Taj Mahal (Born 17/05/1940)

Born Henry Saint Clair Fredericks, Taj graduated from University where he developed a fundamental interest in black music and its associated history.

He moved to the West Coast around 1965 and was a founder member of Rising Sons (along with talents of the calibre of Ry Cooder and the future Spirit drummer Ed Cassidy). Frustrated by the record label's inability to market the group appropriately, Mahal left the group and wound up staying with Columbia as a solo artist. His self-titled debut was released in early 1968 and its stripped-down approach to vintage blues sounds made it unlike virtually anything else on the blues scene at the time. It came to be regarded as a classic of the '60s blues revival, as did its follow-up, "Natch'l Blues". The latter extended the repertoire with a couple of soul song interpretations, a trick Taj was to repeat periodically throughout his career.

Never content to rest on his laurels, his interest in a wide variety of musical styles led to albums incorporating a number of musical genres, including the Afro-American "Happy To Just Be Like I Am" and the West Indian influenced "Mo Roots".

1994's "Dancing The Blues" is a more recent (relatively) example of Taj at his best (blues standards, new compositions, soul songs revisited etc.) whilst the 1997 "Hula Blues" shows him continuing to experiment with various musical styles - although this homage to Hawaiian music comes as no surprise since he took up residence on the island for a while.

Taj's eclectic all-embracing approach to the blues has not always found acclaim and he did seem to fall out of favour completely for a while - however, his stock appears to be riding high again. In 1997, Mahal won a Grammy for Señor Blues. Meanwhile, he undertook a number of small-label side projects that constituted some of his most ambitious work, with frequent forays into world music and beyond. An accomplished roots scholar, Taj never allows a musicologist approach to overshadow the pure fun to be had from his music making. Folk, rock, reggae and calypso all find their way into his music but it still ends up being a product entirely of his own making - worth hearing if you like a bit of variety and breadth to your blues! There are a number of Best Ofs around and a good cheap introduction is the single CD "Best Of" on Columbia.