Not Your Ordinary Bluesman

We encountered Boulder antique dealer Otis Taylor by means of a phone call and his recent album, "When Negroes Walked the Earth." Otis was born in Chicago and grew up in Denver, with the blues tradition in his heritage if not in his neighborhood. Otis hung out a lot at the Denver Folklore Center, where many musical traditions are studied in earnest but none necessarily dominate the musical scene. There he bought a ukulele -- like many folk musicians -- and then moved on to guitar, banjo and harmonica. He also apparently developed an appreciation for black American history, especially in the West and South. In this eclectic and musical environment, Otis discovered and perfected a unique instrumental style and a broad-minded musical direction. One review says his music is "folksy, acoustic country blues performed in traditional ways, but tinted with a transparent wash of Western, Delta and Appalachian influences and subliminal Jimi Hendrix. Often touring with a band, Otis is doing some solo performing, too, as he will at the Big Muddy. He has written a number of his own songs and has come up with multi-faceted, entrancing arrangements of traditional material.

Visit Otis Taylor's web site