Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder - Get On Board (The Songs Of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee) (LP)

Some records feel like old friends the minute the needle drops. Get On Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee is one of those, a warm room where Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder trade smiles, stories, and riffs while the kettle hums in the kitchen. Released April 22, 2022 on Nonesuch Records, the album is a straight-up celebration of the Piedmont blues partners who shaped both men as young players. It is also a late-career reunion that lands with real weight, and it earned a very deserved 2023 Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album.

Taj and Ry go back almost six decades, to their mid 60s group the Rising Sons, a short-lived but legendary Los Angeles outfit that cut tracks for Columbia in 1965 and 1966. Those recordings did not see daylight until 1992, which only added to the myth. You can hear that easy, pre-rock club chemistry again here. Taj sings with his rich, rangy baritone and blows harmonica with that buoyant Sonny Terry whoop, while Ry’s guitar is all springy swing and sly rhythm, more front porch than juke joint, always serving the song. Joachim Cooder, who grew up around this music, rounds the trio out on drums and bass, keeping the feel earthy and unhurried.

Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee were a study in balance, the harmonica and the guitar moving like river and bank, and Taj and Ry honor that conversation rather than try to outdo it. Take Hooray Hooray, which they led with as a single. The pocket is light on its feet, Taj’s harp trills answer Ry’s bright chords, and the vocal has the kind of lived-in humor you expect from two players who have actually seen a few backrooms and bus stations. That tone carries through the set. The tempos sit just behind the beat, the arrangements stay roomy, and you feel the air of a small space, as if you are sitting three feet from the microphones.

This is not cosplay. Both artists have kept Terry and McGhee’s language in their hands for years, and they are comfortable editing it in small, loving ways. Ry threads little country-blues turnarounds into the verses, then drops a single gliding slide note that says more than a flurry ever could. Taj phrases like a great storyteller, lingering on a line, then nudging it forward with a chuckle. The trio leaves space, which lets the lyrics breathe. When Taj sings about day work, travel, or food and love and trouble, it lands like a conversation, not a museum placard.

The sound is classic Nonesuch, detailed without sanding off the grain. You hear pick noise, you hear breath on the harp reeds, you hear Joachim’s soft thump in the room. On Get On Board vinyl those textures bloom even more, the low end a touch woodier, the guitars fleshy and present. If you are the sort who hunts Taj Mahal vinyl or Ry Cooder vinyl at a Melbourne record store on a Saturday morning, this is exactly the kind of album you will want to take home and spin all the way through, then flip and do again. And if you prefer to buy Taj Mahal records online, it sits neatly beside other Taj Mahal albums on vinyl, a late highlight that plays well with his early Columbia sides and his collaborations from the 2010s.

What makes the record stick is the sense of gratitude. Taj has often talked about the elders who taught him, and Cooder’s whole career has been a map of American vernacular music. Here they share the joy of songs that have outlasted scenes and trends. The rhythms are raggy and sure, the harmonica laughs, the guitar grins, and the stories keep good company. It is the feeling you get when a veteran shows you the right way to carry a tune you thought you already knew.

If you are filing by genre, call it traditional blues, but it also feels like a letter to the folk revival coffeehouses, to university gyms, to living rooms where Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee once held court. That history is baked into every bar. The win at the Grammys only confirmed what the grooves already say, that this is not just a tribute, it is a living thing. For anyone digging through racks of vinyl records Australia wide, or dropping the stylus after dinner with friends, Get On Board is a keeper, a reminder of how deep a simple song can go when played by people who truly care about where it comes from.