📍Springfield, MA, USA
1942 – 1964“Henry Saint Clair Fredericks Jr. was born in Harlem in May 1942 and grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, a manufacturing city on the Connecticut River, the eldest of nine children. His father, Henry Sr., was an Afro-Caribbean jazz arranger and pianist whom Ella Fitzgerald had called the Genius, and his mother, Mildred, was a schoolteacher and gospel singer from South Carolina. They filled the house with music and encouraged all the children to play. The family had a shortwave radio that brought in music from all over the world, and musicians from the Caribbean, Africa and across the United States often visited their home, so Henry grew up hearing calypso, African music, jazz and the blues. He took classical piano lessons and learned the clarinet, trombone and harmonica. When he was eleven, his father was killed in an accident at his construction business, a terrible loss for the family. His mother later remarried, and his stepfather had a guitar, which Henry began playing at thirteen or fourteen. A new neighbour, Lynwood Perry, a nephew of the bluesman Arthur Big Boy Crudup, taught him the Piedmont style and could play like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. Henry also worked on a dairy farm in his teens and loved farming. He took the name Taj Mahal from a dream, studied animal husbandry at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and moved to Los Angeles in 1964, forming the Rising Sons with Ry Cooder. He became a pioneer of world music, blending blues with Caribbean, African and Hawaiian sounds, and has won several Grammy Awards.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today