Otis Taylor: Below The Fold

(Herald rating: * * * *)

Chicago-born bluesman Taylor had a broader musical reach than most of his hometown colleagues. He plays banjo and mandolin alongside the customary guitars and harmonica. And there is something of the serious storyteller about him. His previous albums have been titled White African, Respect the Dead, Truth is Not Fiction, and When Negroes Walked the Earth.

There is much intensity to his work where he sings of black Americans in the South daring to stand up for their civil rights, of a man who has mistreated his wife and now resorts to hookers, of his mother's woman lover moving in when his parents separated, and of abandonment. Such uninviting stories and others come with coiled passion where the instrumentation is often minimal but applied like barbed wire being tightened.

Reference points are early John Lee Hooker, Mississippi John Hurt and Delta blue artists, but Taylor avoids lyrical and musical cliches. With mournful trumpet, cello and stinging but restrained electric guitar, these songs suggest a darkness in the heart of the singer. But in the telling there is a redemptive power. This isn't easy, but it dares you to look away.

Label: Telarc/Elite