That first record is now safely out of print. “I wasn’t complete about my vision,” says Taylor, “so why should I put out something that wasn’t complete? It was a decent album, not a great album. All the others are great albums. And, nothing like keeping something rare. One day when I want to do a greatest hits, people will want to buy it because they get something from Blue Eyed Monster. Merchandising!”
If his assessment seems immodest, it’s nevertheless largely accurate. When Negroes Walked The Earth (dedicated to his father, who died in 1974, and whose swaggering portraits adorn the album) is more a look backward at his training in the folk blues, including gruff covers of “Cuckoo” and “Pretty Polly”. Each subsequent record has a scope, an artistic vision, an intent that is unmistakable and unwavering.
“I’m trying to make them a journey,” he says. “A lot of that I learned from Kenny, and from a guy named George S. Clinton [a well-established soundtrack composer; Austin Powers, etc.]; the guy was a Sundance Fellow and he was my teacher [during the summer of 2000] for film and composing.”
Taylor took over production of his music with Double V, once Passarelli had left the band. “I got most of my technique watching Kenny,” Taylor says with a soft laugh. “I’d always act like I wasn’t watching, like I was asleep. But I was always paying attention. I knew I could do this two albums ago, but I just for loyalty didn’t.”
His albums are elegant but deceptively simple affairs, regardless who’s producing. Taylor is not, by reputation, a fan of multiple takes, and though the instrumentation on Double V includes cellos and horns, he’s careful to record music he can play regardless the setting. Hence the absence of drums.
“I didn’t [use] drums because I try to make an album so if I go solo, and you see me solo, you won’t be disappointed.”
Taylor will not smile for the camera, though our photographer finds him more than friendly. He does not smile, is barely animated onstage, though he’s been fronting bands off and on since the mid-1960s. He speaks so softly you can barely hear him, yet his songs ring so clearly they will not be ignored.
He knows exactly what he is doing. This is his art, it’s serious art, and everything about his presentation demands that it be taken as such. And yet he records with studied informality, and says the songs just come to him.
“I just wrote a song this morning,” he says. “I had this guitar line that I love, and I just never could get it. I got it this morning, the words. It’s really weird, I just don’t fight it. I was hitting this really good spell of riffs but no words for about two months, and all the sudden today the words came to me that mean something, that I feel. That made me happy. That’s why I sound up to you, because I actually am.”
He actually should be. He has selected a photograph of daughter Cassie to adorn the cover of Double V (younger daughter Jae suggested the story for “Mandan Woman”, about York, the slave who traveled with the Lewis & Clark expedition), and it is Cassie who sings lead on the final track, “Buy Myself Some Freedom”.
“Oh, she’s the star,” he says, “but she wants to be an actress. One day it’ll be like, ‘Wasn’t your father some obscure blues musician?’ Everybody is just waiting for her to decide she wants to do music. She’s a really good bass player, she has a really original sounding voice, but she could care less.”
Otis Taylor is not given to idle brags, and his daughter is everything he says, perhaps more. “I wasn’t that good when I was 17,” he says. “I know how good I was. I didn’t have a voice like she has a voice. That’s just the way it is…”
A gesture from the end of World War II decodes the title, Double V. It was, a press release says, a hand sign meant to signify victory in the war, and the willingness of returning black soldiers to fight for the right to vote.
Truth Is Not Fiction opened with “Rosa Rosa”. White African opened with “My Soul’s In Louisiana”, the story of a black man shot by whites for a murder he didn’t commit. Respect The Dead opened with “Ten Million Slaves”.
“They’re not political,” Taylor insists. “I’m a storyteller. If you tell stories about what happened to black people, that’s not political, it’s just historical. I thought it was very paradoxical that Rosa Parks was sitting down to stand up for freedom. It wasn’t being political, I was telling a story about somebody having great strength as a woman.”
No, he will not be led to play angry black man, not even by intimations of supportive white liberal guilt.
“I don’t want to overjudge people, because then I’ll be judged,” he says. “I’m not a Christian or anything; that sounds very Christian, judge not lest you be judged.
“I have an expression,” he continues, “‘That’s the way it is.’ It’s just the way it is, man, you can’t change it. That’s why I don’t like to get too political, you see what I’m saying?”
Because you don’t think you can change it?
“No, because I don’t know if I’m perfect, lily white perfect, you know what I’m saying? Political is where I came from; you have to find out how far outside your door you want to get involved.
“They were trying to change a park around the corner from me, and I fought to keep the park [the way it was]. Neighbors wouldn’t talk to each other. It was a park, y’know? That’s why I try to stay out of politics as much as possible, because it can really absorb your life and start making you hate people you shouldn’t be hating.”
ND co-editor Grant Alden lives, writes and art directs in Morehead, Kentucky. He’s not good at staying out of politics.
