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Taj Mahal (via last.fm)

The AP writes a lot of things and the bitch about a lot of things, but generally they are my source for unbiased news. Look what we were given today, an AP story about Taj Mahal and the Blues Hall of Fame.

From the Associated Press....

Taj Mahal, the blues legend whose vibrant, worldly music encompassed African-rooted sounds of all kinds, will be inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.

Mahal, whose real name is Henry St. Clair Fredericks, has been selected along with New Orleans soul singer Irma Thomas, Chicago bluesman Son Seals and ragtime guitar player Rev. Gary Davis to join the Blues Hall in Memphis, Tenn. They will be inducted in a ceremony on May 6, which will be followed the day after by the Blues Foundation's 30th annual Blues Music Awards.

"I'm very happy that a group of my peers think it's something I deserve after the years I've put into the music," said Mahal, 66, speaking by phone from the San Francisco Bay area.

California is one place Mahal has spent a lot of time, though the nearly nomadic singer-guitarist notes: "I pretty much move around wherever I like."

The same could be said of Mahal's music, which has for four decades dug deeply into sounds of many places, particularly Africa, the Caribbean and Hawaii. The breadth of Mahal's influences came partly from his heritage and partly from a nurtured openness.

[Source: The Blues Foundation]