Product Description
RELEASE DATE 05.01.2026 - TAJ MAHAL - TIME
TAJ MAHAL & THE PHANTOM BLUES BAND
Time
Thirty Tigers
Taj Mahal is a national treasure. His musical world view is a sweeping panorama that scoops up blues, jazz, swing, calypso, reggae, folk, Latin, and just about anything else that crawls across his path. Taj doesn’t just perform songs, he inhabits them with an intensity that rattles the room. Taj vacillates wildly on styles and genres on his releases. His latest, Time, is all over the place stylistically as well.
Recorded in 2010, the ten tracks were unearthed for this outing which also features a Bill Withers composition previously unrecorded and offered to the Phantom Blues Band for this project, becoming the title cut. Pianist Jon Cleary, who arranged the song, accompanies Mahal and band on guitar, percussion, mandolin, and backing vocals as well as piano. It’s a beautiful rendering, a prescription for healing from heart brokenness: “When it don’t work out/The way you want it to/What you do/Just remember/To forget about your life/And get on with the new/Time will see you through.”
This marks the end of a nearly recording 20-year hiatus from Taj’s Grammy-winning pairing with Phantom Blues Band, who continually back Taj on tours and on every other Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise. The Phantoms are guitarist Johnny Lee Schell, bassist Larry Fulcher who also co-produced with drummer Tony Braunagel are the core band with a horn section of Joe Sublett, Lester Lovitt, and Darrell Leonard, with Cleary and Mick Weave on piano and organ.
“Sweet Lorene,” written by Redding and Isaac Hayes, first appeared on Otis Redding’s ‘66 release Complete And Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary Of Soul. Mahal’s rendition is just as complete and unbelievable and as jam-packed with soul, Mahal gruntin’ and groanin,’ promising to sock it to ya, and he does just that. The Phantom Blues Band recreates the sound of the MG’s backing on the original, Mahal redecorating with a guttural gut-shot howl just before the outro, flinging around a wheelbarrow full of git-it and bring-it.
Ziggy Marley guests on vocals on his father’s “Talkin’ Blues,” with the controversial lyrics “Feel like bombing a church/now that you know that the preacher is lying” inserting a new last verse before shifting back into an honorific to his dad. Taj recently told American Songwriter’s Song Diving Podcast that “That song is about me.” Taj says he was once visited by Marley, who said “I’m gonna do you, you gonna do me.” According toTaj, when Marley says, “Your face is in a permanent screw” that the lyric came from his “Cakewalk Into Town.”
Mahal back-porches it for “Rowdy Blues,” a slow-rollin’, laid-back cruiser with a ukulele accompaniment by Mahal and a rare mandolin guest shot by Cleary. “Crazy ‘Bout A Jukebox,” written by Cleary’s uncle, Johnny “Snakehips” Johnson, name-checks a plethora of jukebox heroes his paramour is in love with including Koko Taylor, Etta James, Jackie Wilson, Little Richard, Little Willie John, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Ben E. King, the Shangri-Las, and the Shirelles, with Mahal moaning soulfully “I wish she was a crazy over me.”
One of Mahal’s best to date, an unearthed time capsule that still stands the test of time.
– Grant Britt
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