Otis Taylor

Throughout his trajectory as a blues performer, Otis Taylor confronted difficult themes without hesitation, moving from time spent at Denver’s Folklore Center through a short interlude in London, England, a withdrawal from music in 1977, a thriving period as an antiques broker, and a return to the blues in 1995. His 2001 release White African on Northern Blues Music, which showcased Kenny Passarelli on bass and keyboards alongside Eddie Turner on lead guitar, stood as his most forthright examination of African-American experiences, confronting the lynching of his great-grandfather and the murder of his uncle. He also examined brutality through accounts of a Black man put to death in the 1930s for a crime he had not committed and of a father unable to pay for medical care while watching his son perish. Taylor further blended faith with irony by portraying Jesus as an ordinary man seeking to evade crucifixion and by exploring infidelity among ordinary people.

His debut album Blue-Eyed Monster, together with 1997’s When Negroes Walked the Earth, likewise unsettled the blues community. Portions of Taylor’s work evoked the rural Delta settings of the 1920s and 1930s, which aligned with his reading of Charley Patton’s “Stone Pony” on the Shanachie Records collection Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues: New Acoustic Recordings of Pre-War Blues Classics, a project that also included Alvin Youngblood Hart, John Hammond, Duke Robillard, and Corey Harris. Elsewhere his songs addressed social injustices so directly that they recalled the stance of South African poet and activist Stephen Biko.

Born in Chicago in 1948, Taylor relocated with his family to Denver after his uncle’s murder in search of safety. He developed an affinity for blues and folk music at the Folklore Center, and after hearing Etta James perform “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You” he embraced the blues, the banjo, country blues, and Mississippi John Hurt, while also admiring Junior Wells and Muddy Waters and absorbing folk-blues along with Appalachian traditions. He mastered guitar, banjo, and harmonica, later recognizing the deeper links between these instruments and the savannahs of western Africa.

In his mid-teens Taylor assembled his initial ensembles, the Butterscotch Fire Department Blues Band and subsequently the Otis Taylor Blues Band. He spent part of 1969 in England attempting to secure a recording contract with Blue Horizon, yet talks collapsed and he came back to the United States. During the 1970s he adopted the mandolin before stepping away from music in 1976 to build a prosperous career as an antiques broker. Encouraged by Passarelli, he resumed performing in 1995, beginning with a benefit concert and then appearing both solo and with his band across America and Europe. In summer 2000 he was awarded a composition fellowship by the Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah, where he mingled with film figures at the Sundance Film Festival; When Negroes Walked the Earth appeared on Shoelace Records that same year.

Taylor joined the “Writing the Blues” component of the National Blues Foundation’s “Blues in the Schools” program and began composing and performing fresh material in 2001. Northern Blues issued White African and Respect the Dead in 2001 and 2002, after which Truth Is Not Fiction became his first Telarc Blues album in 2003. A second Telarc set, Double V, followed in 2004, then Below the Fold in 2005 and Definition of a Circle two years later. The revelatory Recapturing the Banjo emerged in 2008 on Telarc, succeeded by the dark and jazzy Pentatonic Wars and Love Songs in 2009. Taylor moved quickly to release Clovis People, Vol. 3 in 2010, an album whose participants reflected his broadening musical reach: daughter Cassie Taylor on bass, renowned electric guitarist Gary Moore on lead guitar, pedal steel guitarist Chuck Campbell, and jazz trumpeter and cornetist Ron Miles.

After experiencing back pain in 2010, Taylor consulted a physician who identified a softball-sized cyst on his liver and spine. He scheduled surgery yet immediately entered the studio to record new material “just in case.” He recovered, completed Contraband, and saw it issued by Telarc in early 2012. For 2013’s My World Is Gone he assembled a larger ensemble that included Ron Miles and Mato Nanji, lead guitarist from Indigenous. The 2015 album Hey Joe Opus: Red Meat incorporated appearances by Langhorne Slim and Warren Haynes, while 2017’s Fantasizing About Being Black presented Taylor’s reflections on contemporary race relations through exploratory blues.