Truth Is Not Fiction

Product Details

Artist : Otis Taylor
Binding : Audio CD
EAN : 0089408358722
Label : Telarc
Number of Discs : 1
Product Group : Music
Release Date : 2003-07-28
UPC : 089408358722

ASIN : B00009NH8M

Track Listings for

Disc-1
1. Rosa Rosa
2. Kitchen Towel
3. Comb Your Brown Hair
4. Babies Don't Lie
5. Be My Frankenstein
6. House Of The Crosses
7. Past Times
8. Shakie's Gone
9. Be My Witness
10. Nasty Letter
11. Walk On Water
12. Baby Please Don't Go

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review

There is an upbeat style of blues that lightens life's darkest moments by its sheer joyfulness and exuberance. And then there is Otis Taylor's style of blues. On his fourth album, the multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter drags us once again into the seething underbelly of emotional gloom, wallowing in the sadness, hurt, and confrontation of the human condition. It's not pretty, but it's the territory that has been uniquely staked out by Taylor and his stripped-down, percussion-less backing duo of producer-bassist Kenny Passarelli and lead guitarist Eddie Turner. This riveting storytelling music springs from Delta, folk, slave, and prison songs, with many tracks boiled down to a single repeated chord. Mournful cello occasionally fleshes out the sound, but with Turner's slicing lead guitar and Taylor's dusky voice singing harrowing tales of lynching, rape, murder, death, lost love, and nasty letters, the intensity generated--even by the album's only cover, "Baby! Please Don't Go"--is off the scale. Not for the squeamish, Taylor's chilling music provokes, angers, and unnerves the listener in ways that are just too powerful for most artists to muster. Otis Taylor's truth is found in the dark recesses and murky shadows. --Hal Horowitz, Amazon.com

Customer Reviews

Dark, but stunningly good. (2005-10-07)

Otis Taylor has done it again. Another classic album, again often bleak in outlook, but so, so, good. It's hard to list the standout tracks as they're almost ALL standouts, but 'House of the Crosses', 'Past Times', 'Shakie's Gone', and Rosa Rosa are especially good. About the only track on the album I don't listen to regualarly is Big Joe William's 'Baby Please Don't Go', which is OK, but I've heard so many versions....'House Of The Crosses, which the sleeve notes assure us is fiction, is about a guard at a real-life prison in Russia, one of whose inmates is his evil father. Cello backing, very spooky. 'Shakie's Gone' is about the death of a former slave, while 'Rosa Rosa' is of course about Rosa Parks, the woman whose refusal to stand up in the black section at the back of a bus and instead sat down in the whites-only front section sparked the US Civil Rights struggle. As Otis eloquently puts it, 'who's that standing up for freedom'.I regard this as among Taylor's finest album's, and possibly the very best from an excellent collection.

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• Styles > Jazz > Labels
• Styles > Blues
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