Because Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder used to be in the same band, when nobody outside the LA folk scene knew their name.
Talent wise, that’s Lennon & McCartney, Tosh and Marley, Captain & Tennille, Elton & John.
Taj Mahal is my favorite artist of all time. When Jessica Stenson told Taj I read his biography, Taj said he wanted to meet me and spent a half hour chatting with me after one of his Thanksgiving shows at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley. I played it cool, but that was like meeting Buddah.
But don’t sleep on Ry Cooder. He plays guitar like a demigod. He has since he was a kid. He was always a true playa. He got to keep cutting solo albums on Warner Brothers because every year in the 70s when George Harrison came for hid meetings with the label, when he arrived in America he wanted his advance copy of Ry Cooder’s latest solo album. Talk about an audience of one. Some of his solo albums are still haven’t recouped their advance. But they are treasures.
But when I meet Ry, I am going to thank him for bringing the World the Buena Vista Social Club. The Staxx Brothers song ‘Slowdown (the 12th St Blues) was the product of cofounder Joshua Hanson obsessing on that album and speaking Spanish like Keith Richards.
But on a deeper level that hits me even harder today, I figured out that the singer that helped popularize that album’s classics like Dos Gardenias Para Ti, and was the author of the anthem of the Cuban Revolution was my Great Uncle Daniel Santos.
Someday in Cuba when I sing those songs I will have a closer relationship than most wiyh songs I just thought sounded charming as they dazzled the NPR crowd up the charts. It was a brilliant album and documentary, but it got in Josh’s bones first.
If I knew better, so would have learned all those songs, and Josh and so would have dazzled all the Spanish girls. But we already dazzled all the Spanish girls. At WSU I was President of the Latino Fraternity for a time.
Sometimes it’s so easy, it only seems hard, because it all comes so damn easy when you’re young & strong and everyone is beautiful. It should have been easy for Ry and Taj to record the greatest American albums of their generation. They came close on their own.
In a perfect world I will convince both of them to produce me. If I am Sly enough, I will fool them both into playing on the same song. Ry has his Pro Tools rig ready at home.
In another dimension, these two would rivaled The Beatles and been bigger than Eagles. Both of them never got as big as they should have. But they never burned so hot they dissapeared like Hendrix. They never got shot like Taj’s broseph Bob Marley.
But instead Taj invented the Allman Brothers. There is a wonderful explanation in the Muscle Shoals Documentary about how a stupid horse, some good Whiskey, a terrible accident and Taj’s Native American lead guitar player Jesse Ed Davis taught Diane Allman how to play slide. In just one week, with just one bottle, and with just one Taj Mahal debut solo album after these two childhood friends and some times rivals called it quits.
Something were just meant to be. But most of the time life just happens and you have to be your own man.
In England they have bands. But in America, every man is a King. So despite America having more raw talent, Britain will probably always have better bands.
“St. Peter Told Me God Has a Hell of a Band, But The Devil Still Has The Best Songs, and plenty of the publishing.”
– Dylan Van Keef
