Taj Mahal, Savoy, Stony Plain Records ***1/2

What a voice. What a feeling. Not an album for intellectualising over but built for unabashed enjoyment instead veteran blues man Taj Mahal goes pretty much jazz certainly in terms of the choice of tunes and all points adjacent much more than usual …

Published: 24 Apr 2023. Updated: 41 days.

What a voice. What a feeling. Not an album for intellectualising over but built for unabashed enjoyment instead veteran blues man Taj Mahal goes pretty much jazz certainly in terms of the choice of tunes and all points adjacent much more than usual here on a very enjoyable romp through a whole load of standards that you would have thought are just too familiar to work but do given the tilt Mahal and pals bring to it. So riffing against backing singers on 'Stompin’ at the Savoy' it's so laid back it's horizontal. Maria Muldaur guests on a stately ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside’ while violinist Evan Price picks up some choice spots especially effective on 'Baby Won't You Please Come Home.' Recorded in an Oakland, California, studio with Taj (real name Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr who turned 80 last year) Danny Caron is on guitar; Ruth Davies on the bass; album producer John Simon on piano; and Leon Joyce, Jr is on drums as the core unit with guests joining in. Taj's harmonica playing on the rolling 'Caldonia' is one of the best bits and 'Lady Be Good' is another highlight when Taj scats. A fun listen. Out on 28 April. 'Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby' is streaming ahead of release. Taj Mahal, photo: via G Promo

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Track of the week: Pablo Held, Norma Winstone, Underwater Rendezvous, Hopalit *****

For track of the week we return to the eventually mellotron rising (way on later from when you hear piano accompaniment initially) and first track of Buoyancy the outrageously atmospheric Norma Winstone and Pablo Held co-write. Something of an …

Published: 24 Apr 2023. Updated: 41 days.

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For track of the week we return to the eventually mellotron rising (way on later from when you hear piano accompaniment initially) and first track of Buoyancy the outrageously atmospheric Norma Winstone and Pablo Held co-write. Something of an instant classic in both the precarious and unsettling melody and the lyrics and very spooky vocal of Norma Winstone, the stunning 'Underwater Rendezvous' takes the breath away. Percy Pursglove's Wheelerian contribution on flugel is the icing on the cake. As for that eerie vocal dance to the music of time the effect is occult. ''Memories of childhood'' are that rendez-vous on a weightless song structurally all verse, no chorus. Beyond any direct context think of Edward Thomas (1878-1917) first, the great First World War poet, for purposes of delicacy and sense of both time and silence and above all rural Englishness not necessarily a benign picture postcard space but somehow a haunted landscape as well. Play the track first and read these lines as the song begins its own particular spell:

Only the sound remains

Of the old mill;

Gone is the wheel;

On the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns.

Edward Thomas 'The Mill Water'

Defer as well to his classic 'Adlestrop' - that is inevitable in a way given the power of Thomas' imagery:

Yes. I remember Adlestrop -

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

It's uncanny isn't it the match? And then you go read Philip Larkin and the title poem of 'The Whitsun Weddings' perhaps for a ''sense of falling, like an arrow-shower/Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.''

Norma Winstone and pianist Will Bartlett have delivered an extraordinary magnum opus of a jazz treatment of Larkin's poetry very recently released incidentally - The Soundless Dark which you can read about here.

Norma Winstone, photo: press