Louis Rosen: 1970 -The Singer-Songwriter Comes of Age IV—James Taylor
“I have a gut fondness for James Taylor,” host Louis Rosen begins. “Musically he’s adept. Though his lyrics don’t have the sharp, sensitive feeling of Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan, what he brought at a crucial moment of time was a gentler kind of song that could soothe or comfort, while often underneath quite dark.” In preface, we watch a short video of Taylor’s BBC solo performance preceding the release of featured album Sweet Baby James (March 1970).
The first song is “Something in The Way She Moves.” Rosen points out that a year later, after Taylor’s first album was released, his title would show up as the second line of George Harrison’s “Something.” “You can hear the pervasive feeling of Dylan here, though James lost that by the time he recorded it,” the host adds. The clip of a recent rendition performed with Carole King proves his observation. “Carolina On My Mind,” replete with whistling introduction, is next, then, “Fire and Rain.” There’s that dulcet voice, the broad southern “i.”
James Taylor was one of five children born to a wealthy Boston doctor- intellectual, academic, increasingly absent for work, and his artistic wife. None of the kids went to college. Three landed in psychiatric institutions, one died young. Three have been musicians. Raised in North Carolina, Taylor felt a strong connection to the countryside often reflected in songs. His first musical instrument was cello; bass-clef oriented influence shows in unique guitar styling. “It never took any work for me to play guitar. It was a release, an outlet that just fed itself…” the musician has said.
As a teenager with guitarist Danny Kortchmar, “Jamie & Kootch,” played small clubs in Martha’s Vineyard where the family summered. Taylor went to two prep schools. During senior year, depression overwhelmed him. He spent nine months at McLean’s Psychiatric Institute in Massachusetts. It was, he says, “a lifesaver … like a pardon or like a reprieve.” At Kortchmar’s encouragement, he then moved to New York where they started a short-lived band called Flying Machine.
Jay Gee Records produced several singles including “Rainy Day Man” and “Night Owl,” but nothing took off. The already unstable young man became addicted to heroin. When the band broke up, Taylor spiraled further. Rosen tells a story of reprieve. “One night, James called home, something he never did. His father knew something was seriously wrong. ‘Do not move,’ he told James. ‘Stay exactly where you are until I get there.’ Mr. Taylor flew to New York, found his son in a squalid apartment, packed him up, and drove him home.”
He told his father he wanted to go to England to try his luck. After six months rehabilitation, Taylor did just that. He had a demo and a single contact name through Kortchmar, Peter Asher. Asher, who’d been part of Peter and Gordon, was now A & R head of The Beatles’ Apple Records. He listened to the demo and played it for The Fab Four. James Taylor was the first American artist Apple signed. Differences between making music and fostering a career made things difficult. He fell back into his drug habit.
Allen Klein took over at Apple. Asher knew he and his discovery had to get out and had the savvy to approach Paul McCartney rather than the new boss. When he asked that Taylor be released, McCartney said, “Sure, go.” Asher and Taylor flew to Los Angeles. “No other record company on the planet would’ve done that,” Rosen notes. The album James Taylor was released in England and favorably received, but the artist couldn’t promote it. He’d signed himself into Austen Riggs Medical Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
When he emerged, Taylor played the rite of passage Troubadour, then The Newport Folk Festival. “The rock n’ roll generation was almost exhausted. His was the perfect music,” Rosen comments. Once again on the verge, the musician broke both hands and feet in a motorcycle accident. Asher secured his new client a contract at Warner Brothers Records. Taylor moved to California and in 1969, began recording tracks for Sweet Baby James.
Carole King had by then divorced writing partner/husband Gerry Goffin and moved to Los Angeles to embark on a solo career. She played piano on the album. When he toured, the headliner would feature King and her own material. She was terrified but developed performing chops. “We spoke the same language,” Taylor said. “We slipped into the mother tongue.” He’d later reciprocate playing guitar on her solo recording. Taylor was 21, King 28. “When a singer songwriter shows up, that’s ten years of work. It’s the second album that shows you who he is.” (David Crosby)
“At an early age, we can hear a guitar style that’s so distinctive even 50 years later we recognize it, Rosen says picking up his own guitar. “He understands the essential ideas of music theory while starting to use a harmony that’s unlike rock n’roll. Taylor uses a ii chord to lead to the dominant chord …It’s all harmonically closer to the pre-rock style of Gershwin or Richard Rodgers than rock n’ roll. He drew on an ability a lot of people didn’t have, playing with a pick.”
Taylor often included a single cover song on his albums and now plays many more. We listen to his version of The Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends.” The musician makes every song his own. It sounds personal. “Having found his style as a teenager, he’s spent the rest of his life refining it. Joni Mitchell kept changing, evolving and Paul Simon (previous subjects of this series) has insatiable curiosity that goes beyond any single approach.” Taylor is a universal constant.
Timing was everything. When he made the cover of Time Magazine in 1970, James Taylor epitomized the singer/songwriter. He was the sensitive young man. “Struggling with addiction until 1984 is part of what broke up his marriage to Carly Simon. If you listen to him now, he’s extremely intelligent and articulate, which is particularly evident when he speaks of the trauma of earlier years.”
“James never writes in a bluesy minor key. Harmonic language is always in major. He communicates a sense of endurance. Even `Fire and Rain,’ about the suicide of an ex-girlfriend arrives in a major key. Still, there’s an abiding sense of melancholy… While he knows exactly what everything means, lyrics can be obscure, whereas in 1970, Mitchell and King aim for clarity.”
The goal of his second album was to get out of the way of the sound of his voice and guitar. We listen. Title song “Sweet Baby James” was written as a gift for his older brother’s first born. It has a lovely Roy Rogers/Gene Autry feel. “Low and Behold” is old time gospel. “Sunny Skies” eases in oddly contradictory: “And you will be pleased to know/That Sunny Skies hasn’t a friend.” “Country Road” speaks of Carolina. A terrific arrangement of “Oh Susanna” evokes a bygone era. “He had an underlying weariness interesting in a person his age,” Rosen says. We listen to side two.
“James Taylor captured the zeitgeist of the moment. The fact that he became commercially successful was more of a surprise to him than anyone else. Taylor became less prolific after he got clean…My own personal take is that the whole album may not be as good as others of the time, but what it represents – that voice, that guitar style, that melancholy profoundly affected people. His style was gentle without being vacant…He was an excellent songwriter and even better albums were to come..”
All unattributed quotes are Louis Rosen
LOUIS ROSEN’S NEXT SINGER/SONGWRITER CLASS: Wednesday June 24 at 7:15 p.m.
