Most bluesmen sing the blues with sadness, resignation, or even celebration. Not Otis Taylor. He’s got the blues and he’s pissed about it.
Whether it’s railing against racial discrimination against African-Americans since his 2000 debut When Negroes Walked The Earth, to homelessness, drug abuse, and unaffordable health care, Taylor makes his anger known without couching it behind double-meaning metaphors. Lyrically, he’s a modern day JB Lenoir. His delivery rarely rises to a howl but it always conveys despair and often hopelessness. And there’s no basic 12 bar blues like his contemporaries, either; he takes a single chord and milks it for all it’s worth, a la John Lee Hooker. And for good measure, he tosses in a good helping of Appalachian folk to create the sonic match for his down-home but biting lyrics.
And so it goes for Taylor’s latest offering, 2005's Below The Fold. Although the album starts with something his previous five had none of: drums. “Feel Like Lightning” is a bluegrass flavored gumbo with a fiddle, Taylor’s banjo and a rock guitar. Drums are also employed for just two other tracks, but honestly, his tunes don’t really need any. Elsewhere, a lightly played trumpet appears on tracks like “Boy Plays Mandolin” which also features some nice playing of the fretted instrument by Taylor.
Later, Otis uses the infamous Ludlow Massacre of 1914 to convey the rage of the have-nots toward the haves in “Your Children Sleep Good Tonight”. When Taylor sings these lines, the anger simmering just beneath the surface of his mildly plaintive expression sends a chill down your spine:
Mothers and babies sleep good in the ground
They ain’t never gonna see the light of day
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