Otis Taylor – Respect The Dead

A veteran of the Otis Taylor Blues Band and T&O Short Line with guitarist Tommy Bolin, Otis Taylor ended his extended hiatus from the music business in the 1990s. The driving, intense folk blues of Respect The Dead follows last year’s acclaimed White African.

Again using a drumless format, Taylor handles acoustic guitar — he’s a master of the single chord driven to pointed excess — banjo, harmonica, and mandolin. Producer Kenny Passarelli adds bass to Taylor’s fecund rhythms; Eddie Turner sends shafts of electric guitar notes, often bent and jarring, into some dense, mesmerizing passages; and Taylor’s daughter, Cassie, adds tender backing vocals, giving sweet relief to the dark blues in his deep, plangent voice.

Social issues, particularly African-American ones, have peppered Taylor’s recent works, and that continues to be the case here. Respect The Dead opens with the frenetic, despairing “Ten Million Slaves”, a hypnotic country blues tune, anchored by electric banjo, that recollects the fears of enslaved Africans transported to the Americas. Its finale — a feral moan matched with panicked banjo plucking — sends a tingle down the spine as the journey ends for the helpless slaves, but the nightmare doesn’t.

Taylor often favors a dark truth over a light tale, and he doesn’t dress it up or dumb it down.