In my search for The Blues, at the age of 18, I came across Taj Mahal’s double album \u2018Giant Step\/De Ole Folks at Home\u2019 at the Glorie record store on Ceintuurbaan in Amsterdam. After immersing myself in Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, John Mayall, and others, Taj Mahal made my heart beat faster with his incomparable mix of Blues, Country blues, Delta blues, Cajun, Rock, and Soul. ‘Giant Step’ is the electric part, with Taj Mahal on vocals, harmonica, banjo, and Mississippi national steel-bodied guitar, Jessie Ed Davis on guitar, piano, and organ, Gary Gilmore on bass, and Chuck Blackwell on drums. On \u2018De Ole Folks at Home\u2019, the incomparable Taj Mahal (solo) brings traditional and classic acoustic, raw downhome blues like no other.<\/p>\n
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Taj Mahal was born in 1942 as Henry Saint Clair Fredericks in Harlem, New York, U.S. Together with the then 17-year-old Ry Cooder, he was one of the founders of the legendary Rising Sons in 1965. This band did not last long, but it was the start of a long and successful career for Taj and Ry.\u00a0 Taj is now 81 years old and still performs frequently, has made dozens of albums (I have almost all of them), has been nominated for 15 Grammy Awards, and has won four. Taj Mahal cannot be pigeonholed and surprises you again and again on every album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-12428","bluesvdmaand","type-bluesvdmaand","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n