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With Otis Taylor, it's best to expect the unexpected. While his music, an amalgamation of roots styles in their rawest form, discusses heavyweight issues like murder, homelessness, tyranny, and injustice, his personal style is lighthearted. "I'm good at dark, but I'm not a particularly unhappy person," he says. "I'd just like to make enough money to buy a Porsche."
Part of Taylor's appeal is his contrasting character traits. But it is precisely this element of surprise that makes him one of the most compelling artists to emerge in recent years. In fact, Guitar Player magazine writes, "Otis Taylor is arguably the most relevant blues artist of our time."
Otis Mark Taylor was born in Chicago in 1948. After his uncle was shot to death, his family moved to Denver where an adolescent’s interest in blues and folk was cultivated. Both his parents were big music fans. A young Otis spent time at the Denver Folklore Center where he bought his first instrument, a banjo. He used to play it while riding his unicycle to high school. The Folklore Center was also the place where he first heard Mississippi John Hurt and country blues. He learned to play guitar and harmonica, and by his mid-teens, he formed his first groups – the Butterscotch Fire Department Blues Band and later the Otis Taylor Blues Band.
“Blues CD of the Year awarded four times:
2002,
2005,
2007,
2008,
”
DownBeat Magazine
"There may not be a better roots album released this year or decade than Recapturing the Banjo."
DownBeat Magazine
““one of the most innovative, thought-provoking blues artists to emerge in the last 20 years.””
Billboard
"Otis Taylor is arguably the most relevant blues artist of our time."
Guitar Player Magazine
“Who is the King of Acoustic Blues? I am putting my money on Otis Taylor. Everything about his music conveys deep and total commitment. Since his comeback, every one of Taylor's recordings has absolutely burned with the pure fire of his bluesiness.
Taylor plays guitar vamps better than anyone, and he stretches out these repeated figures with more mesmerizing intensity than any blues artist since John Lee Hooker first came on the scene. ...Taylor's groove is so strong, that I can listen to his music at length, and just find myself more and more deeply drawn into it.”
Ted Goiga - jazz.com
“
Blues singer/guitarist/banjoist Otis Taylor is drawing from history's deep well for his new disc, Clovis People (Telarc). The disc's title refers to ancient society whose 13,000-year-old remains were found near his home in Boulder, Colo.”
DownBeat Magazine
“Otis Taylor is not the best banjo player; he’s the best bluesman today.”
Philippe Thieyre (Rock & Folk/France Inter)
“This time out, Otis Taylor seems less interested in creating hallucinatory aural landscapes than evoking emotional intensity through the pristine interplay between acoustic instruments and undistorted voices.”
Living Blues
