Bluesman's work has role in movie

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Bluesman's work has role in movie
July 25, 2009
By STEPHEN HUMPHRIES
philly.com

LOS ANGELES - In blues circles, Otis Taylor is something of an outsider. The musician, whose music plays a prominent role in Michael Mann's new movie, "Public Enemies," has an iconoclastic vision for his music. Put it this way: When was the last time you heard blues played on a banjo?

Taylor's just-released "Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs" - his 10th album - also incorporates jazz, folk, rock, and African rhythms. Music historians may struggle to compartmentalize the Denver-based musician's oeuvre, but Taylor calls it "trance blues."

"People say, 'You can't categorize Otis,' " the 60-year-old said recently. "The Blues Foundation says it has no category for me. So, my album's never going to be nominated for blues albums. But it's OK, because I won the Michael Mann award."

Taylor clearly relishes the prize of exposure. "Ten Million Slaves," a neck-and-neck canter of banjo and electric guitar, is selling well on iTunes due to its placement in the trailers for "Public Enemies," a Johnny Depp biopic about Depression-era gangster John Dillinger.

But, most of all, Taylor is grateful for the experience of working with a director renowned for enhancing visuals with rock songs ever since he created TV's "Miami Vice."

Taylor is still a relative novice in the blues world. Just 15 years ago, he was an antiques dealer. A music career wasn't on Taylor's mind. After all, a previous foray into professional musicianship as a young man failed to yield a viable record deal. By 1977 he knew it was time to quit.

The turning point was a benefit gig for a local coffee house. The rapturous response to the show proved to be the nudge he needed to cut an album.

"My wife said, 'There'll only be one record.' Now there's 10 records," he said, grinning.

A good review in Playboy magazine for Taylor's third album, "White African," made others sit up and take notice. In truth, Taylor's songs are hard to ignore. Over the course of successive albums he's written songs about the lynching of his great grandfather, the gunshot murder of his uncle, and his mother's drug bust for selling heroin. "Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs" includes a song in which the "other woman" in a marriage turns out to be the wife's lesbian lover.

It's about his mother.

Taylor's parents were into bebop jazz; Taylor preferred rootsy fare. "My father didn't like folk, country, or blues because that had to do with suppressed blacks," said the songwriter. "He was intelligentsia. He didn't like country people, because they stayed in the South and he got out."

Nevertheless, Taylor gravitated toward the banjo. But when someone noticed Taylor's prowess and encouraged him to go South, Taylor started "freaking out." The South was hardly a hospitable environment for a black man in the 1960s, so Taylor started leaning more toward guitar and harmonica.

"Later, about 15 or 20 years ago, I discovered that banjo came from Africa, but I didn't know that when I was a kid," he said.

Warming to his theme, Taylor laid out a detailed history lesson about how whites took over minstrel shows and, with their black face makeovers, employed banjos and watermelons as racially stereotypical props. Such Jim Crow-era performances may explain why African-Americans began to abandon the banjo. The instrument's original heritage was lost.

"Until the '60s, the banjo was still linked with ignorant white country people - Appalachian hillbillies," Taylor said.

Taylor's revelation about the black roots of the instrument inspired him to unite blues luminaries such as Guy Davis, Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart and Keb' Mo' for the 2008 album, "Recapturing the Banjo."

"I was just wanted to show that black people don't play the banjo like white people," Taylor said.

The record, which includes "Ten Million Slaves," was met with critical plaudits. But it also put pressure on Taylor to deliver a worthy follow-up.

"After the banjo album, I knew there was going to be a lull if I didn't watch out," said the songwriter. "I thought, 'If Otis Taylor does love songs, that'll get their attention, because I'm so dark.' "

Nevertheless, the songwriter challenged himself to write happy tunes. "Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs" boasts a number of romantic songs.

But "Dagger By My Side" is about a man who murders his mistress, and "Lost My Guitar" is a metaphoric lament about the tragic 1974 car-accident that killed Emma K. Walsh, the young daughter of Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh, in Boulder, Colo. Taylor is friends with the girl's mother.

Easygoing in person, Taylor is hardly an optimist. "You're either fighting to go up, or you're fighting to keep from going down," he said of his career.

"When you're unique, and there's only one of you, you're in a better position when things go bad because they can't go replace that. But they can go get 10 more of these Chicago [blues] guys. So, I'm hoping in the long run, I'll be stronger."