Customer Reviews
Dark, but stunningly good. - By: Richard Vernon, 07 Oct 2005 
Otis Taylor has done it again. Another classic album, again often bleak in outlook, but so, so, good. It's hard to list the standout tracks as they're almost ALL standouts, but 'House of the Crosses', 'Past Times', 'Shakie's Gone', & Rosa Rosa are especiallly good. About the only track on the album I don't listen to regualarly is Big Joe William's 'Baby Please Don't Go', which is OK, but I've heard so many versions....
'House Of The Crosses, which the sleeve notes assure us is fiction, is about a guard at a real-life prison in Russia, one of whose inmates is his evil father. Cello backing, very spooky. 'Shakie's Gone' is about the death of a former slave, while 'Rosa Rosa' is of course about Rosa Parks, the woman whose refusal to stand up in the black section at the back of a bus & instead sat down in the whites-only front section sparked the US Civil Rights struggle. As Otis eloquently puts it, 'who's that standing up for freedom'.
I regard this as among Taylor's finest album's, & possibly the very best from an excellent collection.
