The public high school Manual of Denver in Colorado wanted to “repair a mistake of the past” and gave him the diploma of end of study which he should have had in 1966. Instead, once excluded, Otis Taylor is launched in music and has become a reference in the blues repertoire.
He is a young bachelor who has just graduated at 74, 57 years after being expelled from his high school. It takes place in the United States, in Denver, Colorado and the name of the main interested party should speak to blues enthusiasts since it is Otis Taylor, renowned guitarist and singer who has just released his twelfth album but which for a few days is on all TV channels for anything other than its music.
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Otis Taylor was 17 years old in March 1966, he was a good student, diligent, discreet, he only had two months left of high school to do before receiving his graduation diploma based on continuous assessment when the management of the establishment summoned him to impose an ultimatum: it was either his haircut or his diploma. Otis Taylor, a young black man, wore, as was beginning to be done at the time, an afro cut, a cut which the director, therefore, told him to give up. Except that the high school student will say no. “They wanted me to cut everything in exchange for my diplomahe explains to NPR radio, but I said ‘I don’t care, goodbye, I won’t go to college, instead I’ll play music. ” So he was expelled the same day. And immediately, he launched himself. He will first play for others, guitar, banjo, harmonica, before releasing his first albums, win his first awards, magazine’s best album of the year Down Beat in 2002, best performer for Living Blues in 2004.
Over the years, several anti-discrimination laws have come into effect, including the Crown Executive Order prohibiting discrimination based on hair texture, which has been adopted by some 20 states, including Colorado. “And I thinkexplains Taylor, that my school wanted to right an injustice”. Indeed, this is what the current director said when giving him his diploma in front of all the young students, it is “fix past mistakes“.
In the end, Otis Taylor insists that he accepts this repair but that he takes it all with a grain of salt. All his life he sang about discrimination, racism, he sang about what it’s like to be a black man in the United States, and to all the journalists who ask him if he had any regrets,
he answers : “Never, none, how could I regret being myself?”