A prodigal instrument comes home

CD Review  by Jeff Trippe

One premise underlying bluesman Otis Taylor’s most recent release is that most people do not know that the banjo’s roots are not in America but in Africa, or that it was tremendously important in African-American traditions until roughly 1900, when for various reasons it began to fall out of favor with black musicians.  I might argue that anyone interested enough in banjo to buy this disk would probably be at least partially aware of the instrument’s history.  Nonetheless, Taylor’s case needs no further proof than this solid collection of songs, for when all is sung and done, I cannot imagine them without banjo.

Taylor, himself a highly regarded singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, gets a good deal of help here from the likes of Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis, Don Vappie, Corey Harris, and Keb’ Mo’ – each one a formidable artist in his own right.  They trade off on banjos, guitars, mandolin, percussion, and vocals, while Ron Miles adds tasteful touches on cornet, and bassist Cassie Taylor is the rock everybody leans on.  In some cases, sparse arrangements such as that for “Deep Blue Sea” remind us that the banjo is not just that loud, jangling drumhead we hear so much of at bluegrass festivals; indeed, it has other identities, other moods, and it curls up to the blues like a bloodhound to a bone.  On other tracks, multiple banjo parts make for a pretty wild chase; the opening cut, “Ran So Hard the Sun Went Down,” is a good case in point.

This is an album on which every song resists the fast forward button, but for me, there are a number of outstanding moments.  “Absinthe” breathes Chicago streets, but the drum track offered by Keb’ Mo’s son, Kevin Jr., is most definitely a New Orleans groove, and thus the song gathers about seventy years of musical migration into just over four minutes.  The Gus Cannon composition “Walk Right In,” one of those tunes everyone has heard someplace, is as infectious as ever, and Taylor’s “Five Hundred Roses” is as ghostly as anything John Lee Hooker ever laid down.  Guy Davis’s treatment of “Little Liza Jane” is straight out of a Civil War camp, and interestingly, it follows the blues/rock classic “Hey Joe,” under which Taylor rolls out a distorted electric guitar complete with Hendrix riffs, as if to say, “1860s or 1960s – doesn’t matter.  The banjo works.”

Taylor is bighearted enough – and intelligent enough – to give substantial chunks of the lead vocals to the other musicians, but to my taste, Keb’ Mo’s voice is the epitome of the modern blues.  On the soulful “Live Your Life” and the closing number, “The Way It Goes,” his honest delivery goes straight to the heart, and every word seems to carry the weight, the suffering and the joy, all at once, of the African-American experience.

The banjo is an important part of that experience.  Musicologists now know, of course, that in the 1880s black and white string musicians shared more or less the same repertoire, that they learned from one another, and that although the banjo was not original to this country, it certainly became an integral thread in a distinctive American musical tapestry.  If you want a thorough summary of its integration, you can read Dick Weissman’s excellent liner notes.  But to really understand, you’ll have to hear the songs.  Paradoxically, in recapturing the banjo, Otis Taylor has helped to free our minds as grateful listeners.

Otis Taylor is currently on tour in Europe.  Visit www.otistaylor.com for complete tour dates.