30/06/2026
Just last week, the great Taj Mahal sat down with Bernard Zuel to talk about his new album, TIME... click below for an insight into the album and more from this legend.
'TIME' is out now via Resonatin' Records / Thirty Tigers / Civilians
https://www.bernardzuel.net/post/all-time-s-like-the-present-for-taj-mahal
ALL TIME’S LIKE THE PRESENT FOR TAJ MAHAL
IT WAS, IN ONE SENSE, an accident of timing – not least because it was meant to happen a week earlier but misunderstanding or misadventure had put the kybosh on that first attempt at conversation – that the death of Clive Davis, a giant of mixed reputation but rare name recognition for a record company executive, coincided with this call to Taj Mahal who has a new album out called, appropriately enough, Time.
But in truth, for Mahal – whose real name is Henry Saint Clair Fredericks Jr, but where’s the earthy blues realism and spiritual adventure in that? – when you’ve been making music for more than 60 years, been on this earth for more than 80 years, and been across so many strands of the music industry for ever, the chances are any time you’re talking you might be asked about the death of some or other legend/giant/contemporary/well known figure.
And the chances are good you encountered them. In this case, back in the late ‘60s in Los Angeles when Davis was Columbia label president and Taj Mahal was suddenly single (musically speaking) as his bi-coastal and bi-racial group with another blues-and-more guitarist Ry Cooder, Rising Sons, split on the wheel of record company indecision and Mahal’s self-titled first album slid by without much attention.
“There’s good Clive and bad Clive, or good Clive and other Clive, I’ll put it that way,” says Mahal, wryly. “But for me I checked in with him after Rising Sons basically debacled because a lot of things collided that didn’t work in our favour. The music was there, the musicians were there, but all the legal stuff that went into putting the group together in those days was really difficult.
“People went off in their different directions and I decided after a year and a half of being outside I should call and check in with the record company and say, hey, I’m a signed artist here and I have ideas and I would like to record them. So I did. And instead of calling the stock boy in the mail room [he laughs] I called the president of the company, made a pitch to his secretary and Clive called me in a couple of hours.”
Davis sent a producer, David Rubinson, gave them studio time and some cash – “we became like the Damon Dash and Jay-Z relationship,” chuckles Mahal today: “Damon did the business and Jay-Z did the music” – and the resulting album, The Natch’l Blues, straddled stripped down folk blues, electrified city blues and punchy, brassy soul in a way that was the first indication of his career-long idea that borders, like label executives, were slippery things best ignored. ...
.. this is an excerpt. Read the full story at www.bernardzuel.net
