Taj Mahal – Labor of Love (180g 2LP)

Label: Analogue Productions – AAPB 113 – 200 Gram Virgin Vinyl
Mastered by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio

1st Time on Vinyl – Limited Edition – Pressed at QRP Quality Record Pressings
When I first played this record at home I had no idea how it was recorded. The recording quality was obviously high and transparency great, but I felt the last bit of spatial “magic” was missing. I later found out it was recorded at 16 bit/44.1K resolution, which was probably the limit “in the old days”.Labor of Love will not be released digitally so this is it. Don’t be a fool and let the resolution stop you. These are probably the best sounding damn “field recordings” you’re likely ever to hear and the stripped-down music is transportive and magical Sound 9/10 Music 9/10 Michael Fremer Analogue Planet

What we have here is magic: classic blues tunes – ‘Stagger Lee,’ ‘My Creole Bell,’ ‘Mistreated Blues,’ ‘Zanzibar,’ ‘John Henry’ and more – treated with such love and wit and heartache and (to use a tired term that’s appropriate here) authenticity. Few field-hand recordings are drenched with this much sweat. And none of those field-hand recordings (few live or studio recordings, period) sound so vivid.” – Fred Kaplan, Stereophile.com

Previously unreleased late 1990s recordings!
200-gram vinyl pressed at Quality Record Pressings!
Taj Mahal, loose and casual in informal recording sessions with peers
Taj performs with guest artists: John Dee Holeman, Cool John Ferguson, Cootie Stark and Algia Mae Hinton
The blues live on because the blues give people life, not the other way around. Talk about the blues with Grammy winning singer-songwriter and composer Taj Mahal, or Tim Duffy, founder of the Music Maker Relief Foundation, and you’ll quickly understand how deeply they grasp this. So it’s no surprise that their shared love of blues has created a special vinyl-only album release that’s got the loose, easy feel of a porch-sitting guitar strum, sipping sweet tea on a warm summer day.
Labor of Love comprises recordings made by Duffy, hanging out with Taj and other artists in a Houston hotel room and during visits to the Music Maker Relief Foundation headquarters in Hillsborough, North Carolina.
Taj and Tim first connected in the mid-1990s as Tim was establishing the foundation. The foundation is dedicated to preserving Southern roots music by directly supporting senior artists in need, while documenting their music and sharing their stage and recording talents with the world.
“The album is Taj Mahal’s 47th. On it are six solo performances by Taj and seven more duets recorded with Music Maker Relief Foundation artists. All of the songs are previously unreleased performances recorded in 1998. … Taj states that he enjoyed getting to know the musicians lives and “how they made things work” while getting “closer to the source.” – Richard Ludmerer, makingascene.org