Otis Taylor: blues misfit and visionary

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Otis Taylor: blues misfit and visionary
June 9, 2010
By GEG KOT
Kentucky.com

Otis Taylor calls the music he plays "trance blues," which is one way of describing a sound that doesn't really have a home in traditional blues circles.
"I'm a blues artist not a blues musician," he says. "I'm not a blues interpreter. People get confused when I say that, but Muddy Waters didn't want to play what everybody else played. He didn't want to sound like anyone else. Neither do I."
Taylor says he's been told by various keepers of blues institutions that despite his 10 acclaimed studio albums since 2000, he still doesn't fit in with their perception of what the music should be. No, Otis Taylor doesn't play "Sweet Home Chicago."

"The Blues Foundation told me they don't have a category for the kind of music I make," he says. "In response to that, I ask, 'What if the greatest blues musician hasn't been born yet?' They look at me like I'm tripping when I say that. That's a test to see just how forward-thinking someone is. I mean, who the hell did Robert Johnson listen to? The blues to me is all about call and response. Flamenco, Irish music, they're very close to the blues. It's an attitude."
His latest album, "Clovis People Vol. 3" (Telarc), gives free reign to his idiosyncrasies. Snaking guitars ride a chord, maybe two, over grooves as steady as a river, while banjo, theremin, violin and pedal steel add spooky atmosphere and a cornet darts in and out. Once in a while, a guitar solo erupts. It's a hypnotic sound that shares similarities with acid-rock, Afro-beat, and the Mississippi hill-country blues of R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough.
The title of "Clovis People" was derived from an ancient culture whose artifacts were discovered near Taylor's home in Colorado. In the same way, Taylor did a little digging himself to piece together the album, resurrecting songs from throughout his career that either didn't get widely heard or weren't released at all. "Little Willy," for example, is a tale of a school shooting that Taylor shelved when the Columbine massacre occurred in 1999.
"The things I write about happened a long time ago," Taylor says. "I don't feel comfortable writing songs that are 'topical.' It makes me really uncomfortable making money off someone's disaster."
Instead, Taylor prefers a more elliptical, open-ended style that nudges listeners toward reaching their own conclusions about what happens in his songs. It's an approach in keeping with the shadowy instrumental interplay he prefers.
That style was forged in Denver, where he studied banjo at the local folklore center as a teenager, and then moved to Boulder, Col., where he found himself in a band with future Deep Purple guitarist Tommy Bolin in 1967. Taylor scored a record deal, but never made an album, in part because he had so much difficulty transferring his skills as a live performer into a studio recording. Discouraged, he walked away from the business in the mid-'70s and didn't return until the mid-'90s. During his time away he worked as an antiques dealer and bicycling coach.
"I had this style that people still consider strange, unorthodox," Taylor says. "It was a fluke that I got back into it. It wasn't what I was going to do. But I realized why I started playing music again. I don't know if I love what I do, but I'm obsessed with it."
That obsession took shape over a series of albums that have cemented Taylor's reputation as a visionary artist and songwriter. Oddly enough, though the straight blues world hasn't fully embraced him, Hollywood has. His songs have been used in several TV shows and movies, including Michael Mann's 2009 release "Public Enemies." The track "Ten million Slaves," which plays over the closing credits, has been streamed more than 1.1 million times on YouTube.
"I'm not a kitten or a baby, I'm not cute, so people must be seeking out the song because they're moved by it," Taylor says. "I'm considered radical, so there's no middle ground for me. You either get it or you don't. When Hollywood gets it, it changes your life."