TAJ MAHAL: He’s Not a One-Man Band : Taj Mahal’s Bandstand Play

Taj Mahal thinks the blues-loving public’s idea of him has become a little distorted lately, which is ironic considering that few stage performers project as vivid an image.

Large and muscular under his trademark broad-brimmed hats, Mahal has long been one of the most accomplished and versatile performers on the acoustic-blues circuit, switching between guitar and piano to deliver pumped-up solo concerts that reinvigorate venerable forms.

But Mahal notes that his solo blues act is only one specialty on an expansive menu of styles. Since his album debut in 1967, Mahal (who early on substituted his fanciful stage name for his given one, Henry Saint Clair Fredericks) has played alone and with bands, played blues the rural Southern way and the urban Northern way, explored the Caribbean music that is part of his family heritage and even played Hawaiian music in a band featuring five ukuleles.

On his two most recent albums, “Dancing the Blues” and the just-released “Phantom Blues,” he has fronted plugged-in bands while serving up a variety of edgy electric blues and horn-driven soul music and R&B.;

Yet what he calls “the economic boogie”--the need to keep expenses down--has demanded that most of his 200-plus performances per year be solo gigs.

“That’s sort of unfortunate, because everyone sort of missed the changes that happened, the direction I was going in,” Mahal said in a recent phone interview from his home in Los Angeles. “I see myself as a composer who plays music and likes to play with other people, and not just as a solo artist.”

He thinks his image as a folk-blues specialist has been underscored by the popularity of his 1969 double album, “Giant Step / De Ole Folks at Home,” a double album that includes some full-band performances but is marked by memorable solo-acoustic numbers that have become staples of his shows.

“That seems to be the most available stuff people can get their hands on,” Mahal said. “They seem to focus around that album. Very few [artists] showed where the raw [acoustic blues] material was, and how it sounds before you put that jam spin on it.”

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But now, putting on that jam spin is at the top of Mahal’s agenda. After the phone chat, he would head to a North Hollywood studio for rehearsals with a six-man touring band, including two horns, keyboards, bass, and Bonnie Raitt band alumni Tony Braunagel and Johnnie Lee Schell on drums and guitar.

The lineup made its debut Wednesday at the House of Blues in West Hollywood, the first in a string of Southern California dates. The monthlong tour continues tonight at the Belly Up in Solana Beach, and Friday at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

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After recording sporadically under his own name during the 1980s, Mahal has put out three consecutive albums on the Private Music label, his steadiest stretch since the ‘70s.

“The combination is perfect,” Mahal said of his working arrangement with his label, and with John Porter, producer of the two most recent albums.

“[Porter] just knows where the music is and is not trying to get me to wear a sequined jacket,” he said, invoking his image for a too-polished, market-oriented approach to music-making. “The record company stays out of my way, and we get a chance to do exactly what we want.”

The approach has paid off with commercial airplay on Triple A (adult-album-alternative) stations for “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes.” In another small irony, this warmly rippling, folksy romantic declaration is the lone acoustic track on an otherwise rambunctious electric album. But Mahal, who seldom has had radio play outside the folk and blues specialty shows, isn’t complaining.

“We’re very excited about folks’ reaction to ‘Phantom Blues,’ ” Mahal said. “Everybody’s already jumping up and down about it. My hopes are always high for all [my records]. If they don’t hear it now, they’ll discover it later.”

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Star-studded guest rosters for recording sessions have helped such veteran blues artists as John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy enlarge their audiences in recent years, and the gambit is in effect on “Phantom Blues.”

Eric Clapton supplies edgy guitar solos on two Chicago blues songs, Bonnie Raitt shares vocals with Mahal on the R&B; nugget “I Need Your Loving,” Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo plays accordion on a zydeco-flavored tune and Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers plays 12-string guitar on “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes.”

Raitt’s contribution was a matter of an old friend returning an old favor: Mahal supplied harmonica, bass and backing vocals on her 1973 album, “Takin’ My Time.”

Mahal first met Clapton in 1968 when they both appeared in the Rolling Stones’ “Rock and Roll Circus,” a semi-legendary, never-released marathon filmed event that Mahal said is due to come out soon on CD and home video.The Campbell connection arose from Mahal’s five-week engagement last year as opening act for Petty.

A veteran at winning over big crowds at folk and blues festivals, Mahal said he had no problem on the Petty tour facing a largely unfamiliar audience as a solo acoustic act opening for a full-on rock band--a potentially daunting assignment.

Mahal said he just stuck with his usual approach.

“Every night I go out and play, I make no assumptions that my [audience] knows my songs. This guy comes out, picks up a guitar, cranks it out, and people like it,” Mahal said. “Every night [with Petty] I got a standing ovation. That kind of feeling was really good.” The approach also worked as he played a series of summer dates on another major-venue rock tour, the H.O.R.D.E. festival.

Now, having recently moved to Los Angeles after 12 years living on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, Mahal is looking to branch out in other ways.

“I’d like to get involved on another level. I don’t need the credits for playing the blues and paying the dues. I’ve already done it. There are some other things to do here--movies and scores and voice-overs. There’s a lot of business around town that I haven’t taken any advantage of. I have some talent that can be worked in that direction.”

In fact, Mahal’s resume already includes some movie soundtrack work (including the score for “Sounder”) and musical accompaniments for children’s recordings. He is collaborating with jazz saxophonist David Murray and others on a musical about the great baseball pitcher Satchel Paige, which he expects to open in Philadelphia in 1997.

If his new musical slant is electric, and his new career aims wide-ranging, Mahal remains obviously fond of his acoustic-blues beginnings. It is a subject he launches into with particular zest in a deep, richly grained speaking voice that presages his bullfrog singing style.

Mahal said his upbringing in Springfield, Mass., emphasized traditional forms of culture.

“The blues was always a movement, a mind-set, a look, a lot of other things besides what’s on vinyl and in the notes,” Mahal said. “I grew up in the last third or quarter of the migration [of American blacks from the South to the North].

“My mother [a teacher] was from the South and my father [a jazz pianist and arranger] was from the Caribbean,” and he said both encouraged a respect for the cultural traditions underlying the blues.

“It was clear vibrations. I wasn’t taught to be afraid of any of that stuff, and it wasn’t left out,” he said. “A lot of people who did come up from the South tried to change to whatever the Northern vibration was, and they tried to change their ways, become more sophisticated. I saw that as a detriment.”

Mahal, now 53, got his professional start during the early ‘60s on the active Cambridge, Mass., folk scene. In 1964 he moved to Santa Monica, where he hooked up with a teenage Ry Cooder in the band Rising Sons.

That group played an eclectic mix of blues, folk and rock and landed a deal with Columbia Records but never released an album. (A 22-track collection of the Rising Sons’ output finally emerged in 1992.)

Columbia did keep Mahal as a solo artist, and he soon became known as a rarity within a rarity: a young black man who played acoustic blues, a field otherwise occupied by a small fraternity of such white enthusiasts as John Hammond and Dave van Ronk.

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Mahal says he wasn’t alone, though, as a ‘60s-generation black man who played the acoustic style.

“There are so many people who didn’t get recorded but who were around and didn’t have [the desire or opportunity] to go chase the brass ring.”

Among them, he said, were some boyhood friends who helped shape his own playing from junior high school on--the Nichols brothers, whose family had moved to Springfield from Mississippi, and Linwood Perry, one of Mahal’s early musical partners.

“A lot of people in the real tradition don’t travel around,” Mahal said. “[Perry] had a job, worked for the city driving a big dump truck, making money--and he played guitar. He’s still there in Springfield. He’s a great player, he just never went out. That’s what I’m talking about [in his new album’s title]. They’re everywhere. The ‘Phantom Blues’ is everywhere.”

* Taj Mahal plays Friday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $19.50. (714) 496-8930.