A Conversation with Taj Mahal – HuffPost 9.17.12

Mike Ragogna: Hi-ya, Taj.

Taj Mahal: Hi, Mike.

MR: You have a new project, The Hidden Treasures Of Taj Mahal: 1969 – 1973, with some studio gems on one disc and a Live at the Royal Albert Hall performance from April 18th, 1970, on the other. Can you go into those hidden treasures and the concert? I imagine you worked with the label in determining what the material was.

TM: Well, they had come to me several times. It ultimately started in the eighties. They started trying to create The Best of Taj Mahal, blah, blah, blah. Most of what they did back then was without communicating with me, what the best was, and so they made their choices based on trying to match what I was doing with the market. I was out there, and it was so far from right. It was pitiful. I didn’t have any control over that, but I was vocal about letting them know that they missed the mark. Anytime that we had any communication, I would tell them, “Look, you guys missed the whole point. I told you what my audience was listening to and you just went on and tried to compare what I was doing to what was acceptable for other people.”

This was a different thing. I still maintained some relationship with them — me and the people that were there back in the days, you know, my hey day at Columbia. Now it’s morphed into Sony and it’s a new crew of people in there who didn’t have a history with me. Some people started twenty years ago and developed a new history with me. They were able to come to me with some different ideas and, basically, see eye-to-eye on everything. It was certainly a lot better relationship than what it used to be and that’s when they said, “You’ve got to stop hanging here, it sounds pretty good.” I was like, “Nah, if I put out a record, it isn’t something that good.” They worked on me for a while, a couple years in fact, and they said that they would send me copies of it. I said, “Nah, I don’t want to listen to it.” They said okay and then left me alone. They came back at it again and said, “You know, we think there’s some good material here.”

A few years ago, we started to talk about it and they sent me copies of what they had there. I was quite surprised with it. I didn’t really change my mind about what I thought it was. Looking through the spyglass of anthropology, looking from the big end down to the little end, it sounded pretty doggone good. I didn’t really feel all that excited to put it out there, but they were. For once, let’s listen to what somebody else has to say. There isn’t tons of it, there’s just a precise amount of it. This is not bad. A lot of times, it’s just like, “Ugh, there are a lot of takes, you have to wait to try this,” and distraction. It’s not like that. It’s pretty concise and I am very happy to have kept it that way. I’m very excited for people to hear what’s there.

MR: The first disc has 12 tracks, but the total time is 77:27. You’re taking your time though some of these tracks. Can you remember some of these sessions? For example, you have “Sweet Mama Janice” on here. You’ve got “I Pity The Poor Immigrant Jacob Cyder.” Do you remember any of these sessions?

TM: All of it!

MR: All of it?

TM: All of it. I will tell you one that took me a second to really grab. It is called “Butter.” You know what it was? Often, when we’re recording something, we’ll come up and play on it to see if it’s going anywhere and then get back to the segueway into another song, collect our thoughts on something we’re trying to play. I was one of these guys, I didn’t go over three takes on anything. It might be five or six because you have a couple false starts, or there’s a breakdown or a mistake in it. But, mostly, I didn’t go over three takes. I thought that, if you can get it in take one, that’s the best ever.

MR: Also, it’s the way to capture the most inspiration, right?

TM: Right, exactly.

MR: Yeah.

TM: After that, you are spinning your wheels.

MR: Now, Sony Legacy has released some amazing blues collections by folks like Robert Johnson. But when it comes to living legends, they’ve got you.

TM: Uh, no, they’ve got Tony Bennett.

MR: (laughs) Yes, they’ve got Tony Bennett.

TM: Tony’s wonderful. What a wonderful guy. With Tony and his career, he’s still it. It’s an ongoing thing, it’s in process, and it’s in motion. But the music changed around him. For a while, people weren’t listening to what he was doing. He had his people who he was playing for, but he did other things. He has a very full life. He’s a great painter. I’ve seen a couple things he’s painted. And he is also an incredible human being. For myself, I am still in the career of it, so it’s kind of hard for me to look back and have the perspective of the observer. I wish I could sometimes because there are certain things I need to decide or figure out. Yeah, it’s exciting place to be in, man.

MR: On The Hidden Treasures Of Taj Mahal, your fans finally get to hear a terrific version of your Royal Albert Hall concert as well as those previously unreleased gems.

TM: Yeah, that’s good…there are not that many recorded concerts. I think there’s another live show we did in Chicago and, I don’t know. One of these days, I’m going to go down to the vault with those guys and look at what they got there. One time, I was in the photo lab with them. Very interesting; it’s all exciting.

MR: Speaking of live shows, you tour.

TM: We tour. I haven’t toured than less that 125-150 days a year since the late sixties, and that’s every year since then. By 1971-72, we were pretty much on the road a lot. My year is based around me being on tour. So regardless of what it might seem like, if you guys got stages, we’re going there to play. That’s just the way it is. If we’re not here, we’re in Europe or down in Australia and New Zealand. We get to go to Japan, you know, we get to do the Caribbean, South America, Central America, we do Canada and around Europe and the Mediterranean.

MR: You’re in demand.

TM: It’s not based on what’s hot now, it’s based on the fact that people like the music. They like to relive it. They like the relationship between us. Outside the country, they are less fairweather players. They like you because they like you. Not because you’ve got something hot and there you are.

MR: Sure, but in the Midwest, we love our performers too! (laughs)

TM: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It not to blanket it as being negative here. Here, it’s just more scripted. If they’ve got you by the neck, you’re going to hear from the guy. If you don’t, well, you’re on your own. (laughs) I don’t mind that. I don’t mind the “on your own” part because the people that like me like me because it’s the fact that they made that decision, not that someone made it for them. You’re right about the Midwest. It is a solid group of people that I’ve been playing to since the sixties. It’s been just about solid every year. It’s exciting, man. These songs are great to hear, great to hear the energy, and I think a lot of people are going to have a good time listening to them and dancing to them, hearing how things are developing.

MR: Taj, you’re a Grammy winner, which I imagine you appreciate in some way, right?

TM: Yeah. I had nine nominations before I figured out that it wasn’t something that they just dropped on you even if you got nominated. You had to do a whole lot of inside work. Once we mastered that, everything was pretty good. It’s true. People will nominate you, but there is work that you have to do to secure that nomination. You have to make sure everybody gets your record, they review it, they send in their comments. It’s more complicated than you just standing there waiting for them to say they like you. I’m really happy that after nine nominations, we won two in a row.

MR: Where do you think the blues is heading? What are your thoughts on it in general?

TM: Ultimately, it’s in good hands with the younger people who are involved in it. It needs to have, as usual, more of a platform and visibility. There’s still too much shrouding of things that should be things that people should know. It came out of the American experience that somehow resonates in everybody that are wanting it or enjoying listening to it, or whatever. It’s more than some old music people made here in this country. It’s a really powerful statement and testament to overcoming adversity and being able to enjoy getting over that adversity. To apply this incredible tone in music, to every motion and everything that’s happening in your life, it’s a fabulous point of view and place to start. So many musicians that I know who are now playing jazz or music beyond jazz started out with blues as their prime style. In my estimation, it’s like any other indigenous music we’ve come up with here, created here in this country. It needs to have a much better visibility and platform. But as far as the health of music, it’s incredible. Never before has there been a time where so much blues has been so available to people who download and have the internet, just many kinds of ways.

MR: We still need a national platform to make it more visible. Maybe it needs a weekly TV show or a sports event.

TM: Yeah. (laughs) Or you’re watching some sitcom and you here a phrase that’s 15 years old that’s making its way, you know, into the dialogue, in a script. It’s just the same thing with the blues. You hear people say the same thing over again. “Well, you know, I thought I was going to go to the concert and listen to something that was going to bring me down,” or they would think, ” I heard these guys playing blues for a half an hour and I was bored to death.” That’s not what the blues are about, ya know? I dare anyone to listen to the great players and not feel bored. If you are, you’re dead.

MR: Taj, what’s your advice for new artists?

TM: New artists? I’m not limited to blues, I’m just talking about music. What I usually say to artists is that people try to figure out how one becomes unique. There are a lot of reasons for that. One reason is that you have a respect for your tradition, your culture. Guys got a French brother or a Scottish father or a French father and, you know, an Italian mother. If you’re 19 years old and you’re playing music, why wouldn’t you take the time to investigate, you know, what would be your role as a popular musician in the culture of your parents or a musician in either of those cultures, you know? Find out what it is that you can use. Put it down in your hand, mold it up like a piece of clay, add some blues, R&B, or some pop or country or some reggae and some classical music. You’re going to be unique. I mean, it’s right there. In my estimation, it is like the concept of cooking or alchemy, which is, to me, cooking with elements. The other cooking is with vegetables and oils, onions, etc. This is something that’s going to be more as people change their ways, buy their foods, spending and puttin’ out that money, to have it all 3,000 miles across the country. They’re going to have something close by dealing with everything that’s 25 miles outside your city. The reason it’s going to be is because some people are going to, in the future, in order to change their economic basis to something that makes some sense is to stop taking for granted that the supermarket down the road is always going to be there. That leads to the same kind of thing as music. You’re going to be more self-sufficient about how you produce it. That’s all I’ve been headed toward. All I want is to play for myself more than anything else because it helped to balance out just being inside your head.

MR: Yeah.

TM: And being an intellectual. If you can’t feel it in your body and in your movement… I am sure a lot of people live their lives that way, but I didn’t want to. I encourage people to move on both levels. Have the mind and body working soundly together and music is something that helps that.

MR: Nice. While on tour, will you be playing songs from your Hidden Treasures release?

TM: That will be later on this year. There are some tunes that I’ve already played in other bands I’ve had along the way. This is all coming out, I’ve never really liked to tour the album I was playing. Maybe back in the early sixties, when there was so much music playing, after a while, there’s some stuff that I would have to cover anyway because that’s what people came for. They wanted to hear those classics — “Corina,” “Fishing Blues,” and, you know, many of the other tunes that were really popular. “Leaving Trunk” and “She Caught The Katy.” Right now, with the trio, I haven’t started working with any of that material yet. With the bigger band we will because a lot of it does entail a larger arrangement to pull it off. I haven’t thought about it, we’re not focusing on it. I’m just looking to make sure this thing gets out there. I just can’t believe they are putting it out.

MR: Congratulations on that and all the best with that. Taj, I appreciate you spending time talking to us here, and thanks for bringing in sustainable living.

TM: Before the music kicked in, I owned an Associate’s degree in Animal Science and a minor in Veterinary Science and Agronomy. I spent a number of years in the vocation of agriculture; I spent six, seven, eight years on a big dairy farm making money to go to college and, you know, my thought is there are two things that we really can’t do without — music and food. Getting to the sustainability, I’ve been thinking about it since the fifties when it appeared to me that we were going to run out in the direction that we were going. Then we got to the sixties and there were people that were thinking on that same level. I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with sustainable energy, permaculture — people that are not plowing, they’re fielding, cuttin’ it low. Sometimes, they burn it off, take off the straw and plant it back in the same fields again. The stuff that can be done, I’ve always had an interest in it. It’s a personal study for me, what’s going on with the agriculture, all the time. I’ve been a supporter of farmers markets for 40 – 50 years. Always have been. This is more of a real thing, 34 miles a gallon. 56 miles a gallon? Alright, they know they can do it. They also know that they don’t want to do it because they are making too much money. We just have to guide them. “If you want my money, then you are going have to dance to this,” instead of the other way around. I’m dancing to your tune, and you’ve got my money! (laughs)

MR: That reminds me of one of your quotes. When you were talking about The Hidden Treasures Of Taj Mahal, it was a general statement, but you said, “Go for it babies, listen and dance your,” well, we’ll just say “butts off.”

TM: Yeah!

MR: And there’s your other quote that I love. “I made the music of my heart and y’all helped so thanks — Maestro Mahal.”

Transcribed by Joe Stahl