Like the Philly soul classic by Kenny Gamble and Kenny Huff states, every day’s been a holiday lately for Taj Mahal. And with two Grammy nominations pending – one for traditional blues album and another for roots that paired him with the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Bonnie Raitt, Keb’ Mo’ and Mick Fleetwood –along with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy, the Grammy’s sponsor, the 82-year-old maestro would be justified to sit back and simply enjoy the acclaim.
But not Taj. Like he has throughout his 60-odd year career, the bluesman, songster, musicologist, storyteller and more has been hitting the bricks running like he always has, surprising fans at every performance with selections from the broadest range of influences of anyone on the planet.
He was catching his breath before launching the New Year with a travel schedule that would tire out many folks half his age when Blues Blast caught him at his home in California recently. The tour he was about to launch included an appearance with Trombone Shorty and George Clinton in Cuba, a seven-day voyage on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise to the Caribbean with his longtime backing unit, Phantom Blues Band in tow, a tribute concert for longtime musical partner Jesse Ed Davis in Tulsa, Okla., a show in San Francisco and then four more in Phoenix, Ariz.
And through most of it, audiences are in for something special. And, no, it’s not a sampling from Get on Board, his prize-winning acoustic masterpiece, which pared him with Ry Cooder and took home the traditional blues trophy in 2023. Nor is it a taste of his recent, studio album treasure, Savoy, which delivered a tip-of-the-cap to the famous New York City ballroom that shares its name and put an upscale, bluesy-jazzy spin on tunes from the American songbook.
After all, he coined the term “world music,” and, throughout his life, Taj has never pigeonholed himself into any one particular style. It’s hard to conceive that, at his age and considering his diverse career, he’d come up with something that’s both refreshing and new.
But he’s accomplishing that and more with his new touring unit, the Taj Mahal Sextet, which will be on several of those dates, delivering a classy, silky smooth, azure mix of many of the styles he loves.
It’s all on display on his latest disc, Swingin’ Live at the Church in Tulsa, which is vying for a traditional blues Grammy. It delivers a big tip of the fedora to the music of the city.
Tucked alongside the Arkansas River in the oil-rich fields between the Great Plains and the Ozarks, Tulsa may have escaped your attention, which might have been drawn to Chicago, Memphis, Kansas City and more. But the city has a deep musical legacy all its own.
Home to museums honoring both Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, it was a vital stop for blues and jazz artists, the territory bands of Ernie Fields and Bernie Moten and an early stop on the chittlin circuit, too. In the first quarter of the 20th century, its Greenwood neighborhood – known as Black Wall St. – was the most successful African-American community in the nation.
In 1921, it was the site of the horrific Tulsa Race Riot. White supremacists massacred about 300 men, women and children, burned more than 1,250 buildings, left 100,000 people homeless, destroyed the business district and wiped an area that stretched for 35 blocks off the map.
One building that survived the disaster was the Grace M.E. Church, where Taj recorded the live set last year. Build in 1915, six short years before the riot, and located a little more than a mile to the east, the church is on the National Register of Historic Places, but it’s a treasure in the musical sense. In 1972, Leon Russell purchased the property as the headquarters of his Shelter Records with offices, a recording studio and a showroom in the former church, too.
The complex became the creative home for a diverse roster of talents – J.J. Cale, Tom Petty, Jimmy Buffett, Willie Nelson, Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton, The Gap Band, Stevie Wonder, Freddie King and dozens of others. And it’s now considered the epicenter of the Tulsa Sound – the convergence of rock, country, blues, Western swing and much, much more.
“I come to a place like the Church,” Taj says, “and it’s all the great things at one time! It’s really unique because of all the wood in the building. It’s just a wonderful sound. It’s a great room to record in.”
His ties to the community began in the mid-’60s. And although he never recorded for Shelter, he and Leon remained close friends throughout Russell’s life.
“It was an interesting way they played,” Taj says. “They really played the music! They didn’t just regurgitate the notes.”
The facility was completely renovated in 2022. New owners Teresa Knox and Ivan Acosta did so with the intent to use the Church to showcase the Tulsa Sound and perpetuate it for the next generation. Claudia Lennear — who was a backup singer alongside Rita Coolidge for Joe Cocker during his Mad Dogs and Englishmen tours and the lady that Mick Jagger described in the song “Brown Sugar” – was one of the first to be booked into the room.
“She also was an Ikette a long time for Ike and Tina Turner,” Taj says, “and did a lot of work with Leon Russell. “Claudia had a conversation with Teresa after the show. Teresa said: ‘Would you know anyone that you think would be interested in coming here?’ Claudia mentioned my name, adding: ‘Oh, a lot of people around here know Taj…Tommy Tripplehorn, Barry Gilmore, Chuck Blackwell, Jimmy Karstein, Jamie Oldaker, David Teegarden…,’” listing a number of the city’s giants the maestro worked with and befriended through the years.
Claudia made the connection, and the timing proved perfect for Taj to try something new.
He’d been touring with with bassist Bill Rich, drummer Kester Smith and guitarist/Hawaiian lap steel player Bobby Ingano as the Taj Mahal Quartet, but realized that playing in the Church put him in a “challenging position.” The rich acoustics simply weren’t right for the quartet’s sound, which was propelled by a powerful beat.
“When I was away through town to check out the Bob Dylan museum, Teresa took me on a journey through the Church to see everything,” he adds, “the microphones, the studio, the performance room and the bar – and it was really nice.
“I was drawn to the place. I’m a fan of live music and I knew I had an idea that had a really good sound…something that should be out there. And the Church was the right place to record.”
His solution: add dobro player Rob Ickes and guitarist/vocalist Trey Hensley to the quartet, giving birth to the Taj Mahal Quintet was born, a group that could far better emulate the music of the city.
Captured in front of a truly appreciative audience last March, the sextet swings from the jump on the album. It’s obvious that Taj is enjoying himself throughout. His vocal delivery sounds decades younger than his age as he covers six of his own tunes and others by Chuck Willis, Howlin’ Wolf, T-Bone Walker and David Keli’I, the Hawaiian steel guitar master.
The disc offers a wealth of great solos and seamless interplay between instruments with elements of everything from soul, reggae, Latin and R&B to Cajun, Caribbean and gospel to jazz, calypso, Hawaiian slack-key and South American music rooted in African rhythms in the mix. It’s a masterful mélange of all of the musical influences of the maestro’s life.
Although his sound is rooted in the fertile soil of the Delta, you see, Taj Mahal is one of the most important people to take the blues stage in our lives, but he’s not a Mississippi bluesman. The world has been his sounding board since birth.
A self-admitted “analog guy” living in a digital age, Taj was born Henry Saint Claire Fredericks Jr. on May 17, 1942, in Harlem to two exceptionally gifted parents. His childhood provided advantages that kids born in the Delta could only dream of.
His dad was a first-generation American. His family hailed from St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, emigrated to the U.S. in 1902 and built a life for themselves in Manhattan, where his grandparents married. His mom’s family originated in West Africa, entered the U.S. through Charleston, S.C. and lived and worked in Cheraw and Bennettsville, S.C. They relocated to Harlem in 1937 or ’38.
“My father’s people were African-positive, Caribbean-positive, world-intelligent positive people – they had all that energy,” Taj says. “My mother was a college graduate from South Carolina State University majoring in child development. They met New York City and came together in the whole music scene.”
Even though Henry Sr. isn’t a figure well-known in the history books, he played an important role in the culture that endured after the Harlem Renaissance. A classically trained Caribbean boogie-woogie piano player, composer and copyist, his talents also extended swing, jazz, jump blues and big band.
Henry Sr. composed charts for Benny Goodman, Chick Webb and other giants, and family friend Ella Fitzgerald lovingly branded him: “The Genius.”
But Taj’s mom, Mildred Shields, was just as special. She taught school for 40 years, sang in a gospel choir. She was also a storyteller well-versed in the folklore that carried over from Africa and took root during the slave era.
The couple met at the Savoy. Webb was playing that night, and Henry Sr. was there trying to hawk some of his charts. Mildred was there to see Ella, who was also performing. Her music was just starting to soar up the charts. Their home became an epicenter for a galaxy of stars from all sorts of music and all cultures, bandleader Buddy Johnson — of “If I Fell in Love with You” fame — and his sister Ella and Ella Fitzgerald included.
“Buddy was from Laurenceburg, S.C., knew my mom from down there and knew my father,” Taj says. “I remember the event. My mother cooked for three days in preparation. Things like that were happening all the time. My folks were really good together and very smart people.
“They gave us an incredible beginning and opened us up to being connected to people globally. Where everything came for me was a positivity toward my own culture, positivity toward other cultures and, you know, acknowledging them for who they are – as well as an interest in music.
“That was just the water I swam in…messages from places unknown.”
With World War II raging and jobs in the music industry few and far between, the Fredericks family’s future was in peril. At one point, Taj’s mother asked: “We’re having fun, but what are we doing? At some point, I want to go back to school for my master’s degree. Are you willing to make life easy enough to do it?”
“Sure,” he said. “But in the deal, I want a grand piano in the house.”
Taj was just an infant when the family decided to return to their ancestral roots, move to Springfield, Mass, and begin a life of farming. Henry Sr.’s record collection grew, and the sounds of the Caribbean frequently filled the air thanks to his shortwave radio. The environment had changed, sure, but the relationship with their big city friends didn’t stop. Regular visits from visitors insured that the music and merriment continued.
“The music had cultural value,” Taj insists, “not just something that was going to be on the Hit Parade on radio Friday nights. Back then, the songs I was hearing might not have had value for everybody, but they were important to me. The records back then were like relatives talking to you. It wasn’t Top of the Pops or Top 20 Countdown or anything like that.
“That all changed in the ’60s, when the record industry started feeding us only music they were making money off of. We were being programmed, and I was much more interested in being programmed by my own culture.”
Life on the farm was pretty amazing, too. In its original form in West Africa, music was a big part in agriculture and daily life. Thousands of miles and a light year away from its origin, Taj was renewing the link.
“If you want to know anything about me,” he insists, “I’m more impressed by my what my ancestors think about me than anything else going…no matter what! That’s why, for me, I consider the records of Toumani Diabaté, the kora master from Mali, so important. Through it, I managed to make the connection to my ancestral music — and that all came through finger picking!”
Finger picking has had its place in the Western world since the 18th century, but didn’t really start to take hold in popular music until appearing intermittently in the ’40s, he notes. But it really struck a chord with everyone, Taj included, when the folk groups – the Kingston Trio, the Tarriers, the Weavers and others – emerged in the ’50s. And he’s always been drawn to anything else that contains a blues thread.
Taj took up clarinet, trombone, harmonica and classical piano as a child and is adept at 16 more today. A quick study, he was only eight or nine years old when – after two weeks of lessons – his piano teacher told his mom: “You’re wasting your money. Your son’s already playing boogie woogie!”
Life then was idyllic.
But then, at age 11 or 12, tragedy struck. Taj was looking on as his dad worked the field. Their tractor rolled over, landed on him and crushed him to death. It was horrific.
Fortunately, music eventually helped Taj ease his grief.
“Then my mother married another Caribbean man, a Jamaican,” he remembers. “That’s how a guitar – and more music — got into the house…African music, Irish, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican. But my interest was the blues. The blues was something amazing.
“Sometimes it was served up as a side dish, sometimes it was a whole meal, sometimes just a flavor. But it was always just so powerful and important, you could feel it wherever it was.”
One day, he was down in the basement when he discovered his stepfather’s six-string and started to teach himself how to play using a broken comb for a pick.
“At some point, I became fascinated with Jimmy Reed. I liked his tempo, what he had to say. And then I got lucky enough to run into a neighbor next door, Lynwood Perry. I was 14 or 15, and he was a little older – and he could play. He came right out of the tradition in North Carolina. He could play a whole bunch of stuff…Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Blind Boy Fuller.
“And his brother-in-law was named Carlton Crudup. He was a nephew of Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup. This guy could play guitar! It was divine!
“And about five houses up and around the corner was the Nichols family. They came from Stovall, Miss. – they were off the same plantation as Muddy! Junior Nichols and particularly Ernest…Ernest could play ‘Boogie Chillen’ like John Lee Hooker. And he built his own guitars and amplifiers.
“He took and old radio and a six-volt battery, plugged that in and had the speaker on the radio plugged into his guitar. And it was playin’ like an amplifier. With them, I was seein’ somebody who knew what the hell they were doin’!”
Even so, Taj truly had two loves: the music and the farm. He sang in a doowop group in high school, but was pretty convinced he was going spend his life tending to crops and cattle. He enrolled in the University of Massachusetts, majoring in animal husbandry with a minor in both agronomy and veterinary science. By age 19, he already was a farm foreman with a herd of 100 dairy cows, doing everything, including clipping udders to keep the cows clean. He was growing corn and alfalfa. And he also was playing to audiences, too.
“The confusing part of it,” he admits, “was why did all the young kids in the dorm have all this knowledge about black music that I didn’t have?”
He quickly learned that they were early participants in the groundswell of what would be the folk revival of the 1960s. There were blues and folk clubs popping up all over, especially in Massachusetts, and – for the first time ever – white society began shining a spotlight the country blues artists who’d been toiling in obscurity in the cotton fields of Mississippi and hills of the Piedmont since the ’30s.
“I was excited about it all,” he says.
Always a student of social injustice, he adopted the stage name Taj Mahal around the same time after experiencing a dream about Mahatma Ghandi and his own fight for racial equality in India. “The overriding thing is…I didn’t have any idea where I was going in terms of music.”
In truth, he was more interested in tracing its roots, which he knew had taken root in the soil of foreign lands long before the U.S. was born. “I’d already tired of commercial music,” he adds. “For me it left me…yeah…there’s nothing there – it’s like cotton candy. I wasn’t listening to it.
“I had a rhythm-and-blues band called The Electras when I was going to school. We became famous in the Northeast because we didn’t play what everybody else was…stuff that made ’em dance and then ask questions about the music. But I started working on my acoustic side more and began to play with different people and learning more and more older tunes.”
His final journey from the farm to the stage occurred shortly after graduating from UMass and encountering Fred Gerlach, an exceptionally gifted 12-string player who recorded for Folkways. “‘How is this guy with a name like Gerlach, I wondered — and who are these other guys that might be Russian or Polish or Ukrainian or whatever — playing the blues?
“I guess there’s something in the water. But that’s not it.”
Still in his early 20s and out of college, Taj had moved to Boston where he was running open-mic nights at Club 47 on Harvard Square in suburban Cambridge, Mass. A landmark institution in the Civil Rights movement, it was also one of the first venues to feature African-American performers on its stage, Mississippi John Hurt and the Reverend Gary Davis included.
“One night, this young man came in with a guitar, asked to play and told me he had two songs, and, if the audience liked him, he could play an encore, but that was it,” Taj remembers. “He asked if there was room to tune up, and I pointed him down the hall and put another guy on.
“As I’m walking down the hall to tell him he’s on, I hear this amazing music – obviously a 12-string played – not played – through the wall. I open the door, and here’s this guy. He tells me his name…Steven Nicholas Gerlach.
“I had to ask…‘are you any relation to Fred Gerlach?’ He said: ‘Yeah. He’s my uncle’ – and he’s playing Leadbelly music…tunes that Fred had recorded. He gets up, and he’s amazing. He’s not strumming the guitar, he’s picking it…using one finger pick…and the audience was quite impressed.”
The instrumental he played as an encore, “Meadowlands,” was “unbelievable,” Taj says, as excited today as he was then. ”It started out with harmonics, and it literally inspired my mind to see fields in the Middle East and Europe.”
The duo struck up an immediate friendship. They began sharing a Cambridge apartment and launched a music school with the intent to instruct folks who wanted to play older music.
“He always played a 12-string,” Taj remembers. “But one night, he picked up my guitar – a six-string – and started playing like Blind Blake, Reverend Gary Davis and all these different other guys.
“Back then, I had heard a lot of musicians at this point who were getting big, BIG bucks for supposedly carrying on the blues tradition. I could go into a club, hear ’em play, and not hear eight bars of music. But this guy’s voicing, the music, was saying something…the way it’s supposed to be played.
“I asked: ‘How’d you learn to do that?’ and he says: ‘When I was in Los Angeles, I took lessons from this guy named Ry.’
“The next words out of my mouth were: ‘Do you think that guy would like to be in a band? Do you think we can get him out here?’ I knew that anybody who could teach you to play music the way it sounded was somebody you wanted to play with. And he says: “I don’t know…he’s only 17-years-old!’
“‘Okay,’ I said. ‘We’re going to California.’”
With the assistance of his manager, Taj subsequently booked a tour that took them from New England into Quebec, on to Ottawa and Toronto and then to Detroit, where Steven’s uncle Fred made his home. They planned to hitchhike to the West Coast. That was until someone suggested they could secure a drive-away, a new car built in Motor City that was destined to be delivered to an owner far away.
They wound up delivering a brand new ’65 Cadillac to a joyous recipient in San Leandro, Calif. For Taj, the event was a real eye-opener because he’d never driven more than 125 miles on a trip before in his life.
Soon after, Taj settled in Santa Monica, and yes, 17-year-old Ry — Ry Cooder — was interested. Along with guitarist Jessie Lee Kincaid, bassist Gary Marker and drummer Ed Cassidy – who subsequently co-founded the band Spirit, they formed a group called the Rising Sons, became local favorites and eventually landed a Columbia Records. When Cassidy left, Kevin Kelley assumed duties behind the kit.
Sadly, however, as good as they were, success for the Rising Sons was hard to find.
Maybe it was their sound, which was so different it was ahead of its time. Maybe it was because they were one of the first interracial groups working the circuit and gigs were hard to find in what was then a racially divided world. Who knows?
Columbia released only one single, “Candy Man”/ “The Devil’s Got My Woman,” before they disbanded in 1966. It took another 26 years before the 20 other cuts they recorded finally saw the light of day on the Columbia Legacy imprint.
The group failed, but for Taj, a star was born.
Columbia signed him as a solo artist. Within a few years, he released an eponymous LP followed by two more discs, The Natch’l Blues and the double set Giant Step/De Old Folks at Home – all seminal recordings of the folk-blues era, that that established him as a headliner and household name across the land.
Sixty years later, the circle remains unbroken. His first entry to Tulsa and its music came through Jesse Ed Davis, who played guitar on Taj’s first four albums and was a frequent contributor throughout his life. Born in Norman, Okla., and of Comanche, Muscogee and Seminole ancestry, Jesse Ed had a successful solo career in addition to work with John Lennon, Eric Clapton and appearances on dozens of Shelter albums, and it was he who first introduced Taj to the label’s giants…J.J. Cale, sax player Bobby Keys and eventually Leon himself.
The maestro is reaching new audiences with Swingin’ Live at the Church in Tulsa, but he’s far from done. There’s no telling how he’ll reinvent himself next.
And now, fortunately, he knows he’s not alone. He’s rejoicing that there’s a new wave of youngsters ready, willing and able to carry forward the legacy of his ancestors in the same way he has – with one foot in the past and the other in the future. Folks that include Jontavious Willis, Sean “Mack” McDonald, Marquise Knox, Jerron Paxton, Allison Russell, Kaia Kater and Rhiannon Giddens, too.
“And they’re not all chasing each other,” he says proudly. “They’re using the modern techniques of communicating, sharing music and helping each other out.”
For them, the best is yet to come.
So, too, is it for Taj. After the awards, he’ll be celebrating the new album with a release party at the Church in March. And rumor has it that he has several other projects that might come to fruition in the months ahead. One thing’s for certain: Taj may be 82, but he doesn’t let the moss grow beneath his feet. Check out where he’s playing and what he’ll be up to next by visiting his website: www.tajblues.com.
