Saturday, July 30, 2005
Saturday Reading Room is Open
(with thanks to Bob Sarles for the article, or the reading room would be closed today, or if not closed exactly, then at least pretty empty)
Sittin' In With Otis Taylor
By Art Tipaldi/BluesWax Magazing
With nine of every ten songs on the radio today lamenting the loss of "my baby," Otis Taylor comes as a breath of fresh air. His songwriting eye is like no other. In 1998 he turned on the spotlight with his first record, When Negroes Walked The Earth, and he's not stopped through five recordings.
Check out this sampling of his songs through his five records: "Rosa, Rosa," a tribute to Rosa Parks; "3 Days and 3 Nights," about a man who cannot pay for medical care for his dying child; "My Soul's In Louisiana," the story of a black hobo in the 1930s who is accused of a murder he did not commit; "Ten Million Slaves," about looking back on the horrors of living through Middle Passage; "Plastic Spoon," about an elderly couple who must eat dog food to afford prescription medicines; "Took Their Land," about the interment of Native Americans and Japanese Americans; "505 Train" about a child witnessing domestic violence; and "Saint Martha Blues," a song written about the lynching of Taylor's own great grandfather.
"I'm not afraid to talk about certain things. That's all it is," says Taylor. "Everybody else knows about these topics. We see them on TV. We read it in books. People make movies about them, but no one writes songs about them. I'm really a singer-songwriter who is a storyteller. Some people argue that I'm alternative Blues. Think of my music as contemporary traditional. My stories are traditional, but the way I record them is very contemporary."
Lyrically, Taylor's canvas is framed in social responsibility; musically, his groove is a darkly swirling, dense sound. Together, Taylor's message and music is a double shot of the real world. "My newest CD comes out in May here [August 23 in the U.S. on the Telarc label], it's called Below the Fold. Some people are saying the Below the Fold is one of the greatest albums I've ever recorded. I'm doing combinations of instruments that are totally outrageous. I've got trumpet and mandolin mixing with fiddles and cellos. It's out there, like Trans-Appalachian music."
"A lot of songs about historical things like the Ludlow Massacre. Woody Guthrie wrote a song about that massacre once. There's also a song about 'my mother's got a best friend and we tell people she's our sister.' I do some songs about people aging from my family."
These last two Telarc CDs have Taylor as producer. "On my older CDs, Kenny Passarelli had to work in the style of my eccentricities and stubbornness. The cello was my idea. He had some great ideas on individual songs like the train on 'Soul's In Louisiana,' but it went back and forth. On my new album, you'll see exactly what my ideas were. Double V had some trippy stuff, the new CD is even more bizarre and out there. There's a whole different feeling than what Kenny would do.
"I've always been into the minimalist thing of no chord changes. I like space. Space leaves room for the emotion of the note and tonation to grow. If you have one note, there is a lot of air around that note so you can feel it more. A note becomes moodier or darker. That's my philosophy on how I approach a picture. I don't use a lot of drums, but when you hear them, you don't think of them as drums in the traditional sense. I try and keep an African reference to drums."
When he played at the Blues Foundation W.C. Handy Blues Music Awards in Memphis in April, Taylor's hypnotic rhythms on his banjo stood out from the glut of guitar and piano driven Blues of the night. I remember how attentive the audience became as each came under Taylor's musical trance.
Though he always captures the ears of Blues audiences wherever he plays, Taylor is quick to speak his mind about his current lack of festival bookings in America and failure to score W.C. Handy Award nominations for his records and songs and wonders why. "I don't know why everyone wants to put everything in this little box, old-time Blues or honky-tonk Blues. I don't know what happened to everybody. I'm a little upset about it and I can feel that there is a small backlash going. My newest CD, Double V, is great, but I didn't get any Handy nominations. Out of all the albums I've written, I've only been Handy nominated for one song, 'My Soul's In Louisiana.' So they don't think I write Blues songs. 'Rosa' is a fantastic song, but never nominated. I feel like I got a wakeup call in the last Handy nominations. I got one for the banjo. I'm getting the picture. But that ain't gonna stop me."
What gives birth to a musician like Taylor with a social conscience and deep sense of history? Though he was born in Chicago in 1948, his family moved to Denver after his uncle was shot to death. It was in Denver that the teenaged Taylor walked into the Denver Folklore Center and found his voice.
"It was the most important place for me. It was the place I'd go after school every day just hang out. I'd go there on weekends to hear music. It was during a certain period in time in 1963 to 1966, just before the psychedelic thing got really heavy. Everybody was into Civil Rights and so, because I was black, I was really welcomed into that environment by the folkies. Because they were writing songs about social issues, it seemed natural for me to also write about social issues."
The Center was also where Taylor first picked up a banjo. He tells that it was the drone, the sadness of it that first appealed to him. He also learned the guitar. And he learned the Blues from first generation Bluesmen like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, and Mississippi Fred McDowell, who all played at the Center.
"I saw Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Fred McDowell play at the Folklore Center. They were just old black people to me because I lived in an all black neighborhood. All these people tell about what they learned from these men. I was raised black, I didn't have to learn about being black. Sometimes I couldn't even understand what Son House or Mississippi John Hurt was saying. I may not be the best Blues musician, but I'm really good at being black. I didn't have to study under anybody. Being black, the Blues was a natural thing. It was your language, your accent."
After years of fronting and supporting various bands in and around the Denver area like the 4-Nikators, the Zephyrs, Butterscotch, and T&O Shortline with singer guitarist Tommy Bolin before Bolin joined Deep Purple, Taylor decided to quit his musical career in 1977.Â
He became a successful art and antiques dealer, and he began coaching the Buccaneer Bicycle Racing Team, a professional bicycling team. Taylor continued playing with friends at jams and, finally, in 1995, succumbed to their urgings and followed music full time.
"I was always into art and antiques. The antiques and art work I did got me more into history. I have a major photography collection of blacks in the West like the Buffalo Soldiers and black cowboys. I collected Indian art, art deco, and things. I have some knowledge about those topics, but I'm not a historian. I think my collecting gave me a little sense of the people and topics I wanted to write about."
Taylor understands that his songwriting mission is nothing newly discovered. "I've always been writing songs. I was just playing a tape from a concert I did at the Denver Folklore Center in 1967 and I was listening to what I was writing then and I realized that I was always dark. Though I didn't write as well as I do now, I was always writing the same kind of songs. I think about social subjects more because I started getting a response to that. They seem to come really easy to me. I can read the newspaper and write a song. That's my way and I never run outta ideas."
Because Taylor's songs are provocative, they open people's eyes to injustices both today and throughout history. But Taylor doesn't see this as a mission or responsibility. "I don't think of it as a responsibility. It's just what I do. I'm just doin' what I do and people picked up on it. I was writin' about subjects like that on Negroes Walked the Earth in 1995. I just felt like writing songs that were interesting."
Like the Quaker principle of bearing witness, once you hear songs like "Resurrection Blues" or "My Soul's In Louisiana," you cannot turn away from the truth. But Taylor continues to deflect the responsibility and defers to the art. "That's nice when people think that about my songs, but I don't tell them what to think. I'm just writing interesting stories. I never know who my songs touch or when. Or what they do with it. I'm not trying to be flippant about it. Everybody likes to be acknowledged for what they do, but I'm just a storyteller. That's what I liked about Folk music, people were storytellers."
Does Taylor feel he channels these songs from the spiritual past of African-Americans? "It's not channeling. I'm black. My parents came from the Deep South and they hated the South. They never said a good word about the South. Sometimes they didn't even like people who came from the country. They weren't happy with the way the South controlled the people. They left and wondered why everybody else didn't leave.
"I don't know if what I'm saying makes any sense. I wasn't raised around Southern Blacks. I was never allowed to speak in a black accent. My father went to college and was like a beatnik. I grew up bilingual; I could talk in the black slang or more proper talk the way my dad wanted. He knew that if I talked right I could progress in the world faster. He was a beatnik and a bohemian, but he always made sure he looked straight to the world. He told me to do my thing, but keep it internal, don't let them find out who you are.
"Black singers were conditioned to sing about certain things because if they didn't they were beat up or their family could be killed or they were terrorized. Pretty soon it became this program and then it's been hard for people to break out of that restraint. So people today want to play like their heroes and write songs like their heroes, but since those are heroes of the past, today's music is still conditioned to leave out certain subjects. If those older heroes could have talked about it, they would have. That's what they should have been singing about. But they couldn't say what they really wanted to say."
Today, Taylor also spends his time involved in teaching Blues in the schools. "What I do is go into schools with a program called 'I Get The Blues When...' I give students a piece of paper that says 'I get the Blues when...' and the students write in what makes them sad. Things like my father died or I broke my leg over the summer. Whatever. Than I have them come up and sing it with me. I do it in schools and colleges, so I reach from six-year-olds to 25-year-olds.
"What do you remember most about school? It might be when you got on stage for the first time. First, they learn that they can perform onstage. That gives them confidence. Second, they learn that anyone can write something. Then they find out that they can be original, which is my whole thing anyway. Then they find out that other people have the same kind of problems that they do.
"I was in Ottawa doing this and a kid was writing about his uncle dying in Somalia. And then other kids were writing about relatives dying in Eastern Europe or Africa. Another time a girl used this to talk about being raped in college. That the teachers learn about whether the kids are having any problems outside the school."
©2005 BluesWax Magazing
================================================
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes. If you do not wish to receive these emailings
send a note to bsarlesWire@aol.com
----------------------------------
Bob Sarles/Ravin' Films
www.ravinfilms.com
Ravin' Films ¶ 7/30/2005 12:36:00 PM
(with thanks to Bob Sarles for the article, or the reading room would be closed today, or if not closed exactly, then at least pretty empty)
Sittin' In With Otis Taylor
By Art Tipaldi/BluesWax Magazing
With nine of every ten songs on the radio today lamenting the loss of "my baby," Otis Taylor comes as a breath of fresh air. His songwriting eye is like no other. In 1998 he turned on the spotlight with his first record, When Negroes Walked The Earth, and he's not stopped through five recordings.
Check out this sampling of his songs through his five records: "Rosa, Rosa," a tribute to Rosa Parks; "3 Days and 3 Nights," about a man who cannot pay for medical care for his dying child; "My Soul's In Louisiana," the story of a black hobo in the 1930s who is accused of a murder he did not commit; "Ten Million Slaves," about looking back on the horrors of living through Middle Passage; "Plastic Spoon," about an elderly couple who must eat dog food to afford prescription medicines; "Took Their Land," about the interment of Native Americans and Japanese Americans; "505 Train" about a child witnessing domestic violence; and "Saint Martha Blues," a song written about the lynching of Taylor's own great grandfather.
"I'm not afraid to talk about certain things. That's all it is," says Taylor. "Everybody else knows about these topics. We see them on TV. We read it in books. People make movies about them, but no one writes songs about them. I'm really a singer-songwriter who is a storyteller. Some people argue that I'm alternative Blues. Think of my music as contemporary traditional. My stories are traditional, but the way I record them is very contemporary."
Lyrically, Taylor's canvas is framed in social responsibility; musically, his groove is a darkly swirling, dense sound. Together, Taylor's message and music is a double shot of the real world. "My newest CD comes out in May here [August 23 in the U.S. on the Telarc label], it's called Below the Fold. Some people are saying the Below the Fold is one of the greatest albums I've ever recorded. I'm doing combinations of instruments that are totally outrageous. I've got trumpet and mandolin mixing with fiddles and cellos. It's out there, like Trans-Appalachian music."
"A lot of songs about historical things like the Ludlow Massacre. Woody Guthrie wrote a song about that massacre once. There's also a song about 'my mother's got a best friend and we tell people she's our sister.' I do some songs about people aging from my family."
These last two Telarc CDs have Taylor as producer. "On my older CDs, Kenny Passarelli had to work in the style of my eccentricities and stubbornness. The cello was my idea. He had some great ideas on individual songs like the train on 'Soul's In Louisiana,' but it went back and forth. On my new album, you'll see exactly what my ideas were. Double V had some trippy stuff, the new CD is even more bizarre and out there. There's a whole different feeling than what Kenny would do.
"I've always been into the minimalist thing of no chord changes. I like space. Space leaves room for the emotion of the note and tonation to grow. If you have one note, there is a lot of air around that note so you can feel it more. A note becomes moodier or darker. That's my philosophy on how I approach a picture. I don't use a lot of drums, but when you hear them, you don't think of them as drums in the traditional sense. I try and keep an African reference to drums."
When he played at the Blues Foundation W.C. Handy Blues Music Awards in Memphis in April, Taylor's hypnotic rhythms on his banjo stood out from the glut of guitar and piano driven Blues of the night. I remember how attentive the audience became as each came under Taylor's musical trance.
Though he always captures the ears of Blues audiences wherever he plays, Taylor is quick to speak his mind about his current lack of festival bookings in America and failure to score W.C. Handy Award nominations for his records and songs and wonders why. "I don't know why everyone wants to put everything in this little box, old-time Blues or honky-tonk Blues. I don't know what happened to everybody. I'm a little upset about it and I can feel that there is a small backlash going. My newest CD, Double V, is great, but I didn't get any Handy nominations. Out of all the albums I've written, I've only been Handy nominated for one song, 'My Soul's In Louisiana.' So they don't think I write Blues songs. 'Rosa' is a fantastic song, but never nominated. I feel like I got a wakeup call in the last Handy nominations. I got one for the banjo. I'm getting the picture. But that ain't gonna stop me."
What gives birth to a musician like Taylor with a social conscience and deep sense of history? Though he was born in Chicago in 1948, his family moved to Denver after his uncle was shot to death. It was in Denver that the teenaged Taylor walked into the Denver Folklore Center and found his voice.
"It was the most important place for me. It was the place I'd go after school every day just hang out. I'd go there on weekends to hear music. It was during a certain period in time in 1963 to 1966, just before the psychedelic thing got really heavy. Everybody was into Civil Rights and so, because I was black, I was really welcomed into that environment by the folkies. Because they were writing songs about social issues, it seemed natural for me to also write about social issues."
The Center was also where Taylor first picked up a banjo. He tells that it was the drone, the sadness of it that first appealed to him. He also learned the guitar. And he learned the Blues from first generation Bluesmen like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, and Mississippi Fred McDowell, who all played at the Center.
"I saw Mississippi John Hurt, Son House, Fred McDowell play at the Folklore Center. They were just old black people to me because I lived in an all black neighborhood. All these people tell about what they learned from these men. I was raised black, I didn't have to learn about being black. Sometimes I couldn't even understand what Son House or Mississippi John Hurt was saying. I may not be the best Blues musician, but I'm really good at being black. I didn't have to study under anybody. Being black, the Blues was a natural thing. It was your language, your accent."
After years of fronting and supporting various bands in and around the Denver area like the 4-Nikators, the Zephyrs, Butterscotch, and T&O Shortline with singer guitarist Tommy Bolin before Bolin joined Deep Purple, Taylor decided to quit his musical career in 1977.Â
He became a successful art and antiques dealer, and he began coaching the Buccaneer Bicycle Racing Team, a professional bicycling team. Taylor continued playing with friends at jams and, finally, in 1995, succumbed to their urgings and followed music full time.
"I was always into art and antiques. The antiques and art work I did got me more into history. I have a major photography collection of blacks in the West like the Buffalo Soldiers and black cowboys. I collected Indian art, art deco, and things. I have some knowledge about those topics, but I'm not a historian. I think my collecting gave me a little sense of the people and topics I wanted to write about."
Taylor understands that his songwriting mission is nothing newly discovered. "I've always been writing songs. I was just playing a tape from a concert I did at the Denver Folklore Center in 1967 and I was listening to what I was writing then and I realized that I was always dark. Though I didn't write as well as I do now, I was always writing the same kind of songs. I think about social subjects more because I started getting a response to that. They seem to come really easy to me. I can read the newspaper and write a song. That's my way and I never run outta ideas."
Because Taylor's songs are provocative, they open people's eyes to injustices both today and throughout history. But Taylor doesn't see this as a mission or responsibility. "I don't think of it as a responsibility. It's just what I do. I'm just doin' what I do and people picked up on it. I was writin' about subjects like that on Negroes Walked the Earth in 1995. I just felt like writing songs that were interesting."
Like the Quaker principle of bearing witness, once you hear songs like "Resurrection Blues" or "My Soul's In Louisiana," you cannot turn away from the truth. But Taylor continues to deflect the responsibility and defers to the art. "That's nice when people think that about my songs, but I don't tell them what to think. I'm just writing interesting stories. I never know who my songs touch or when. Or what they do with it. I'm not trying to be flippant about it. Everybody likes to be acknowledged for what they do, but I'm just a storyteller. That's what I liked about Folk music, people were storytellers."
Does Taylor feel he channels these songs from the spiritual past of African-Americans? "It's not channeling. I'm black. My parents came from the Deep South and they hated the South. They never said a good word about the South. Sometimes they didn't even like people who came from the country. They weren't happy with the way the South controlled the people. They left and wondered why everybody else didn't leave.
"I don't know if what I'm saying makes any sense. I wasn't raised around Southern Blacks. I was never allowed to speak in a black accent. My father went to college and was like a beatnik. I grew up bilingual; I could talk in the black slang or more proper talk the way my dad wanted. He knew that if I talked right I could progress in the world faster. He was a beatnik and a bohemian, but he always made sure he looked straight to the world. He told me to do my thing, but keep it internal, don't let them find out who you are.
"Black singers were conditioned to sing about certain things because if they didn't they were beat up or their family could be killed or they were terrorized. Pretty soon it became this program and then it's been hard for people to break out of that restraint. So people today want to play like their heroes and write songs like their heroes, but since those are heroes of the past, today's music is still conditioned to leave out certain subjects. If those older heroes could have talked about it, they would have. That's what they should have been singing about. But they couldn't say what they really wanted to say."
Today, Taylor also spends his time involved in teaching Blues in the schools. "What I do is go into schools with a program called 'I Get The Blues When...' I give students a piece of paper that says 'I get the Blues when...' and the students write in what makes them sad. Things like my father died or I broke my leg over the summer. Whatever. Than I have them come up and sing it with me. I do it in schools and colleges, so I reach from six-year-olds to 25-year-olds.
"What do you remember most about school? It might be when you got on stage for the first time. First, they learn that they can perform onstage. That gives them confidence. Second, they learn that anyone can write something. Then they find out that they can be original, which is my whole thing anyway. Then they find out that other people have the same kind of problems that they do.
"I was in Ottawa doing this and a kid was writing about his uncle dying in Somalia. And then other kids were writing about relatives dying in Eastern Europe or Africa. Another time a girl used this to talk about being raped in college. That the teachers learn about whether the kids are having any problems outside the school."
©2005 BluesWax Magazing
================================================
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes. If you do not wish to receive these emailings
send a note to bsarlesWire@aol.com
----------------------------------
Bob Sarles/Ravin' Films
www.ravinfilms.com
Ravin' Films ¶ 7/30/2005 12:36:00 PM
