Otis Taylor got off to a stellar start in Denver, first playing guitar in the Butterscotch Fire Department Blues Band in the '60s and forming the short-lived T&O Short Line with Tommy Bolin in the '70s.

But in 1977, Taylor got fed up with music - infighting in bands, a disinterested industry - and walked away for nearly two decades, becoming a successful antiques dealer working out of his Boulder house.

"I didn't need to do (music) moneywise, so I just stopped."

For a spell in the '80s, he even managed a bicycling team that helped black riders get a toehold in that sport. "I wasn't good at it, but I was good at getting sponsorships," he said.

The friend who sponsored the team also started a coffeehouse on The Hill in Boulder. That's how Taylor was drawn back to music 12 years ago.

"I'll come play with you if you open a coffeehouse," Taylor told the friend at the time. "I had no intention of playing music (long term)."

But he went on to play in '95 with bassist Kenny Passarelli and finally into the studio two years later, where he started making albums. Blue Eyed Monster got some acclaim, and each album improved on the last, with When Negroes Walked the Earth and White African bringing race, history and struggle to the forefront.

Origins of 'trance blues'

Taylor's influences come from everywhere - he says he's "spongy." From buffalo soldiers to brutal murders to an offhand comment at his daughter's back-to- school night (where he first heard the phrase definition of a circle), he pulls it in.

"It's like dreams or thoughts or I hear somebody say something. That's a song. It's almost like being like an eagle. You see things others don't see. I hear things others don't hear. You can pick up a paper or go through a book and there'll be songs."

What comes out is nearly primal at times. Taylor's trademark sound is a hypnotic one-chord sound - he calls it "trance blues" - with often-harrowing lyrics. Think John Lee Hooker-meets-bleak-crime-author James Ellroy.

Growing up in a "black intelligentsia" family in Chicago, Taylor had a heavy diet of jazz, pop and soul. The family moved to Denver after Taylor's uncle was shot to death. When he heard folk and blues as a teen at the Denver Folklore Center, "it totally influenced my life."

It was the '60s, "a whole other world, a really magical time," he said. "People cared about civil rights. We were more nave, more trusting. Then drugs got into it and changed the whole thing."

Now he tackles social injustice and human dignity in his songs.

"A lot of people sacrificed so that I can open my mouth. In the 1940s you couldn't. In the 1950s, in the 1960s . . . Sometimes you're in the right place at the right time and you can make things happen."

A rising profile

The 2000 album When Negroes Walked the Earth made the biggest splash, when influential music critic Dave Marsh gave it a strong write-up for Playboy. Festival bookers suddenly had Taylor on their radar, and a fellowship at Sundance, interviews on NPR and multiple W.C. Handy blues nominations followed.

"Awards are good, but things like having records on the New York Times top-10 list and the Washington Post top-10 list at the same time - that's a big milestone. That ain't gonna happen again," Taylor said with a laugh.

"Once you get established with the critics, if you do good albums and do good work, they want to hear the next thing. So they can say, 'He finally fell on his (butt),' or, 'I can't believe this (guy) did it again.' "

With Definition of a Circle, it appears to be the latter. As Marsh told the Rocky this week, "It's the album that reminds you that he also used to play with Tommy Bolin."

Something in Your Back Pocket is a relentless psychedelic rocker about a tense standoff between a club bouncer and an agitated man who wants to get inside - and might have something deadly in that pocket to get him there.

The acoustic Few Feet Away precedes it with gentle guitar, cello and cornet, couching a delicate duet between Taylor and his daughter, Cassie, where he promises he'll always be there. Looking Over Your Fence is a pointed war song about oil, with a harrowing Charlie Musselwhite harmonica solo.

"I'm not a protest singer. I'm a social commentator. I just wanted to do a song about war," Taylor said. "We're not going to stop . . . It's human nature."

Many of his songs are rooted in historic events or gritty street scenes, be it the Ludlow Massacre or the lynching of his great-grandfather. But the songs are Taylor's take.

"I don't research anything. I'm dyslexic, so reading isn't a big thing. I don't do the dates; I just write conceptually."

While he has a strong interest in history, Taylor points out that human nature remains unchanged. They Wore Blue starts out as a Civil War song before moving into the '60s civil-rights movement, ending in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Moving forward

Taylor hasn't abandoned the antiques world.

"I sold all the really good stuff. The good stuff I do have is in a safe-deposit box - black photos, buffalo soldiers.

"I buy and sell a few instruments. Clients will call me and I get on it. I'm still aggressive, I just don't talk about it much. In the antique business, you find something good and you sell it in two hours. You don't hold on to it."

He recently bought a lot of 400 rare books and had them sold worldwide within a week through his contacts - no Internet or eBay for him.

Taylor has begun landing songs in films (his music is in the trailer for the upcoming movie Shooter) and had tunes picked up by the Showtime series Queer as Folk, as well as Crossing Jordan and others.

But mostly he flies around Europe, two electric guitars as his carry-on. "It's OK. I can make a living. In Europe I make the money touring. Here I make the money on the publishing side."

But touring means leaving Cassie, 20, Jae, 17, and his wife, Carol, behind at their Boulder home, near Chautauqua Park. "I'm going to miss my daughter's graduation. I'm going to miss her last day as a cheerleader. I'm going to miss her birthday. Breaks my heart."

Meanwhile, there are more films to score and more licensing deals for his music. The last season of The Sopranos starts soon - a perfect fit, one would think, for Taylor's work - but that call never came.

"They just missed it. One day they'll discover me, maybe."

Brownm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2674

Back to Top