Taj Mahal Explores His Own Origin Story on 'Savoy'

Taj Mahal is a legend across more genres than can possibly be listed in full. Throughout his long career, though known primarily as a bluesman, Taj has flirted with various aspects of his roots, from jazz, calypso, African rhythms, and so much more. On his new album Savoy, Taj Mahal hits on another part of his musical origin story; big band swing.

The title of the album comes from the famed Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, where Taj's mother and father met and bonded over the music of Ella Fitzgerald and Chick Webb. “That's part of the reason I'm here today, baby” he says in that unmistakable voice on the album's only original song, opener “Stompin' at the Savoy.” For the remainder of the album, Taj Mahal picks some songs from the Great American Songbook and from the great Harlem Renaissance. Among the great swing greats touched upon on Savoy are George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Louis Jordan, and Louis Armstrong.

The album's highlights include “Baby, It's Cold Outside.” Recorded with some help from Maria Muldaur (“Midnight at the Oasis”), it's a song that requires perfect tone and timing from the female lead or it starts to sound pretty cringeworthy (“say... what's in this drink?”) Fortunately, Muldaur hits that balance perfectly, her smoky voice melding with Taj's own trademark scratch for a game of cat and mouse that is loads of fun.

Another highlight is Louis Jordan's “Is You Is or Is You Ain't My Baby?” It's a natural fit for Taj, a song covered by plenty of blues and jazz artists, including B.B. King and Dr. John. Over an easy ambling orchestra and an electric guitar lick that gets in your bones, Taj delivers Louis Jordan's lines like “woman is a creature that always been strange / just when you think you know one, you find she's gonna make a change” perfectly.

Produced by John Simon (The Band, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot), Savoy benefits greatly from an excellent band of San Francisco-based musicians and vocalists. It's an album that doesn't bring anything radically new to these classic songs but it's obvious in every note that Taj Mahal is having a blast revisiting the songs of his childhood and it's hard not to get caught up in that excitement.