The blues, that wonderful basis of so much American popular music, has for many listeners grown a bit stale and old-fashioned. It’s not much of a draw outside bar bands, and other than Alligator Records and APO Records, most of the biggest blues labels have folded or gone dormant. Losing many of the music’s first- and secondgeneration practitioners hasn’t helped.
So when you combine the wide-ranging talents of Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’, two players whose singing and playing are rooted in the blues but who, for artistic and financial reasons, have built wider-ranging careers (particularly Mahal), what kind of music should they record? Does the world really need another middling blues-rock session, even from talents this considerable?
The answer is a tasteful and beautifully balanced album, TajMo, now also the name of a tour, a website, and perhaps a profitable side project for both men.
First, to keep the faithful on board, Mahal and Mo’ had to record something traditional. Their version on side two of the great Tennessee bluesman Sleepy John Estes’s “Diving Duck Blues,” which Mahal recorded on his 1968 self-titled debut with Ry Cooder and Jesse Ed Davis, is masterful. With both men singing, Mahal on acoustic guitar, and Keb’ Mo’ on resonator guitar, this is very quiet, traditional acoustic blues played by two of the very best, and Mahal clearly relishes singing it again.
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