photo: Dean Budnick

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As he celebrates his 82nd birthday, Taj Mahal doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Last year, the iconic blues singer and guitarist released his first jazz album, the well-received Savoy and won a Grammy for his 2022 collaboration with his longtime friend Ry Cooder, Get on Board. Mahal continues to tour the country at a steady pace, performing with a mix of combos, and he even recently provided the narration for a state-of-the-art interactive hologram exhibit at the Blues Hall of Fame.

But even as he rolls out a new record, Swingin’ Live at the Church in Tulsa, which was released via Lightning Rod in March, Mahal doesn’t mind reminiscing about his halcyon days from time to time.

“My grandparents immigrated to the United States from St. Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean in 1902—through Ellis Island—and my mother’s family migrated from South Carolina up to New York, where my father was also born. But the Caribbean community [in the U.S.] continued to be affected by the Caribbean music of the time,” Mahal, who was raised in Springfield, Mass., says as he launches into the story of how he befriended Bob Marley, whose son Ziggy he remains close with. “Savoy was about talking about the music that I heard as a youngster in my multiethnic community—jazz, jump blues and big-band music. But, growing up, I kept wondering, ‘When is somebody gonna come out of the Caribbean?’ It was an opportunity to communicate with Americans and Europeans, particularly the people from the African diaspora. So when Marley came out, I was thrilled.”

Mahal’s stepfather—who turned him on to the guitar when he was still in his early teens— was Jamaican, so the future Blues Hall of Famer kept a careful eye on the region’s local sounds as he started to make a name for himself. And, after participating in the 1968 Rock and Roll Circus, he was introduced to Janet Dicker, who worked in Rondor Music’s U.K. office, by Tulsa drummer Chuck Blackwell, and she eventually sent him The Wailers’ “Catch a Fire.”

“I thought that they would never play that music on AM radio because there was too much bass,” Mahal says with a laugh. “Then, they were in the San Francisco Bay Area, opening for a group that shall remain unnamed, and the leader of the group became extremely jealous of them and threw The Wailers off the tour with no support. I was able to rescue these guys and set them up in some wonderful motels that had kitchenettes. They traveled with their own cooks, so I’d take them down to these big, organic co-ops and I helped them get their thing back on the road.”

Likewise, Swingin’ Live at the Church in Tulsa is a full-circle moment for Mahal, while simultaneously capturing his road prowess six decades into his career. The set was recorded at his longtime friend Leon Russell’s famed studio and clubhouse The Church, which also served as the office for his Shelter Records label. The space was renovated in 2022, a few years after Russell’s passing, and Mahal rolled in with his sextet for a live performance that balanced fresh arrangements of his signature tunes with some newer material.

“Leon was a part of the whole Tulsa scene that was responsible for helping get me onto the national scene after we did the Rising Sons,” Mahal says of his early project with Cooder. “Leon played with us a little bit and a couple of my guys went on the road with Mad Dogs & Englishmen. He was a wonderful man, kinda quiet but very attentive. I was working with a sextet at the time I did these shows [at the Church], and it sounded like a good opportunity to record everything when it was at the exciting, juicy stage of development.”

Mahal is also acutely aware of Tulsa’s complicated history. The city, a stop on the famed Chitlin’ Circuit, was once a hotbed for jazz and blues, and the prominent Greenwood neighborhood was even known as Black Wall Street for many years. But, in 1921, that rich legacy was nearly erased after the Tulsa Race Massacre, when a white mob burned more than 1,250 homes and killed hundreds of residents. “I play with a lot of different types of musicians, and oftentimes, it’s music that’s connected to what they’re listening to, or their history, but they don’t really know the background of it,” Mahal says. “One of the reasons that you sometimes have unrest in modern times is because, like anything else, you can ignore it if you wanna, but that’s not gonna make it go away. You gotta deal with it. In the U.S., there is always a footprint of what once was. Do you want to be a victim of that or do you want to put something out there what will lift people up? I’m not out to give people the blues. I want to raise the vibration of the room.”

In terms of his own legacy, Mahal played a critical role in The Allman Brothers Band’s development. He first crossed paths with the Allmans when they were playing with The Hour Glass in the 1960s and his version of Rev. Jesse Davis’ “Statesboro Blues” helped push Duane to pick up the slide. Mahal remained a visible presence in their story through their latter-day New York runs at the Beacon Theatre. But, his favorite memory of Dickey Betts, who passed away in April, is bonding over something else entirely. “The double guitar, the way he and Duane worked together, was just phenomenal. Being that Jesse Davis was the one that inspired Duane to start playing the slide, we always had a good vibe together. But my main memory of Dickey is fishing,” he says. “I had a blues/fishing tournament down in Costa Rica for about seven years. A couple of those years, Dickey, Gregg, young Derek Trucks and several other people from that organization came down and we just had a wonderful time playing music, hanging out and fishing. That was when I got close to him. I’m just thrilled to have known him and known their music.”

As for what’s next, Mahal is excited to stay on the road—and keep his audiences guessing at every stop. “Oftentimes, African musicians, once they record something, they don’t play that stuff again,” he says. “It’s not like in the States where you get a hit and then you’re tied to it for the rest of your life. It’s always that pull between what they want and what you wanna do. It’s a funny thing because the industry wants to lock ‘em in, but the creative musician says, ‘Look at all this other stuff over here. You could probably enjoy this too.’ So, I’m always challenging my audience to come on out here and see what I’m developing. The weather’s fine; you’ll enjoy it.”