About

Labor of Love is one of the most pleasurable albums you're likely to hear all year—and it sounds amazing, too.

In the late 1990s, Tim Duffy, proprietor of the Music Makers Foundation, lured Taj Mahal to go on a 42-city tour with a group of old-time blues musicians. Taj, of course, had his roots in these blues, but he'd long ago strayed into R&B, even rock, earning fame and fortune without selling his soul, and this re-immersion rekindled a passion for the real deal.

As the liner notes to this album tell it, Duffy dragged along some sound gear on the tour, high-end stuff, lent to him by Mark Levinson—B&K microphones and power supplies, a Cello preamp, Apogee A/D converters, and a Nagra-D open-reel digital recorder. One night, in a Houston hotel room, Taj took out his guitar, started strumming and singing, others joined in, and Duffy took it down. A while later, back at Music Makers headquarters, in Hillsboro, NC, Taj sat in on a recording session as a sideman, playing piano, harmonica, hambone, or upright bass. - Stereophile