Search - Taj Mahal :: Sing a Happy Song: The Warner Bros. Recordings

A Rare Find

Stephen Reddy | Brisbane | 11/29/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Unfortunatly Amazon have not given anybody a track listing here.

"Sing a Happy Song" Consists of 3 Albums on 2 cds + some previously unreleased live tracks with the International Rhythm Band.

Albums

#1:"Music Fuh Ya".

#2: "Evolution".

#3:"Brothers, Soundtrack". This Soundtack has never been released seperatly on cd, so it a must have if you collect Taj. Also "Sing a Happy Song" is a Limited Edition of 3000 Only."

Some Taj You May Not Know

David W. Coble | Olympia, WA | 09/09/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Some time around 1967--I musta been in tenth grade, bummed out over the impending Beatles break-up and just getting turned on to Hendrix, the Doors and Cream's "Disraeli Gears"--a buddy of mine hauled out a new album by this far-out black cat named Taj Mahal. I don't recall the title of the LP, just that it had a cool psychedelic cover and some crazy music that at the time I didn't quite get...it wasn't blues and it wasn't rock, reggae didn't have a name yet and it sure as hell wasn't Motown.



I didn't become a heavy-duty Taj freak until a few years later, when I was fresh out of the military and it was hard to find music that didn't suck--the late 60's and early 70's were jammed with intensely interesting and innovative artists, then there was a dry spell that lasted until...come to think of it, compared to that time the dry spell's still here. Taj didn't really fit into any category and 40 years later he still doesn't...you can't pigeon-hole Taj Mahal.



There are several "Best of" Taj collections and unfortunately many people categorize him by his Columbia recordings--tunes like "Fishin' Blues" and "Cakewalk into Town." That phase of his career was fun but few folks seem to realize that the cat has released something like 40 albums over the past half-century or so and thrives on crossing musical genres...he's never been afraid of new directions and while his blues roots probably run deepest, he's crossed over into rock, reggae, jazz, R&B, pop (the rare good kind of pop, like early Stevie Wonder) and even heavy electric stuff...there's no pinning this dude down. Give him a single instrument--an acoustic guitar, a harp, a glockenspiel or a tuba--or give him a full orchestra with a load of backup singers, and this guy will make you smile. He's one of the most musically articulate people of the past generation--that's two generations plus a couple of years, come to think of it. Like a handful of other artists--Eric Clapton, Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, Buddy Guy and J.J. Cale come to mind--you never get bored because you never know what to expect...after more than FORTY YEARS you still don't know what to expect, except that it'll bring you pleasure.



"Sing a Happy Song" is a compilation of the records he produced under the Warner Brothers label, some of which never made it to CD...I've got 20+ of his vinyl LP's and I've spent two years looking for a CD version of one tune from his "Evolution" album, which I once owned but lost...I couldn't remember the album title until it recently made it to CD as an import. De name of de song is "Southbound With the Hammer Down," and it's one of my all-time Taj favorites.



Taj Mahal's birth name is Henry S. Fredricks, born in 1942, a sharecropper's son who learned his craft sneaking into backwater Mississippi juke joints and soaking up the blues from Blind Baby Butter Lima Bean and other legends...I'm just jokin', he hails from Springfield, Massachusetts and his dad, a one-time New York jazz composer and arranger (Benny Goodman covered one of his tunes) was nicknamed "The Genius" in the 'hood because (among many other talents) he spoke seven languages. He died when Taj was 11 and his mother (who had a master's degree in education) remarried to a man named Hughan Williams, in Taj's words, "a straight-up Jamaican, everything changed...My step-dad, you see, was the cat with the guitar."



After graduating from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where his main interests were sciences and veterinary medicine, Taj settled into making music and has never slowed down. His pop wasn't the only genius in the family.



"Sing a Happy Song" is a two-disk, 32-song set taken from the two Warner Brothers albums 'Music Fuh Ya (Musica Para Tu)' and 'Evolution', along with six songs composed for the soundtrack of the movie "Brothers" and six previously-unreleased versions of tunes recorded live at a 1977 Chicago theater concert.



If you dig Taj Mahal and haven't followed him for 50 years (or if you have but haven't yet replaced your vinyl collection) this release is a must-have, along with the two other decent collections--the 3-disk "In Progress and in Motion 1965-1998" and the 2-disk set "The Essential Taj Mahal." For good measure throw in the "The Rising Sons," recorded in 1964 with Ry Cooder (I found this in a cut-out bin). There's some duplication of tracks between the four releases (8 CD's total) but the alternate takes are interesting and worthwhile. It all adds up to 154 tracks give or take a couple, a pretty good introduction to this phenomenal talent."