Earlier this summer, I saw Taj Mahal in concert with Bonnie Raitt on the impressive Bon Taj Roulet tour, the third time I’ve seen Taj.

The second time was in the spring of 1969 at the improbable club in New Haven, the Stone Balloon, fashioned after Greenwich’s Village’s Cafe Au Go Go.

As mentioned in a post on Jethro Tull, who had played the club in February, ’69, the Balloon wasn’t open long, less than a year, but booked a plethora of rising stars from Tull to Taj to Neil Young. Quite a venue situated under a Pegnataro’s Supermarket with a back entrance from the super’s parking lot.

Taj had released two albums by this time, his self-titled debut and the classic Natch’l Blues, which was released the previous summer. He was touring with his original band that included the incomparable Jesse Ed Davis on lead guitar, Chuck Blackwell on drums and bassist Gary Gilmore.

The Stone Balloon was tiny. We went to see them on a Saturday night, some weeks after the Tull show, and Taj and his band were in fine form playing a mix of tunes from the first two albums. They were not as loud as Tull (not that I didn’t like Ian Anderson & Co.), instead perfectly suited to the room size and Davis was mesmerizing.

Of course, Taj wasn’t too shabby either. He had a beautiful take on modern country blues with his unique and refreshing originals mixed with classics like Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, Corrina and You Don’t Miss Your Water (‘Til Your Well Runs Dry).

But the first time I saw Taj was the most surprising and remarkable. In fact, I met him at the apartment I was living in on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston about one year before the Balloon show.

As I mentioned in a piece about a Doors concert at Back Bay Theatre, in the spring of 1968 I was attending Berklee School of Music on Bolyston Street and sharing a two-room apartment with two female roommates, Julie and Betty. I was traveling back to Connecticut each weekend to rehearse and play some gigs with Pulse, a band headquartered at Syncron Studios in Wallingford, run by Doc Cavalier. We had been together since January.

The girls had both dropped out of college and were working at a small club/bar called The Hub, which for a short time featured live music. Prior to my moving into the apartment, the girls had befriended Tim Buckley when he played there.

It was late in the afternoon on a Sunday and I had just driven back from Connecticut a few weeks after The Doors concert in March. I walked into the living room, which was off to the right of the entrance in the small apartment. It had a couch on the far wall as you walked in facing another smaller couch, which opened into a bed.

As I walked in, I couldn’t have been more startled but I tried to keep it together the best I could. Sitting on the larger couch was Taj Mahal, looking like he just popped off the cover of his first album with Julie’s small non-descript acoustic guitar in hand playing and singing a blues tune. He was wearing tight jeans, a shirt with a scarf around his neck, shades and that trademark felt Stetson hat from the portrait on his first album.

I was beside myself. Julie was home, not Betty, and after he’d finished the tune he was playing she introduced me. Sitting next to him was a cake. He said he just came in from Springfield, where he had visited his mother, and she baked him his favorite for his birthday, German Chocolate Cake. Springfield is where Taj grew up after moving from New York.

He couldn’t have been a friendlier or more affable fellow. He and his band were playing at the Hub that week. I had no idea they were there, being preoccupied with getting back to Connecticut. He played a few more tunes. I remember Corrina and Fishin’ Blues but not too much more than that. It goes without saying sitting right across from him, he sounded wonderful, a lot like his acoustic blues disc from the double album Giant Steps, which would come out the next year.

I told him about my band and he was very encouraging. We all had a piece of cake and talked for a while longer and then he had to leave to catch up with his band, who were headed for another city.

I loved Taj’s music from the first time I heard his first album. This encounter though, on his birthday of all days, was sure to not only re-inforce that but also make me a lifelong fan of this seminal blues man.