Consumer Guide Album

Taj Mahal: Savoy [Stony Plain, 2023]
His voice has dried up a pinch or two since he was born in 1942, so long ago that his pianist-arranger dad and gospel-singing mom could well have heard most of these Black pop standards at the landmark Harlem ballroom of the title before they emigrated with young Henry to Springfield Mass. True, these performances can't quite match the voracity that animated Taj's Blues and Ooh So Good 'n Blues lo these many years ago. But the songs he settled on are so classic yet so varied--Gershwin, Ellington, Mercer-Arlen, Louis Jordan, McKinney's Cotton Pickers--they vie with the traditional blues he's been recording off and on since he abandoned agronomy so he could spend his life exploring Africa's musical diaspora. Over the years he's focused on his familial Caribbean while going so far as to hook up with Malian kora master Toumani Diabate on 1999's Kulanjan. But with invaluable help from the great lost producer John Simon, who also adds the kind of piano Taj's dad might have, this album is pretty much one of a kind. If you're afraid it's not for you, at least check out Maria Muldaur's cameo on "Baby It's Cold Outside." You owe it to yourself, and to history. A