OTIS TAYLOR
''RECAPTURING THE BANJO''
FEBRUARY 5 2008
52:38
********************
1 Ran So Hard the Sun Went Down featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart, Corey Harris, Don Vappie, Cassie Taylor 03:52
2 Prophets' Mission featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Keb' Mo', Cassie Taylor 03:34 (Alvin Youngblood Hart)
3 Absinthe featuring Keb’ Mo', Cassie Taylor, Ron Miles, Don Vappie, Kevin Moore 04:20
4 Live Your Life featuring Keb' Mo’, Cassie Taylor, Ron Miles 03:38
5 Walk Right In featuring Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Don Vappie, Cassie Taylor 04:01 (Gus Cannon)
6 Bow-Legged Charlie featuring Don Vappie, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Cassie Taylor 04:25
7 Hey Joe featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Cassie Taylor 04:31 (Billy Roberts)
8 Little Liza Jane featuring Guy Davis 02:44 (Traditional)
9 Five Hundred Roses featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart, Cassie Taylor 04:13
10 Les Ognons featuring Don Vappie, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Cassie Taylor, Ron Miles 03:26
11 Deep Blue Sea featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart 02:21 (Traditional)
12 Simple Mind featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart, Don Vappie, Corey Harris, Cassie Taylor 04:22
13 Ten Million Slaves featuring Cassie Taylor 04:07
14 The Way It Goes featuring Keb' Mo’ 02:56 (Kevin Moore)
Tracks By Taylor, Except As Indicated
********************
Guy Davis/Arranger, Guest Artist, Harmonica, Mandolin, Vocals, Backing Vocals
Corey Harris/Banjo, Guest Artist, Vocals
Alvin Youngblood Hart/Arranger, Banjo, Guest Artist, Guitar, Guitar (12 String), Lap Steel Guitar, Vocals, Backing Vocals
Cassie Taylor/Bass Guitar, Guitar (12 String), Vocals, Backing Vocals
Otis Taylor/Arranger, Banjo, Guitar, Mandolin, Percussion, Piano, Vocals, Backing Vocals
Don Vappie/Arranger, Banjo, Guest Artist, Vocals
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REVIEW/AMG
Steve Leggett
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.
********************
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
Robert Hicks
White African
Bluesman Otis Taylor never skirted tough subject matter in a career that took him from the Folklore Center in Denver to a brief stay in London, England, to retirement from music in 1977, to being a successful antiques broker and, since 1995, back again to the blues. Taylor's 2001 CD White African (Northern Blues Music), featuring Kenny Passarelli (bass, keyboards) and Eddie Turner (lead guitar), became his most direct and personal statement about the experiences of African-Americans. He addressed the lynching of his great-grandfather and the murder of his uncle. Brutality became his concern in songs about a black man executed in the '30s for a murder he did not commit, and about a father who could not afford doctor's bills and and had to sit powerless watching his son die. Faith met Taylor's irony in his vision of Jesus as a mortal man who looked for ways to avoid his crucifixion and in his take on romantic infidelity among common men.
When Negroes Walked the Earth
Taylor's first album, Blue-Eyed Monster, and 1997's When Negroes Walked the Earth also cast an uneasy spell on the blues world. Some of Taylor's music would feel comfortable on the back roads of the Delta in the '20s and '30s. It came as no surprise when he interpreted Charley Patton's "Stone Pony" on a Shanachie Records compilation, Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: New Acoustic Recordings of Pre-War Blues Classics, which also featured popular blues performers such as Alvin Youngblood Hart, John Hammond, Duke Robillard, and Corey Harris. At other times, Taylor's music was so uncompromisingly contemporary in its outlook on social injustices that he seemed more akin to South African poet and activist Stephen Biko.
Taylor was born in Chicago in 1948. After his uncle was murdered, his family moved to Denver for apparent safe haven. Taylor took an interest in blues and folk music at Denver's Folklore Center. After hearing Etta James sing "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You," Taylor knew he liked the blues. He then went to the Folklore Center, where he heard the banjo, country blues, and Mississippi John Hurt. He also liked Junior Wells and Muddy Waters and got into folk-blues and Appalachian music. He learned to play guitar, banjo, and harmonica. Only several decades later did he begin to understand the ties of the blues and its instrumentation to the savannah of western Africa.
By his mid-teens, he formed his first groups -- the Butterscotch Fire Department Blues Band and later, the Otis Taylor Blues Band. He briefly stayed in England in 1969 to pursue a record deal with Blue Horizon, but negotiations failed and he returned to the U.S. In the '70s, he took up mandolin. He decided to leave music behind in 1976 and started a successful career as an antiques broker. After much prodding from Passarelli, Taylor returned to music in 1995. He first played a benefit concert. Then he started to play again both solo and with his band in America and Europe. In the summer of 2000, he received a composition fellowship from the Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah, and hobnobbed with film celebrities at the Sundance Film Festival.
Respect the Dead
His When Negroes Walked the Earth was released on Shoelace Records that same year. Taylor began participating in "Writing the Blues" in the Blues in the Schools program, sponsored by the National Blues Foundation, and he started writing and performing new songs in 2001. White African and Respect the Dead were released by Northern Blues in 2001 and 2002, respectively, followed by Taylor's first release on Telarc Blues, Truth Is Not Fiction, in 2003. A second album on Telarc, Double V, came out in 2004, followed by Below the Fold in 2005 and Definition of a Circle two years later. The revelatory Recapturing the Banjo appeared in 2008, again from Telarc. The dark and jazzy Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs followed in 2009. Taylor wasted no time and followed it up with 2010's Clovis People, Vol. 3 (volumes one and two do not exist). The musicians he assembled for the date are a testament to his ever-widening and eclectically expansive musical vision: daughter Cassie Taylor plays bass, and famed electric guitarist Gary Moore plays lead guitar; pedal steel guitarist Chuck Campbell and jazz cornet player Ron Miles are also featured on the recording. In 2010, after complaining of back pain, Taylor saw a doctor, who concluded he had a softball-sized cyst on his liver and spine. After scheduling surgery, he immediately entered a studio to cut new tracks "just in case." Thankfully, Taylor survived, and completed work on Contraband, which was issued by Telarc in early 2012. For 2013's My World Is Gone, the songwriter enlisted a larger band that included jazz trumpeter Ron Miles and Mato Nanji, lead guitarist from the band Indigenous.
********************
WEBSITE
********************
TO THE TOP
********************
''RECAPTURING THE BANJO''
FEBRUARY 5 2008
52:38
********************
1 Ran So Hard the Sun Went Down featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart, Corey Harris, Don Vappie, Cassie Taylor 03:52
2 Prophets' Mission featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Keb' Mo', Cassie Taylor 03:34 (Alvin Youngblood Hart)
3 Absinthe featuring Keb’ Mo', Cassie Taylor, Ron Miles, Don Vappie, Kevin Moore 04:20
4 Live Your Life featuring Keb' Mo’, Cassie Taylor, Ron Miles 03:38
5 Walk Right In featuring Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Don Vappie, Cassie Taylor 04:01 (Gus Cannon)
6 Bow-Legged Charlie featuring Don Vappie, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Cassie Taylor 04:25
7 Hey Joe featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Cassie Taylor 04:31 (Billy Roberts)
8 Little Liza Jane featuring Guy Davis 02:44 (Traditional)
9 Five Hundred Roses featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart, Cassie Taylor 04:13
10 Les Ognons featuring Don Vappie, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Cassie Taylor, Ron Miles 03:26
11 Deep Blue Sea featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart 02:21 (Traditional)
12 Simple Mind featuring Alvin Youngblood Hart, Don Vappie, Corey Harris, Cassie Taylor 04:22
13 Ten Million Slaves featuring Cassie Taylor 04:07
14 The Way It Goes featuring Keb' Mo’ 02:56 (Kevin Moore)
Tracks By Taylor, Except As Indicated
********************
Guy Davis/Arranger, Guest Artist, Harmonica, Mandolin, Vocals, Backing Vocals
Corey Harris/Banjo, Guest Artist, Vocals
Alvin Youngblood Hart/Arranger, Banjo, Guest Artist, Guitar, Guitar (12 String), Lap Steel Guitar, Vocals, Backing Vocals
Cassie Taylor/Bass Guitar, Guitar (12 String), Vocals, Backing Vocals
Otis Taylor/Arranger, Banjo, Guitar, Mandolin, Percussion, Piano, Vocals, Backing Vocals
Don Vappie/Arranger, Banjo, Guest Artist, Vocals
********************
REVIEW/AMG
Steve Leggett
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.
********************
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
Robert Hicks
White African
Bluesman Otis Taylor never skirted tough subject matter in a career that took him from the Folklore Center in Denver to a brief stay in London, England, to retirement from music in 1977, to being a successful antiques broker and, since 1995, back again to the blues. Taylor's 2001 CD White African (Northern Blues Music), featuring Kenny Passarelli (bass, keyboards) and Eddie Turner (lead guitar), became his most direct and personal statement about the experiences of African-Americans. He addressed the lynching of his great-grandfather and the murder of his uncle. Brutality became his concern in songs about a black man executed in the '30s for a murder he did not commit, and about a father who could not afford doctor's bills and and had to sit powerless watching his son die. Faith met Taylor's irony in his vision of Jesus as a mortal man who looked for ways to avoid his crucifixion and in his take on romantic infidelity among common men.
When Negroes Walked the Earth
Taylor's first album, Blue-Eyed Monster, and 1997's When Negroes Walked the Earth also cast an uneasy spell on the blues world. Some of Taylor's music would feel comfortable on the back roads of the Delta in the '20s and '30s. It came as no surprise when he interpreted Charley Patton's "Stone Pony" on a Shanachie Records compilation, Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues: New Acoustic Recordings of Pre-War Blues Classics, which also featured popular blues performers such as Alvin Youngblood Hart, John Hammond, Duke Robillard, and Corey Harris. At other times, Taylor's music was so uncompromisingly contemporary in its outlook on social injustices that he seemed more akin to South African poet and activist Stephen Biko.
Taylor was born in Chicago in 1948. After his uncle was murdered, his family moved to Denver for apparent safe haven. Taylor took an interest in blues and folk music at Denver's Folklore Center. After hearing Etta James sing "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You," Taylor knew he liked the blues. He then went to the Folklore Center, where he heard the banjo, country blues, and Mississippi John Hurt. He also liked Junior Wells and Muddy Waters and got into folk-blues and Appalachian music. He learned to play guitar, banjo, and harmonica. Only several decades later did he begin to understand the ties of the blues and its instrumentation to the savannah of western Africa.
By his mid-teens, he formed his first groups -- the Butterscotch Fire Department Blues Band and later, the Otis Taylor Blues Band. He briefly stayed in England in 1969 to pursue a record deal with Blue Horizon, but negotiations failed and he returned to the U.S. In the '70s, he took up mandolin. He decided to leave music behind in 1976 and started a successful career as an antiques broker. After much prodding from Passarelli, Taylor returned to music in 1995. He first played a benefit concert. Then he started to play again both solo and with his band in America and Europe. In the summer of 2000, he received a composition fellowship from the Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah, and hobnobbed with film celebrities at the Sundance Film Festival.
Respect the Dead
His When Negroes Walked the Earth was released on Shoelace Records that same year. Taylor began participating in "Writing the Blues" in the Blues in the Schools program, sponsored by the National Blues Foundation, and he started writing and performing new songs in 2001. White African and Respect the Dead were released by Northern Blues in 2001 and 2002, respectively, followed by Taylor's first release on Telarc Blues, Truth Is Not Fiction, in 2003. A second album on Telarc, Double V, came out in 2004, followed by Below the Fold in 2005 and Definition of a Circle two years later. The revelatory Recapturing the Banjo appeared in 2008, again from Telarc. The dark and jazzy Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs followed in 2009. Taylor wasted no time and followed it up with 2010's Clovis People, Vol. 3 (volumes one and two do not exist). The musicians he assembled for the date are a testament to his ever-widening and eclectically expansive musical vision: daughter Cassie Taylor plays bass, and famed electric guitarist Gary Moore plays lead guitar; pedal steel guitarist Chuck Campbell and jazz cornet player Ron Miles are also featured on the recording. In 2010, after complaining of back pain, Taylor saw a doctor, who concluded he had a softball-sized cyst on his liver and spine. After scheduling surgery, he immediately entered a studio to cut new tracks "just in case." Thankfully, Taylor survived, and completed work on Contraband, which was issued by Telarc in early 2012. For 2013's My World Is Gone, the songwriter enlisted a larger band that included jazz trumpeter Ron Miles and Mato Nanji, lead guitarist from the band Indigenous.
********************
WEBSITE
********************
TO THE TOP
********************
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