![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/taj_mahal_savoy.jpg\")
Taj Mahal is music royalty. A prime exponent of both Americana and so-called \u201cworld music\u201d long before either of those labels came into widespread use, he\u2019s a bluesman at his core. His musical vision has always been wide-screen, from his days with Ry Cooder in the Rising Sons to present day. That band cut the Goffin\/King tune \u201cTake a Giant Step\u201d even before the Monkees got around to it. Taj Mahal has always been ahead of his time, and outside of it.<\/p>\n
On his latest release, Savoy<\/i>, the Blues Foundation Hall of Famer and three-time Grammy winning roots legend takes a journey into music\u2019s past. Savoy<\/i> is a collection of songs from the big band\/swing era of the 1930s and \u201840s. Across 14 standards, 80-year-old Taj Mahal applies his blues-based sensibility to jazz tunes, and results are remarkably timeless. A revered and accomplished songwriter in his own right, on Savoy<\/i> Taj Mahal reasserts his primacy as one of music\u2019s foremost interpreters of the work of other composers.<\/p>\n
Taj Mahal introduces the album with some personal reminiscences. A jazz band and silky-smooth female vocal chorus back him, playing Stompin at the Savoy<\/i>. His singing doesn\u2019t come in until midway through the song. The approach sets the stage for a collection of studio recordings that feel like a live performance. He event throws some good-natured scat vocals in toward the song\u2019s end, sounding for all the world like a 21st<\/sup> century Louis Prima.<\/p>\n The song selection leans toward the familiar, but in Taj\u2019s capable hands, each and every tune feels fresh and new. The swaggering \u201cI\u2019m Just a Lucky So and So\u201d leads into the understated and slightly forlorn \u201cGee Baby Ain\u2019t I Good to You.\u201d He turns George Gershwin\u2019s evergreen \u201cSummertime\u201d into an uptempo swing tune. Duke Ellington\u2019s \u201cMood Indigo\u201d is delivered in a more conventional manner.<\/p>\n Taj\u2019s reading of Louis Jordan\u2019s \u201cIs You Is or Is You Ain\u2019t My Baby\u201d is more understated than both Jordan\u2019s original and Joe Jackson\u2019s Jumpin\u2019 Jive<\/i>-era remake, but the song\u2019s sly character is wholly intact. \u201cSweet Georgia Brown\u201d gets a jazz manouche arrangement. Continuing the back-and-forth between reverence and reinvention, \u201cBaby It\u2019s Cold Outside\u201d features an arrangement quite close to the way most listeners know it.<\/p>\n Jordan\u2019s relentlessly uptempo \u201cCaldonia\u201d reminds listeners of the through-line that connects big band jazz and rock and roll. Benny Golson\u2019s instrumental classic \u201cKiller Joe\u201d gets some shoop-doo-wah vocalese applied to it; the song showcases the record\u2019s instrumental expertise.<\/p>\n Savoy<\/i> concludes as it simply must: with a cover of \u201cOne for My Baby (And One More for the Road),\u201d a song designed as a set-closer. Harold Arlen\u2019s classic saloon song is known as a Frank Sinatra vehicle, but it has been effectively covered by many greats from Fred Astaire to Willie Nelson. And as he does with each and every of Savoy<\/i>\u2019s 14 songs, Taj Mahal makes the late-night weeper his own.<\/p>\n You may also enjoy<\/strong> my interviews with Taj Mahal: one from 2018<\/a>, yet another from 2018<\/a> and yet a third, this time from 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Taj Mahal is music royalty. A prime exponent of both Americana and so-called \u201cworld music\u201d long before either of those labels came into widespread use, he\u2019s a bluesman at his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25224,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,42,49,65],"tags":[3110],"class_list":["post-25223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-review","tag-taj-mahal","cat-9-id","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25225,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25223\/revisions\/25225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}