Acoustic Guitar: Mojo Master

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Mojo Master
After four decades of expressing universal human emotions though the blues and a cornucopia of other genres, Taj Mahal is still fusing musical traditions, delighting audiences all around the world, and "happy to be just like I am." In this exclusive interview, he discusses his early influences, his lifelong musical loves, and the enduring power and relevance of the blues.

By Pete Madsen

IN THIS STORY

Audio Examples
Ex. 25: Example 11, played slowly

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Photo credit: Anne Hamersky

AUDIO: Tune Up

AUDIO: Tune Up, open-G tuning

AUDIO: Introduction

Taj Mahal has been mining the mother lode of African-American musical idioms for over 40 years. Beyond blues, jazz, gospel, R&B, and soul, he has included music from around the world, including the Caribbean, Hawaii, Central and South America, and, of course, Africa in his musical palette. But sit down and talk with this eloquent, thoughtful artist and you soon realize that country blues is at the foundation of almost everything he does.

Born Henry St. Claire Fredericks, in Harlem, New York, in 1942, Taj grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts—where, he says, the blues was always around him. His father, a jazz pianist of Caribbean descent, and his mother, a gospel-singing schoolteacher from South Carolina, encouraged him to play music, and he briefly took classical piano lessons. He also dabbled in clarinet, trombone, and harmonica and enjoyed singing, but when a neighbor gave Mahal some guitar pointers, he was off and running. He became interested in the origins of the music he was hearing and immersed himself in the study of African-American music, a lifelong pursuit nurtured in his childhood by frequent visits to the Fredericks home by musicians from the Caribbean, Africa, and all over the US.

In 1964, after attending the University of Massachusetts, he headed to Los Angeles, where he met Ry Cooder, with whom he formed the short-lived band the Rising Sons. During this period Mahal also met and played with blues legends such as Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Buddy Guy, and many others. Mahal became a solo artist and before the decade was out released three brilliant, highly influential albums: Taj Mahal (1967), The Natch’l Blues (1968), and Giant Steps/De Old Folks at Home (1969). They launched a richly creative career in which he has won acclaim (including two Grammies), recorded more than 40 albums, and acted in and/or composed the score for a number of films, all the while continuing to expand upon his love of blues by incorporating music from many world cultures. (His music, performing and recording credits, touring schedule, and favorite fishing spots are all chronicled on his website, www.taj-mo-roots.com.)

Mahal met with me last spring at Anna’s Jazz Island, a nightclub in downtown Berkeley, California, to discuss early influences, his guitar technique, and the universal relevance of the blues.

What got you into the blues? Can you pinpoint a time?
MAHAL It was always there, one way or another. I grew up around it. You see, back in those days, nobody knew what the music was. There was all this stuff out there. You might hear somebody beating on the guitar, or a quartet or trio or duo playing, two guys, one with a mandolin, one with a guitar—and the music was in the people. But there was this tone on the inside of the music; and I kept trying to find out, “Well, what is that?” And every now then you’d hear fleeting moments come through. You would hear some orchestra play, say Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians, and they would play a certain kind of blues. And you’d think, “Where did they learn that from?” It’s like fishin’: You know they’re out there!

Do you remember one of the first blues tunes you learned to play?
MAHAL [Plays Example 1.] I was about 13 or 14, and I discovered that my stepfather had a guitar, and I used to sneak it out and play it and try to figure out, “How do you make something out of this?” This guy, Lynnwood Perry, moved in next door to us from Lewisburg, North Carolina. He was six months or a year older than me, and he could play! When I first heard Robert Johnson’s records, when I went away to university, I was not impressed—they sounded old and scratchy. Because I was used to somebody standing right in the same room with me, showing me their playing, and turning me on to a lot of cats who played. A lot of Southerners migrated to our town. So, if you went into a record store and thumbed through, you were always gonna come across Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King, T-Bone Walker. It just was there. But how to play it was another thing.

AUDIO: Example 1

AUDIO: Example 1, played slowly

You learned to play from your neighbor?
MAHAL Yes, he was the one that started me off. He would be playing all the frontline stuff and I would be playing backup.

But you got more into a fingerstyle thing, where you were doing an alternating bass and accompanying yourself.
MAHAL Well, yeah, that kinda stuff—I had heard that music go by my head. I didn’t want to play guitar with a straight pick. I mean, not that I don’t know how to do that. But [with fingerstyle] it was like the whole instrument was playing. It connected with older-style music. And that was something I was really interested in, because I knew if I could get a wedge up under that stuff there was whole lot of other stuff there. I wanted to get away from just being a strummer or playing that two-note shuffle rhythm. [Starts to play a version of “Freight Train.”]

Did you ever run across Elizabeth Cotten in your travels?
MAHAL Oh yeah, I played a lot with her. I took her around with me. Took her over to Hawaii, had her play over there with me, people really enjoyed her. I was thrilled to be playing with her. I knew her very well. I met her in Philadelphia when I was 19, maybe 20.

I’m curious, that little intro to “Freight Train”—is that something you made up yourself?
MAHAL This [Example 2] is from Mrs. Etta Baker; but I picked all that up from Elizabeth. She had these nice little breakdowns and transitions. There is a Folkways album of her that is great. You could play for the next two lifetimes to learn any of the stuff she would play. I’ve got a really nice DVD where she was talking about the way she learned how to play. [Flips guitar over.] Essentially what she was saying was, this finger [left index] deals with these three notes [fourth through sixth strings] and the thumb deals with these [first through third strings]. ’Cause she was playing a right-handed guitar. You’d have to listen real good when you were playing with her to see how she made her changes, because watching her was not gonna help you.

AUDIO: Example 2

AUDIO: Example 2, played slowly

Do you play in open tunings?
MAHAL Sure: open D, open E, and open G. [Tunes to open G, plays Example 9.]

AUDIO: Example 9

AUDIO: Example 9, played slowly

You play that in open G, and it sounds like something John Hurt would have played in standard tuning in the key of G.
MAHAL [Proceeds to retune to standard tuning and play same groove again, Example 10.] Standard tuning or open tuning, it don’t matter. It’s two different sounds.

AUDIO: Example 10

AUDIO: Example 10, played slowly

Do you play much slide?
MAHAL I’m beginning to again. I did a lot for a while. A lot of that stuff I do for myself. I started messin’ with lap steel. I spent some time with Sonny Rose and those kinda cats. I like the way it’s played when it’s played as a blues instrument and as a Hawaiian instrument. And there are some other applications of it. I love the blues stuff, but I really love the Hawaiian stuff.

Like the early Hawaiian stuff from the ’20s, Sol Ho’opi’I and stuff like that?
MAHAL Oh yeah, Ho’opi’I, he’s great.

I was wondering how much the Hawaiian players were influencing the blues players: They were both playing resonator guitars.
MAHAL I think the Hawaiian troupes traveling with medicine shows might have influenced some of [the blues players]. I don’t know when the exact point came around. I know the [African] diddley bow was happening, deep down in the South. In the Mississippi Delta, they got a big hold on it. A lot of the old songsters, they played what they called knife blade.

They would open up a jack knife or a butter knife [demonstrates, putting the guitar on his lap], then they would put a nail up underneath [the nut] and play “John Henry” and “Shake ’Em on Down.”

I know that Charley Patton played knife-blade style; you can really hear the difference between knife blade and bottle neck.
MAHAL Patton was just ferocious—“High Water Everywhere (Part II).” I usually don’t have favorites by these guys, but “High Water…” [Shakes his head.] Mm-mmm. [Tunes back to open G and plays a Charley Patton/Son House–type groove, Example 11; starts to wail à la Charley Patton.] When I heard Howlin’ Wolf, I said, “Man, that cat must have listened when Charley Patton sat him down and showed him a whole buncha stuff.” That stuff was really amazing. Wolf, Funny Papa Smith, Papa Charlie John Jackson.

AUDIO: Example 11

AUDIO: Example 11, played slowly

I also heard some Son House in what you just played.
MAHAL Yeah, I got to play with Son House. Back when they first brought him back out of the South. He wasn’t playin’. He was kinda nervous. You know, an old black man from Mississippi, and all these young white kids coming around, calling him by his first name, asking him all these questions. He didn’t know what they was doing. How come they knew about his music? “How in the heck could I be somebody on the delta, where life ain’t worth a cold fart, and now all these boys are, like, ‘Play that song from 1932, Serial Number 175477—you know, on the Bluebird label—whatever it is, I like it when you make your glissandos—how are you tuning your guitar?’?” For a guy who didn’t get that kind of attention from the mainstream culture, it was pretty unnerving. He was recovering from a stomach operation, where they had taken out a quarter of his stomach or something like that. He was supposed to not have any alchol, but of course they would give him little nips. They were upset that they couldn’t get him to play.

So they called me up—I was livin’ up the street in Cambridge—and I came down and I realized what was going on: He’s a senior. You got to relate to him like that. And they didn’t know that. They just kept comin’ at him. They were nice enough guys: Al Wilson, who ended up in Canned Heat, and Phil Spiro, and Dick Warner was also involved, John Fahey and Stefan Grossman, they all probably got plugged in at some point.

Any advice you can give to people who want to play like Taj Mahal?
MAHAL Listen to lots of West Indian music. The thing is, everybody tries to figure out, why am I so excited about playing? Because: 6/8 over 2/4 or 4/4 or 3/4. 6/8 is an optimistic feel. So many people come to the blues [with an attitude of], “Oh, I wanna really feel down about my life, so I’m gonna go [plays blues E shuffle in a morose fashion].” I don’t want to ever have to be anywhere in a room with somebody who thinks that is blues.

So a lot of people are missing out on this 6/8 feel against 2/4. It’s really about the rhythm.
MAHAL It’s always about the rhythm! Remember, you’re dealing with a dancing culture, that came [over] and had to reorganize their dance thing on the basis of this new [Western European] music; and that’s why we have the styles of music here. But the propensity is of a dancing culture. Not that everybody dances; not that everybody black can dance. And it’s not just something natural. You got to learn it. You got to have the idea for it. That’s why when I’m playing, most of the time I’m movin’.

But you asked me what to do: Listen to other kinds of music that you can feel. You don’t quite know what it is? Listen to music where the language is something you don’t understand. Music is the universal, if not the intergalactic, language.

TAKE THE BLUES AS THEY ARE
Taj Mahal expresses genuine enthusiasm for the newer generation of blues players—Alvin Youngblood Hart, Keb’ Mo’, and others—that have emerged in recent years. “Oh, I think it’s great,” he says. “I’m thrilled to see those boys out there. And anybody else!” But he also points out that anyone who wants to play the blues seriously—and be regarded as a serious player—must take the form seriously. “At this point I don’t think you can separate it by whether [a player is] black or white,” he says. “I think you can separate it by if they can play it. I don’t care who you are; it’s about playing. I’m not gonna play no country music and try to make it something that it ain’t. And I don’t expect nobody to get up and play blues and play something that it ain’t. Because there is something that it is. It’s not a maybe. It doesn’t kinda sound like this. This is what it is. It’s a real music and it deserves that respect as a real music.”

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Taj Mahal's Equipment Picks
This article also appears in Acoustic Guitar, December 2006

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