Otis Taylor can make people nervous. His take on the blues is defiant, angry, aggressive, and confrontational, owing as much to Peter Tosh as Charley Patton. Although he carries the dust of 1920s country blues in his mostly acoustic songs, his railings against social injustices are thoroughly contemporary. Taylor is an often pedantic songwriter, ...
Otis Taylor has a knack for interesting titles; Blue-Eyed Monster and When Negros Walked the Earth are among the CDs that the Denver bluesman recorded before White African. Taylor also has a knack for very dark and sobering themes -- this 2001 release, in fact, is full of them. On White African, Taylor's subject matter ranges from lynching in the ...
In many cases, modern-day blues artists merely ape the blues masters of yesteryear -- following the blueprint to a T. So it is truly a breath of fresh air when Otis Taylor releases a new album, such as 2007's Definition of a Circle. Sure, there are elements of modern-day blues-rock detected (namely, the inclusion of guest guitarist Gary Moore on ...
Otis Taylor's unconventional approach to the blues has made him one of the freshest and most innovative musicians to hit the genre in decades. A multi-instrumentalist, his driving, modal arrangements and defiant, politicized subject matter make most other contemporary blues artists seem like watered-down popsters. Imagine grafting John Lee Hooker ...
Otis Taylor doesn't suffer fools lightly, and his insistent, hard-driving modal songs, full of defiant reclamations of history and tender vignettes of people struggling to survive in hostile cultural territory, are like nothing else on the contemporary blues scene. Imagine John Lee Hooker if he had grown up in the Appalachians and cut his teeth ...
Otis Taylor earned acclaim in 2001 when his White African release got picked up for national distribution, but this previous disc could just as easily have been the one to bring him into the spotlight: It was every bit as deep, ambitious, and listenable as White African. Listening to the independently issued When Negroes Walked the Earth reveals ...
Otis Taylor might well be the best and most inspired of contemporary bluesmen. His White African album was a masterpiece -- which makes the task of following it doubly difficult. With Respect the Dead, however, he does a superb job -- the man is still very much on a roll. Kicking off with the stark, banjo-led "Ten Million Slaves," the intensity ...
Thanks to films like Deliverance and the rise of bluegrass since the mid-'50s, the banjo has come to be associated with white Appalachia in most people's minds, but the instrument actually has its origins in West Africa, arriving in the New World via the slave trade, and consequently became a dominant factor in early African-American song styles. ...
Otis Taylor doesn't suffer fools lightly, and his songs are full of defiant reclamations of history and tender vignettes of people struggling to survive in hostile cultural territory. Now he wants to talk about love. Taylor began his career playing bluegrass banjo, but switched to guitar (and the blues) in the late '60s, working in various bands ...
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