Call him a bluesman, jazzman, Afro-Caribbean musicologist, even a kid's entertainer. Just don't call Taj Mahal "eclectic."
"What's 'eclectic?'," says the burly, gravel-voiced 63-year-old guitarist/multi-instrumentalist. "It's a word a lot of people in straitjackets use when they're talking about anybody that's free and goes for it.
"I'm not trippin' on that," he adds, reassuringly. "I sometimes get harsh and people say, 'Wait a minute, this isn't the funny old funky Taj we expected!'"
In fact, a conversation with Taj -- who was born Henry St. Clair Fredericks and raised in Springfield, Mass. -- runs the gamut from fond reminiscence (I mention the '72 Mariposa fest I saw him at when I was 14, and he recalls ferocious lightning and a ferry ride he shared with Bob Dylan), to blissful enthusiasm (get him started on fishing) to anger (record labels, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina).
But eclectic is a good word for the dual projects he was in town last week to promote. The first is Jazz Baby, a series of albums of children's songs, performed with jazz/blues arrangements by the likes of Taj (If I Had A Hammer), Dr. John (Toyland), Rosemary Clooney (Fuzzy Wuzzy) and TV stars like Cybill Shepherd (My Bonnie) and Megan Mullally (Home On The Range).
The second is the more meaty The Essential Taj Mahal, a two-disc career sampling -- from The Rising Sons, his band in the '60s with fellow legend Ry Cooder, to a prolific solo career that covers all the aforementioned styles, with Hawaiian and Cuban tossed into the mix. Included are signature songs like Fishin' Blues and Corinna (as covered by King Biscuit Boy) and, would you believe, a Monkees song (Take A Giant Step)?
Of the former, he says, "People called me up and asked would I like to get involved in a project for jazz and for kids. And I think that's really important. The babies need to hear something nice. Whatever real music you hear at five years old is not something you should turn around and be embarrassed about later."
The son of a gospel singing schoolteacher mom and a Caribbean-born jazz-pianist/arranger dad, Taj was exposed to all styles early. "I didn't pick up a guitar until 13, but the music lessons started at five, trombone, clarinet. All I wanted to play was boogie woogie."
And what about that Monkees song? "When the Rising Sons were signed by Columbia, they first hooked us up with (Fifth Dimension producer) Allan Stanton. We're playing this Delta song Down In Black Bottom, one of the great Mississippi melodies, Ry Cooder is killing this solo on electric dobro and this guy comes on the p.a. 'Eehhhh! Excuse me, What's with the distorted guitar?'
"So that didn't go well. So then they decided we needed someone younger, so they brought in Doris Day's son, Terry Melcher. He shows up with Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys and says, 'Yeah, let's play some blues!' Yeah. The Beach Boys. We'll be playin' blues all right.
"The only thing that came out of it was Giant Step," he says, giving an account of funkifying a bubble-gum song. "After it was over, I realized they were never going to do anything with it. From that day on, I did my own thing. I never had nobody talk to me like that again.
"I started breaking away from spending my whole life as a blues man. I said, 'I hear more music than this.' I listen to Coltrane or Miles or (Mali singers) Salif Keita or Ali Farka Toure. Or Cedar Walton or McCoy Tyner.
"All the cultures are coming together musically, the South, Caribbean, Central America, East European, North African. It's happening naturally, and the record companies have nothing to say about it."
