00 (Chuck Blackwell, J. Davis, Gary Gilmore, Taj Mahal)
9 Stagger Lee 03:18 (Harold Logan, Lloyd Price)
10 Built For Comfort 04:44 (Willie Dixon)
11 Natural Man 04:26 (Taj Mahal)
12 Railroad Bill 02:33 (John Work III)
13 Texas Woman Blues 02:54 (Taj Mahal)
14 Early In The Morning 04:58 (Roy Milton)
15 Dust My Broom 04:28 (Robert Johnson)
16 Blind Boy Rag 04:07 (J. Davis, Taj Mahal)
*****
DISC TWO (65:38)
1 Oh, Susanna 02:57 (Traditional)
2 Cakewalk Into Town 02:32 (Taj Mahal)
3 Fishin' Blues 03:14 (Henry Thomas)
4 Nobody's Busines But My Own 03:27 (Taj Mahal)
5 Sweet Mama Janisse 03:31 (Taj Mahal)
6 Little Red Hen Blues 04:54 (Taj Mahal)
7 Mary Don't You Weep 02:37 (Traditional)
8 Sweet Home Chicago 03:14 (Traditional)
9 Frankie & Albert 03:57 (Mississippi John Hurt)
10 M'Banjo 03:17 (Taj Mahal)
11 Statesboro Blues (Take 2) 02:23 (Blind Willie McTell)
12 Bye & Bye 03:31 (Charleyt Patton)
13 Six Days On The Road 02:58 (Earl Green, Carl Montgomery)
14 We Gonna Rock 05:54 (Taj Mahal)
15 Ain't It Funky Now 02:42 (Taj Mahal)
16 Tom & Sally Drake 03:39 (Taj Mahal)
17 Fishin' Blues 03:14 (Henry Thomas)
18 Blues With A Feeling 04:12 (Little Walter)
19 Freight Train 03:17 (Elizabeth Cotten)
Tracks 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 15, 17, 18, 19: Previously Unreleased
Tracks 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 14: Live
*****
DISC THREE (72:19)
1 When I Feel The Sea Beneath My Soul 03:06 (Taj Mahal)
2 West Indian Revelation 06:04 (Taj Mahal)
3 Eighteen Hammers 03:30 (Taj Mahal)
4 Johnny Too Bad 03:12 (Winston ''Shadow'' Bailey, Hylton Beckford, Derric Crooks, Sydney Crooks, T. Wilson)
5 Slave Driver 02:34 (Bob Marley)
6 (Clara) St. Kitts Woman 04:13 (Taj Mahal)
7 Do I Love Her 04:04 (Taj Mahal)
8 Everybody Is Somebody 03:29 (Warren Bailey)
9 But I Rode Some 02:25 (Langston Hughes, Taj Mahal)
10 Crossing 02:31 (Langston Hughes, Taj Mahal)
11 Sentidos Dulce (Sweet Feelings) 03:05 (Taj Mahal)
12 The Most Recent Evolution Of Muthafusticus Modernusticus 03:20 (Taj Mahal, K. Smith)
13 Curry 03:35 (Ray Fitzpatrick)
14 Follow The Drinking Gourd 02:38 (Traditional)
15 Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) 03:31(William Attaway, Irving Burgie)
16 Little Brown Dog 04:13 (Traditional)
17 Señor Blues 03:43 (Horace Silver)
18 Ain't That A Lot Of Love 03:58 (Homer Banks)
19 Take A Giant Step 04:15 (Gerry Goffin, Carole King)
20 Freight Train 04:45 (Elizabeth Cotten)
**********
REVIEW/AMG
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
For being a nearly omnipresent figure, Taj Mahal has never quite gotten the respect he's deserved. At the beginning of his career, he earned a significant amount of attention, but as the years passed, he had woven himself into the fabric of blues culture so well that his presence was taken for granted. That is why the 1998 release of In Progress & in Motion: 1965-1998 was so welcome. Spanning three discs and over three decades, the box set accurately summarizes Mahal's career and makes a convincing case for his talents as a roots synthesist. Dedicated fans may notice a favorite or two missing, but they'll be pleased by the 15 unreleased tracks, including two songs intended for his debut album. There are a number of other rarities for the dedicated here, including several unheard live cuts, material from his early group the Rising Sons, and his entire contribution to the Rolling Stones' legendary Rock and Roll Circus. Even with this plethora of rarities, In Progress & in Motion is primarily for fans who want a solid, comprehensive summary of Mahal's achievements without delving into the particular records, especially since it chooses its songs judiciously, concentrating on his groundbreaking late-'60s/early-'70s work. Indeed, much of his post-Columbia/CBS recordings are quickly recounted on the third disc, but that isn't a problem -- the first two discs show how Mahal created his own sound; the third shows how he maintained it. By balancing the music this way, Mahal and his partner, Lawrence Cohn, have created a representative, enlightening retrospective that is appealing to casual and hardcore fans alike.
**********
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
Steve Huey
One of the most prominent figures in late 20th century blues, singer/multi-instrumentalist Taj Mahal played an enormous role in revitalizing and preserving traditional acoustic blues. Not content to stay within that realm, Mahal soon broadened his approach, taking a musicologist's interest in a multitude of folk and roots music from around the world -- reggae and other Caribbean folk, jazz, gospel, R&B, zydeco, various West African styles, Latin, even Hawaiian. The African-derived heritage of most of those forms allowed Mahal to explore his own ethnicity from a global perspective and to present the blues as part of a wider musical context. Yet while he dabbled in many different genres, he never strayed too far from his laid-back country blues foundation. Blues purists naturally didn't have much use for Mahal's music, and according to some of his other detractors, his multi-ethnic fusions sometimes came off as indulgent, or overly self-conscious and academic. Still, Mahal's concept was vindicated in the '90s, when a cadre of young bluesmen began to follow his lead -- both acoustic revivalists (Keb' Mo', Guy Davis) and eclectic bohemians (Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart).
Taj Mahal was born Henry St. Clair Fredericks in New York on May 17, 1942. His parents -- his father a jazz pianist/composer/arranger of Jamaican descent, his mother a schoolteacher from South Carolina who sang gospel -- moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, when he was quite young, and while growing up there, he often listened to music from around the world on his father's short-wave radio. He particularly loved the blues -- both acoustic and electric -- and early rock & rollers like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. While studying agriculture and animal husbandry at the University of Massachusetts, he adopted the musical alias Taj Mahal (an idea that came to him in a dream) and formed Taj Mahal & the Elektras, who played around the area during the early '60s. After graduating, Mahal moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and, after making his name on the local folk-blues scene, formed the Rising Sons with guitarist Ry Cooder. The group signed to Columbia and released one single, but the label didn't quite know what to make of their forward-looking blend of Americana, which anticipated a number of roots rock fusions that would take shape in the next few years; as such, the album they recorded sat on the shelves, unreleased until 1992.
Frustrated, Mahal left the group and wound up staying with Columbia as a solo artist. His self-titled debut was released in early 1968 and its stripped-down approach to vintage blues sounds made it unlike virtually anything else on the blues scene at the time. It came to be regarded as a classic of the '60s blues revival, as did its follow-up, Natch'l Blues. The half-electric, half-acoustic double-LP set Giant Step followed in 1969, and taken together, those three records built Mahal's reputation as an authentic yet unique modern-day bluesman, gaining wide exposure and leading to collaborations or tours with a wide variety of prominent rockers and bluesmen. During the early '70s, Mahal's musical adventurousness began to take hold; 1971's Happy Just to Be Like I Am heralded his fascination with Caribbean rhythms and the following year's double-live set, The Real Thing, added a New Orleans-flavored tuba section to several tunes. In 1973, Mahal branched out into movie soundtrack work with his compositions for Sounder, and the following year he recorded his most reggae-heavy outing, Mo' Roots.
Mahal continued to record for Columbia through 1976, upon which point he switched to Warner Bros.; he recorded three albums for that label, all in 1977 (including a soundtrack for the film Brothers). Changing musical climates, however, were decreasing interest in Mahal's work and he spent much of the '80s off record, eventually moving to Hawaii to immerse himself in another musical tradition. Mahal returned in 1987 with Taj, an album issued by Gramavision that explored this new interest; the following year, he inaugurated a string of successful, well-received children's albums with Shake Sugaree. The next few years brought a variety of side projects, including a musical score for the lost Langston Hughes/Zora Neale Hurston play Mule Bone that earned Mahal a Grammy nomination in 1991.
The same year marked Mahal's full-fledged return to regular recording and touring, kicked off with the first of a series of well-received albums on the Private Music label, Like Never Before. Follow-ups, such as Dancing the Blues (1993) and Phantom Blues (1996), drifted into more rock, pop, and R&B-flavored territory; in 1997, Mahal won a Grammy for Señor Blues. Meanwhile, he undertook a number of small-label side projects that constituted some of his most ambitious forays into world music. Released in 1995, Mumtaz Mahal teamed him with classical Indian musicians; 1998's Sacred Island was recorded with his new Hula Blues Band, exploring Hawaiian music in greater depth; 1999's Kulanjan was a duo performance with Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté. Maestro appeared in 2008, boasting an array of all-star guests: Diabaté, Angélique Kidjo, Ziggy Marley, Los Lobos, Jack Johnson, and Ben Harper. A holiday album with the Blind Boys of Alabama, Talkin' Christmas, appeared in time for the season in 2014.
**********
WEBSITE
**********
TO THE TOP
**********
''IN PROGRESS & IN MOTION 1965-1998, DISC ONE''
OCTOBER 13 1998
203:22
**********
DISC ONE (65:25)
1 You're Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond 06:15 (Blind Willie Johnson)
2 Corrina 04:26 (Jesse Ed Davis, Taj Mahal)
3 Checkin' Up On My Baby 05:39 (Sony Boy Williamson II)
4 Leaving Trunk 06:24 (Sleeping John Estes)
5 Buck Dancer's Choice 03:09 (Traditional)
6 Going Up To The Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue 03:32 (Taj Mahal)
7 She Caught The Katy & Left Me A Mule To Ride 03:26 (Taj Mahal)
8 Ain't Gwine Whistle Dixie (Any Mo') 01:00 (Chuck Blackwell, J. Davis, Gary Gilmore, Taj Mahal)
9 Stagger Lee 03:18 (Harold Logan, Lloyd Price)
10 Built For Comfort 04:44 (Willie Dixon)
11 Natural Man 04:26 (Taj Mahal)
12 Railroad Bill 02:33 (John Work III)
13 Texas Woman Blues 02:54 (Taj Mahal)
14 Early In The Morning 04:58 (Roy Milton)
15 Dust My Broom 04:28 (Robert Johnson)
16 Blind Boy Rag 04:07 (J. Davis, Taj Mahal)
*****
DISC TWO (65:38)
1 Oh, Susanna 02:57 (Traditional)
2 Cakewalk Into Town 02:32 (Taj Mahal)
3 Fishin' Blues 03:14 (Henry Thomas)
4 Nobody's Busines But My Own 03:27 (Taj Mahal)
5 Sweet Mama Janisse 03:31 (Taj Mahal)
6 Little Red Hen Blues 04:54 (Taj Mahal)
7 Mary Don't You Weep 02:37 (Traditional)
8 Sweet Home Chicago 03:14 (Traditional)
9 Frankie & Albert 03:57 (Mississippi John Hurt)
10 M'Banjo 03:17 (Taj Mahal)
11 Statesboro Blues (Take 2) 02:23 (Blind Willie McTell)
12 Bye & Bye 03:31 (Charleyt Patton)
13 Six Days On The Road 02:58 (Earl Green, Carl Montgomery)
14 We Gonna Rock 05:54 (Taj Mahal)
15 Ain't It Funky Now 02:42 (Taj Mahal)
16 Tom & Sally Drake 03:39 (Taj Mahal)
17 Fishin' Blues 03:14 (Henry Thomas)
18 Blues With A Feeling 04:12 (Little Walter)
19 Freight Train 03:17 (Elizabeth Cotten)
Tracks 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 15, 17, 18, 19: Previously Unreleased
Tracks 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 14: Live
*****
DISC THREE (72:19)
1 When I Feel The Sea Beneath My Soul 03:06 (Taj Mahal)
2 West Indian Revelation 06:04 (Taj Mahal)
3 Eighteen Hammers 03:30 (Taj Mahal)
4 Johnny Too Bad 03:12 (Winston ''Shadow'' Bailey, Hylton Beckford, Derric Crooks, Sydney Crooks, T. Wilson)
5 Slave Driver 02:34 (Bob Marley)
6 (Clara) St. Kitts Woman 04:13 (Taj Mahal)
7 Do I Love Her 04:04 (Taj Mahal)
8 Everybody Is Somebody 03:29 (Warren Bailey)
9 But I Rode Some 02:25 (Langston Hughes, Taj Mahal)
10 Crossing 02:31 (Langston Hughes, Taj Mahal)
11 Sentidos Dulce (Sweet Feelings) 03:05 (Taj Mahal)
12 The Most Recent Evolution Of Muthafusticus Modernusticus 03:20 (Taj Mahal, K. Smith)
13 Curry 03:35 (Ray Fitzpatrick)
14 Follow The Drinking Gourd 02:38 (Traditional)
15 Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) 03:31(William Attaway, Irving Burgie)
16 Little Brown Dog 04:13 (Traditional)
17 Señor Blues 03:43 (Horace Silver)
18 Ain't That A Lot Of Love 03:58 (Homer Banks)
19 Take A Giant Step 04:15 (Gerry Goffin, Carole King)
20 Freight Train 04:45 (Elizabeth Cotten)
**********
REVIEW/AMG
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
For being a nearly omnipresent figure, Taj Mahal has never quite gotten the respect he's deserved. At the beginning of his career, he earned a significant amount of attention, but as the years passed, he had woven himself into the fabric of blues culture so well that his presence was taken for granted. That is why the 1998 release of In Progress & in Motion: 1965-1998 was so welcome. Spanning three discs and over three decades, the box set accurately summarizes Mahal's career and makes a convincing case for his talents as a roots synthesist. Dedicated fans may notice a favorite or two missing, but they'll be pleased by the 15 unreleased tracks, including two songs intended for his debut album. There are a number of other rarities for the dedicated here, including several unheard live cuts, material from his early group the Rising Sons, and his entire contribution to the Rolling Stones' legendary Rock and Roll Circus. Even with this plethora of rarities, In Progress & in Motion is primarily for fans who want a solid, comprehensive summary of Mahal's achievements without delving into the particular records, especially since it chooses its songs judiciously, concentrating on his groundbreaking late-'60s/early-'70s work. Indeed, much of his post-Columbia/CBS recordings are quickly recounted on the third disc, but that isn't a problem -- the first two discs show how Mahal created his own sound; the third shows how he maintained it. By balancing the music this way, Mahal and his partner, Lawrence Cohn, have created a representative, enlightening retrospective that is appealing to casual and hardcore fans alike.
**********
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
Steve Huey
One of the most prominent figures in late 20th century blues, singer/multi-instrumentalist Taj Mahal played an enormous role in revitalizing and preserving traditional acoustic blues. Not content to stay within that realm, Mahal soon broadened his approach, taking a musicologist's interest in a multitude of folk and roots music from around the world -- reggae and other Caribbean folk, jazz, gospel, R&B, zydeco, various West African styles, Latin, even Hawaiian. The African-derived heritage of most of those forms allowed Mahal to explore his own ethnicity from a global perspective and to present the blues as part of a wider musical context. Yet while he dabbled in many different genres, he never strayed too far from his laid-back country blues foundation. Blues purists naturally didn't have much use for Mahal's music, and according to some of his other detractors, his multi-ethnic fusions sometimes came off as indulgent, or overly self-conscious and academic. Still, Mahal's concept was vindicated in the '90s, when a cadre of young bluesmen began to follow his lead -- both acoustic revivalists (Keb' Mo', Guy Davis) and eclectic bohemians (Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart).
Taj Mahal was born Henry St. Clair Fredericks in New York on May 17, 1942. His parents -- his father a jazz pianist/composer/arranger of Jamaican descent, his mother a schoolteacher from South Carolina who sang gospel -- moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, when he was quite young, and while growing up there, he often listened to music from around the world on his father's short-wave radio. He particularly loved the blues -- both acoustic and electric -- and early rock & rollers like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. While studying agriculture and animal husbandry at the University of Massachusetts, he adopted the musical alias Taj Mahal (an idea that came to him in a dream) and formed Taj Mahal & the Elektras, who played around the area during the early '60s. After graduating, Mahal moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and, after making his name on the local folk-blues scene, formed the Rising Sons with guitarist Ry Cooder. The group signed to Columbia and released one single, but the label didn't quite know what to make of their forward-looking blend of Americana, which anticipated a number of roots rock fusions that would take shape in the next few years; as such, the album they recorded sat on the shelves, unreleased until 1992.
Frustrated, Mahal left the group and wound up staying with Columbia as a solo artist. His self-titled debut was released in early 1968 and its stripped-down approach to vintage blues sounds made it unlike virtually anything else on the blues scene at the time. It came to be regarded as a classic of the '60s blues revival, as did its follow-up, Natch'l Blues. The half-electric, half-acoustic double-LP set Giant Step followed in 1969, and taken together, those three records built Mahal's reputation as an authentic yet unique modern-day bluesman, gaining wide exposure and leading to collaborations or tours with a wide variety of prominent rockers and bluesmen. During the early '70s, Mahal's musical adventurousness began to take hold; 1971's Happy Just to Be Like I Am heralded his fascination with Caribbean rhythms and the following year's double-live set, The Real Thing, added a New Orleans-flavored tuba section to several tunes. In 1973, Mahal branched out into movie soundtrack work with his compositions for Sounder, and the following year he recorded his most reggae-heavy outing, Mo' Roots.
Mahal continued to record for Columbia through 1976, upon which point he switched to Warner Bros.; he recorded three albums for that label, all in 1977 (including a soundtrack for the film Brothers). Changing musical climates, however, were decreasing interest in Mahal's work and he spent much of the '80s off record, eventually moving to Hawaii to immerse himself in another musical tradition. Mahal returned in 1987 with Taj, an album issued by Gramavision that explored this new interest; the following year, he inaugurated a string of successful, well-received children's albums with Shake Sugaree. The next few years brought a variety of side projects, including a musical score for the lost Langston Hughes/Zora Neale Hurston play Mule Bone that earned Mahal a Grammy nomination in 1991.
The same year marked Mahal's full-fledged return to regular recording and touring, kicked off with the first of a series of well-received albums on the Private Music label, Like Never Before. Follow-ups, such as Dancing the Blues (1993) and Phantom Blues (1996), drifted into more rock, pop, and R&B-flavored territory; in 1997, Mahal won a Grammy for Señor Blues. Meanwhile, he undertook a number of small-label side projects that constituted some of his most ambitious forays into world music. Released in 1995, Mumtaz Mahal teamed him with classical Indian musicians; 1998's Sacred Island was recorded with his new Hula Blues Band, exploring Hawaiian music in greater depth; 1999's Kulanjan was a duo performance with Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté. Maestro appeared in 2008, boasting an array of all-star guests: Diabaté, Angélique Kidjo, Ziggy Marley, Los Lobos, Jack Johnson, and Ben Harper. A holiday album with the Blind Boys of Alabama, Talkin' Christmas, appeared in time for the season in 2014.
**********
WEBSITE
**********
TO THE TOP
**********
