Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr. grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, spent his teenage years milking as many as 70 cows a day on a commercial dairy farm, majored in animal husbandry at the University of Massachusetts, and chose the stage name Taj Mahal after a dream about India, Mahatma Gandhi and social tolerance. In this deep dive we trace how that unconventional path produced one of the most innovative careers in American roots music. Born in Harlem in 1942 to a gospel-singing mother and an Afro-Caribbean jazz arranger father whom Ella Fitzgerald reportedly called "the genius," he learned early from a shortwave radio that the world's music was far bigger than what American stations played.

We follow the tragedy of his father's death in a tractor accident when he was 11, the stepfather who brought a guitar into the house, and the neighb ...