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Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder – Get On Board - The Songs Of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee
Label: Nonesuch – 075597913552, Nonesuch – 1-667107
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: Worldwide
Released: Apr 22, 2022
Genre: Blues
Style: Country Blues
A1 My Baby Done Changed The Lock On The Door 4:16
A2 The Midnight Special 3:26
A3 Hooray Hooray 4:20
A4 Deep Sea Diver 5:18
A5 Pick A Bale Of Cotton 3:03
A6 Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee 3:16
B1 What A Beautiful City 4:11
B2 Pawn Shop Blues 5:52
B3 Cornbread, Peas, Black Molasses 3:44
B4 Packing Up Getting Ready To Go 2:50
B5 I Shall Not Be Moved 4:19
Licensed To – Nonesuch Records Inc.
Phonographic Copyright ℗ – Perro Verde Records LLC
Copyright © – Perro Verde Records LLC
Pressed By – Record Industry – 35552
Recorded At – Temple Of Leaves
Recorded At – Wireland Studios
Mixed At – Temple Of Leaves
Mixed At – Wireland Studios
Mastered At – Temple Of Leaves
Mastered At – Wireland Studios
Mastered At – Sterling Sound
Drums, Bass – Joachim Cooder
Liner Notes – Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal
Mastered By – RKS*
Producer – Ry Cooder
Recorded By, Mixed By, Mastered By – Martin Pradler
Vocals, Guitar, Mandolin, Banjo – Ry Cooder
Vocals, Harmonica, Guitar, Piano – Taj Mahal
Manufactured in the Netherlands by Record Industry.
Includes insert.
Barcode (Text): 0 75597 91355 2
Barcode (Scanned): 075597913552
Matrix / Runout (Side A runout): 35552 1A 075597913552 1-667107-A RKS STERLING
Matrix / Runout (Side B runout): 35552 1B 075597913552 1-667107-B RKS STERLING
Matrix / Runout (MAstering, stamped in runouts): STERLING
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Rezension
Sie begannen ihre Karriere gemeinsam: 1965 gründete der 23jährige Taj Mahal gemeinsam mit einem gerade 17jährigen weißen Milchbart namens Ryland Cooder die Band Rising Sons (in der übrigens der spätere Spirit-Drummer Ed Cassidy am Schlagzeug saß). Cooder war auch auf Mahals Solo-Debüt zu hören, das war 1968. Über ein halbes Jahrhundert später haben die beiden Roots-Veteranen beschlossen, daß man mal wieder etwas Gemeinsames machen könnte. Zum Beispiel eine Würdigung eines der bedeutendsten Duos der amerikanischen Folk-Geschichte. Die beginnt schon mit dem Albumcover, das sich am 1952er Folkways-Debüt des Duos orientiert. Die elf enthaltenen Klassiker leben gleichermaßen von Mahals Raubauzigkeit und Cooders perfektem Gespür für Timing und Proportion. Angesichts des allgemeinen Niveaus ist es beinahe unmöglich, einzelne Songs hervorzuheben, aber “Deep Sea Diver” mit rumpelndem Barrelhouse-Piano von Mahal und dreckiger E-Gitarre von Cooder (der hier auch als Sänger eine grandiose Performance hinlegt) darf nicht unerwähnt bleiben, ebenso der berührende Albumausklang “I Shall Not Be Moved”. Eine späte Sternstunde in der Diskographie beider Meister! (2022)
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Legenden
Taj Mahal und Ry Cooder kennen sich fast schon ihr ganzes Leben lang. 1966 gründeten sie die Gruppe Rising Sons und nahmen ein Album auf. Der Erfolg bleib jedoch aus, das Album wurde erst viele Jahre später vermarktet.
Stattdessen sollten die Musiker ihre eigenen Wege gehen, die sich nun, 57 Jahre später, wieder einmal kreuzen. »Get On Board« heißt ihr neues gemeinsames Album, auf dem sich die beiden Legenden zwei anderen Legenden widmen
Die Reunion-Platte
Taj Mahal und Ry Cooder machen 2022 wieder gemeinsame Sache und veröffentlichen ihr erstes Kollaborationsalbum seit 57 Jahren, seit dem Debütalbum ihrer längst aufgelösten Band, den Rising Sons.
»Get On Board« heißt die Platte. »The Songs Of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee« lautet der Untertitel, der verrät: Der Blues-Musiker und Multiinstrumentalist und der virtuose Gitarrist, Sänger, Komponist und Produzent widmen sich hier zwei Ikonen des Piedmont Blues, deren Musik sie schon seit dem Teenager-Alter begleitet und geprägt hat.
Auf die Frage, wohin Terry und McGhee ihn musikalisch führten, sagte Cooder: »Die Straße runter, weg von Santa Monica. Wo alles gut war. ›Ich muss hier weg‹, war alles, was ich denken konnte. Was machst du, vierzehn, achtzehn Jahre alt? Ich saß in der Falle. Aber diese erste Platte, ›Get On Board‹, die 10ʺ auf Folkways, war so wunderbar, dass ich das Gitarrenspiel verstehen konnte.« Taj Mahal fügte hinzu: »Ich fing an, sie zu hören, als ich ungefähr 19 war, und ich wollte in diese Kaffeehäuser gehen, weil ich hörte, dass diese alten Jungs dort spielten. Ich wusste, dass es irgendwo da draußen einen Fluss gab, in den ich eintauchen konnte, und wenn ich einmal drin war, würde es mir gut gehen. Sie brachten das ganze Paket für mich.«
Elf Stücke aus dem Katalog von Sonny Terry und Brownie McGhee haben für sie »Get On Board« ausgewählt und neu interpretiert. Unterstützt werden Taj Mahal (Gesang, Mundharmonika, Gitarre, Klavier) und Ry Cooder (Gesang, Gitarre, Mandoline, Banjo) dabei von Rys Sohn Joachim Cooder (Schlagzeug, Bass).
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Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder
Get On Board
“They were so solid. They meant what they said, they did what they did… here’s two guys, a guitar player and a harmonica player, and they could make it sound like a whole orchestra.” – Taj Mahal
“It was perfect. What else can you say?” – Ry Cooder
Nearly sixty years after they first played together, Ry Cooder and Taj Mahal, longtime friends and collaborators, reunite with an album of music from two Piedmont blues masters who have inspired them all their lives: GET ON BOARD: THE SONGS OF SONNY TERRY & BROWNIE MCGHEE, on Nonesuch Records.
With Taj Mahal on vocals, harmonica, guitar, and piano and Cooder on vocals, guitar, mandolin, and banjo – joined by Joachim Cooder on drums and bass – the duo recorded eleven songs drawn from recordings and live performances by Terry and McGhee, who they both first heard as teenagers in California.
Explaining where Terry and McGhee took him musically, Cooder says, “Down the road, away from Santa Monica. Where everything was good. ‘I have got to get out of here,’ was all I could think. What do you do, fourteen, eighteen years old? I was trapped. But that first record, Get on Board, the 10” on Folkways, was so wonderful, I could understand the guitar playing.”
Taj Mahal adds, “I started hearing them when I was about nineteen, and I wanted to go to these coffee houses, ‘cause I heard that these old guys were playing. I knew that there was a river out there somewhere that I could get into, and once I got in it, I’d be all right. They brought the whole package for me.”
Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder originally joined forces in 1965, forming The Rising Sons when Cooder was just seventeen. The band was signed to Columbia Records but an album was not released and the group disbanded a year later. The 1960s recording sessions, widely bootlegged, were finally issued officially in 1992. GET ON BOARD is Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder’s first recording together since then.
Harmonica player Sonny Terry and guitarist Brownie McGhee, both originally from the southeastern United States, had active solo careers as well as collaborating with some of the most celebrated musicians of their time. But they were best known for their forty-five-year partnership, which began in 1939 and included mesmerising live performances around the world and numerous acclaimed recordings.
Their Piedmont blues style became popular during the folk music revival of the 1940s and ’50s, centered in New York City’s flourishing club scene for jazz, boogie-woogie, blues and folk music. Terry and McGhee traveled in the same circles as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, and Josh White, among others in a rich mix of writers, actors and musicians. As a new generation emerging in the 1960’s drew inspiration from folk and blues, Terry and McGhee toured the world as the foremost exponents of the acoustic music of the Piedmont. They were named National Heritage Fellows in 1982 in recognition of their distinctive musical contributions and accomplishments.
“You got the south on steroids, when you got the music of the south, the culture of the south, the beauty of the south, through Brownie and Sonny,” Taj Mahal says. He describes McGhee as a “solid rhythm player. To really play behind the harp like that. He would set stuff up. He wasn’t making many notes. Sonny had all the notes, running around. But Brownie, he laid it down.” Cooder adds: “This thing of squeezing the thumb and first finger and a little bit of the second finger, which I still do. I’d forgotten where it came from. That’s what Brownie did. I saw him do that and said, ‘I think I can do that.’”
Taj Mahal calls Terry “a wizard harmonica player”. Cooder says, “Sonny had incredible rhythm for one thing. Making sounds with his voice and the harmonica so you couldn’t tell quite which was which. He was good at that.”
“We’ve been doing this a while,” Cooder says. “Perhaps we’ve earned the right to bring it back. Taj Mahal concludes. “We’re now the guys that we aspired toward when we were starting out. Here we are now… old timers. What a great opportunity, to really come full circle.”
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