James Taylor

• 1. Introduction

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  James Taylor, the American singer-songwriter and guitarist, was the last act on the bill at the Newport Folk Festival on the 20th of July 1969. Thousands of fans had stayed through the rain just to hear him. He got through only 15 minutes. Then festival co-founder George Wein walked onstage and told the crowd that the Apollo 11 astronauts had landed on the moon. The music stopped, and history took over the night.

  That soaked, interrupted crowd raises a puzzle. Decades later, Taylor's 1976 Greatest Hits album would stand among the best-selling albums in US history, with 11 million copies sold there alone. How does a quiet son of a North Carolina medical professor end up with that kind of audience? What did he have to survive along the way? And why did his songs keep finding listeners long after most of his rivals had faded?

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• 2. Chapel Hill Roots

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  James Vernon Taylor was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston on the 12th of March 1948. His father, Isaac, was a resident physician there and came from a wealthy Southern family. His mother, Gertrude, had studied singing with Marie Sundelius at the New England Conservatory of Music. She had hoped to become an opera singer before marrying Isaac in 1946. James was one of five siblings who all went on to music: Alex, born in 1947, then James, then Kate in 1949, Livingston in 1950 and Hugh in 1952. Hugh later left the business and, since 1989, has run The Outermost Inn, a bed-and-breakfast in Aquinnah, Massachusetts, with his wife.

  In 1951 the family moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Isaac became an assistant professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. They built a house in the sparsely populated Morgan Creek area. Taylor later remembered the red soil, the seasons and the smells, and said that growing up there was "more a matter of landscape and climate than people." Isaac was often away, serving at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland and, in 1955 and 1956, with Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica. From 1964 to 1971 he was dean of the medical school. Beginning in 1953, the family spent every summer on Martha's Vineyard.

  As a child in North Carolina, Taylor took cello lessons. In 1960 he learned the guitar. Hymns, carols and the music of Woody Guthrie shaped his playing, while his cello training gave him a bass-clef way of hearing music. He also experimented on his sister Kate's keyboards. He explained the result this way: "My style was a finger-picking style that was meant to be like a piano, as if my thumb were my left hand, and my first, second, and third fingers were my right hand."

  On the Vineyard he met Danny Kortchmar, a teenage guitarist from Larchmont, New York. The two traded blues and folk songs. Kortchmar admired Taylor's "natural sense of phrasing, every syllable beautifully in time," and recalled, "I knew James had that thing." Taylor wrote his first song at 14. By the summer of 1963 the pair were playing coffeehouses around the island under the billing "Jamie & Kootch."

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• 3. Hospital and Village

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  In 1961 Taylor entered Milton Academy, a preparatory boarding school in Massachusetts, and by his junior year he was struggling. His grades were fine, but the pressure of the college-prep world made him uneasy. The headmaster later said, "James was more sensitive and less goal-oriented than most students of his day." Taylor went home to finish the semester at Chapel Hill High School. There he played electric guitar in Alex's band, The Corsayers, later renamed The Fabulous Corsairs. In 1964 they cut a single in Raleigh with James's song "Cha Cha Blues" on the B-side.

  His return to Milton for senior year went badly. He felt part of a "life that he was unable to lead," slept 20 hours a day, and watched his grades collapse. In late 1965 he committed himself to McLean, a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. Doctors treated him with chlorpromazine, and the hospital's organized days gave him a sense of time and structure. As the Vietnam War escalated, the Selective Service System summoned him. He arrived uncommunicative, with two white-suited McLean assistants beside him, and was rejected on psychological grounds. In 1966 he earned his diploma from the hospital's Arlington School.

  Taylor called his nine-month stay "a lifesaver... like a pardon or like a reprieve." His brother Livingston and his sister Kate would later be patients and students there as well. He never framed his struggles as something to cure and leave behind. "It's an inseparable part of my personality that I have these feelings," he said.

  Kortchmar urged him to leave the hospital, and Taylor checked himself out. After a single semester at Elon University, he moved to New York City to form a band. Joel O'Brien, formerly of Kortchmar's old group the King Bees, took the drums. Taylor's childhood friend Zachary Wiesner, son of academic Jerome Wiesner, played bass. Taylor refused to name the group after himself, so they became the Flying Machine. Their repertoire included "Knocking 'Round the Zoo" and "Don't Talk Now," songs he had written at and about McLean. By the summer of 1966 they were regulars at the Night Owl Cafe in Greenwich Village.

  The Village also brought heroin. Taylor fell in with a motley crowd and began using it, to Kortchmar's dismay. A hasty session in late 1966 produced one single, Taylor's "Night Owl," backed with "Brighten Your Night with My Day." Rainy Day Records released it, Jubilee Records distributed it, and Northeast radio gave it some airplay. Jubilee would not pay for an album. Poorly chosen bookings followed, ending with three unpaid weeks at a failing nightspot in Freeport, Bahamas. The Flying Machine broke up.

  "I learned a lot about music and too much about drugs," Taylor later said of this period. By then his use had become full-blown addiction. "I just fell into it, since it was as easy to get high in the Village as get a drink," he explained. He sat in Washington Square Park playing guitar to hold off depression, then passed out, and he let runaways and criminals sleep in his apartment. Out of money and abandoned by his manager, he phoned his father one desperate night. Isaac flew to New York, rented a car, and drove all night to bring James and his belongings back to North Carolina. Six months of treatment brought a tentative recovery, along with a throat operation to repair vocal cords damaged by singing too harshly.

  The band's story had an afterthought. Once Taylor became a solo star, the old recordings were released in 1971 as James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine.

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• 4. Apple Records in London

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  In late 1967, funded by a small family inheritance, Taylor moved to London to try life as a solo act. He drifted between Notting Hill, Belgravia and Chelsea and recorded demos in Soho. Kortchmar then made the connection that mattered. His old band the King Bees had once opened for Peter and Gordon, and that tie led Taylor to Peter Asher, the head of artists and repertoire at the Beatles' newly formed Apple Records.

  Taylor handed Asher a demo tape that included "Something in the Way She Moves." Asher played it for Paul McCartney and George Harrison. McCartney remembered his reaction: "I just heard his voice and his guitar and I thought he was great... and he came and played live, so it was just like, 'Wow, he's great.'" Taylor became the first non-British act signed to Apple. Asher later became his manager, and Taylor said of him, "He had this determination in his eye that I had never seen in anybody before."

  From July to October 1968 Taylor recorded his first album at Trident Studios, while the Beatles were making The White Album down the road in the same period. McCartney and an uncredited Harrison sang on "Carolina in My Mind," whose lyric about a "holy host of others standing around me" referred to the Beatles. The title phrase of "Something in the Way She Moves" gave Harrison the lyrical starting point for his own classic, "Something." McCartney and Asher also hired arranger Richard Anthony Hewson to add orchestrations and unusual linking passages between songs. Reception to those touches was mixed at best.

  During the sessions Taylor relapsed, using heroin and methedrine. He went through a British treatment program, returned to New York for hospitalization, and finally committed himself to the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Apple released James Taylor in December 1968 in the UK and February 1969 in the US. Jon Landau wrote in Rolling Stone that "this album is the coolest breath of fresh air I've inhaled in a good long while. It knocks me out." But Taylor was in treatment and could not promote the record, and it sold poorly. "Carolina in My Mind" failed to chart in the UK.

  In July 1969 he headlined six nights at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Soon afterward, a motorcycle accident on Martha's Vineyard broke both his hands and both his feet and kept him from playing for months. He kept writing through the recovery, and in October 1969 he signed with Warner Bros. Records.

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• 5. Sweet Baby James

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  In December 1969, in California, Taylor held the sessions for his second album with Asher as manager and producer. Carole King took part in the recording. Sweet Baby James came out in February 1970 and became his critical and popular breakthrough. Its single "Fire and Rain" drew on his attempts to break his drug habit through psychiatric treatment and on the suicide of his friend Suzanne Schnerr. The album sold more than 1.5 million copies in its first year and eventually passed 3 million in the US. It earned several Grammy nominations, including one for Album of the Year. Rolling Stone later placed the album on its 500 greatest albums list in 2003 and the song on its greatest songs list in 2004.

  Beyond records, Taylor appeared alongside Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys in Monte Hellman's film Two-Lane Blacktop. In October 1970 he joined his then partner Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs and the Canadian band Chilliwack at a Vancouver benefit concert. It raised money for Greenpeace's protest of the US Atomic Energy Commission's 1971 nuclear tests at Amchitka, Alaska. The recording was issued in 2009 as Amchitka, The 1970 Concert That Launched Greenpeace.

  On the 17th of February 1971, Taylor sang "Sweet Baby James," "Fire and Rain" and "Country Road" on The Johnny Cash Show. Two weeks later, on the 1st of March 1971, Time magazine put him on its cover as "the face of new rock." The story compared his brooding persona to Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and to The Sorrows of Young Werther. It praised his "references to roads traveled and untraveled, to fears spoken and left unsaid." One writer called his look "a cowboy Jesus." Taylor later replied, "I thought I was trying to look like George Harrison."

  His next album, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, arrived in April 1971 to critical acclaim. It held his biggest US single, his version of King's new song "You've Got a Friend," with Mitchell on backing vocals. The follow-up, "Long Ago and Far Away," also made the Top 40. The album sold 2.5 million copies in the US. In early 1972 Taylor won his first Grammy Award, for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, for "You've Got a Friend." At the same ceremony, King won Song of the Year for writing it.

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• 6. Marriage and Hits

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  On the 3rd of November 1972, Taylor, then 24, married Carly Simon, 29, in a small ceremony at her apartment in Murray Hill, Manhattan. A post-concert party after his show at Radio City Music Hall then grew into a large wedding celebration. Their marriage drew heavy public attention over the following years. They had two children, Sarah Maria "Sally" Taylor, born on the 7th of January 1974, and Benjamin Simon "Ben" Taylor, born on the 22nd of January 1977. Both children also became musicians. The couple guested on each other's albums and had two duet hits, a cover of Inez and Charlie Foxx's "Mockingbird" and a version of the Everly Brothers' "Devoted to You."

  Taylor's fourth album, One Man Dog, appeared the same month as the wedding. It was a concept album made mostly in his home studio, built from eighteen short pieces and featuring cameos by Linda Ronstadt, Carole King, Carly Simon and John McLaughlin. Reviews were lukewarm. It reached the Top 10 but sold disappointingly, and the lead single was "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight."

  Taylor then spent most of 1973 enjoying married life and returned to the studio in January 1974. Walking Man followed in June, with appearances from Paul and Linda McCartney and guitarist David Spinozza. It was a critical and commercial disaster that sold only 300,000 copies in the US. The title track missed the Top 100.

  He recovered quickly. In 1975 the Gold album Gorilla produced one of his biggest hits, a version of Marvin Gaye's "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)," with Carly singing backing vocals. The follow-up single, "Mexico," featured Crosby and Nash and reached the Top 5 on the Adult Contemporary chart. The album also carried "Sarah Maria," a song about his daughter Sally.

  In 1976 came In the Pocket, his last studio album for Warner Bros. Art Garfunkel, David Crosby and Bonnie Raitt sang on it, and Stevie Wonder co-wrote a song with Taylor and played a harmonica solo. The single "Shower the People" became an enduring favorite. Rolling Stone was particularly critical of the album, though it still went gold.

  Then, in November 1976, as his Warner contract ended, the label issued Greatest Hits, gathering the best of his work from 1970 to 1976. It grew into his best-selling album ever, with worldwide sales close to 20 million. The next stop was a new label: in 1977, Taylor signed with Columbia Records.

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• 7. Recovery and Rio

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  Between March and April 1977 Taylor quickly recorded his first Columbia album, JT, released that June. It earned his best reviews since Sweet Baby James and a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year in 1978. Peter Herbst of Rolling Stone wrote that it was "the least stiff and by far the most various album Taylor has done," and that "it's nice to hear him sounding so healthy." JT sold more than 3 million copies in the US, tying Sweet Baby James as his biggest-selling studio album. It was carried by "Handy Man," written by Jimmy Jones and Otis Blackwell, which also won Taylor a Grammy and topped the Canadian charts. "Your Smiling Face" became a live favorite, while "Honey Don't Leave L.A.," written for him by Kortchmar, did less well.

  In 1979 he returned after a year away with Flag, a Platinum album of covers that included a Top 30 version of the Gerry Goffin and Carole King song "Up on the Roof." Two Flag songs, "Millworker" and "Brother Trucker," were used in the PBS production of the Broadway musical Working, based on Studs Terkel's book. Taylor appeared in it as a trucker. He also played the No Nukes concert at Madison Square Garden, where he and Carly delivered a memorable "Mockingbird."

  On the 7th of December 1980, Taylor met Mark David Chapman, who would murder John Lennon the next day. Taylor told the BBC in 2010 that the man had pinned him to the wall, talking wildly about getting in touch with Lennon, and that it was "surreal to actually have contact with the guy 24 hours before he shot John." Taylor lived in the building next to Lennon's, and the following night he heard about five explosions in quick succession.

  In March 1981 he released Dad Loves His Work, whose themes included his relationship with his father and the effect he and Simon had on each other. It went Platinum and gave him a duet hit with JD Souther, "Her Town Too." That September, Simon announced their separation, saying, "Our needs are different; it seems impossible to stay together." The divorce was finalized in 1983. Taylor was living on West End Avenue in Manhattan, on a methadone maintenance program. The deaths of his friends John Belushi and Dennis Wilson, and his wish to be a better father to Sally and Ben, pushed him forward. Starting in September 1983, over four months, he came off methadone and ended his heroin habit.

  By January 1985 he was thinking of retiring. Then he was invited to play the Rock in Rio festival in Rio de Janeiro. "I played to 300,000 people," he recalled. "They not only knew my music, they knew things about it and were interested in aspects of it that to that point had only interested me." He said that validation "helped get me back on track." He wrote "Only a Dream in Rio" in tribute. It appeared on That's Why I'm Here, released in October 1985, with Joni Mitchell and Don Henley singing backing vocals on "Only One."

  On the 14th of December 1985 he married actress Kathryn Walker at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. She helped him fight his addiction, though they divorced in 1996. His albums now came further apart but with steadier quality. Never Die Young arrived in 1988, and New Moon Shine in 1991 brought the Adult Contemporary hits "Copperline" and "(I've Got to) Stop Thinkin' About That." He began touring regularly, especially on the summer amphitheater circuit. The two-disc Live album in 1993 captured it, with Arnold McCuller's descants on "Shower the People" as a highlight. He also voiced himself on The Simpsons, in the episode "Deep Space Homer," and in 1995 played the Lord in Randy Newman's Faust.

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• 8. Later Years and Honors

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  Hourglass, released in 1997 after six years without a studio album, won Taylor his best reviews in almost twenty years. Its songs turned toward his troubled past and family, and "Enough To Be on Your Way" was inspired by the alcoholism-related death of his brother Alex earlier in the decade. Rolling Stone found that "one of the themes of this record is disbelief," and Taylor called it "spirituals for agnostics." It was his first Top 10 album in sixteen years and won him Best Pop Album in 1998, his first Grammy since the JT years. A New York concert opening that summer's tour aired live on PBS.

  Personal happiness arrived alongside the music. In 1995 Taylor began dating Caroline "Kim" Smedvig, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's director of public relations and marketing, whom he met when he performed with John Williams and the Boston Pops. They married at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Boston on the 18th of February 2001. Twin sons, Rufus and Henry, were born that April, and the family settled in Lenox, Massachusetts. The 2002 album October Road, which went Platinum, wove in their story through "On the 4th of July" and "Caroline I See You." Taylor said he felt calmer: "I thought I'd passed the midpoint of my life when I was 17."

  In 2004 he chose not to renew his contract with Columbia/Sony and released James Taylor: A Christmas Album through Hallmark Cards. In November 2007 he released One Man Band on the Hear Music label, a record born of a three-year tour in which he was accompanied only by pianist Larry Goldings. That same month he headlined six shows at the Troubadour with Carole King, marking the venue's 50th anniversary. He joked there about the 1970s, saying he played the club "a number of times in the 70s, allegedly."

  In January 2008 he recorded about 20 songs by other writers, live in the studio, and released them as Covers that September. One of them was "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," which his grandmother had caught him singing over and over at the top of his lungs at the age of seven. In 2010 the Troubadour Reunion Tour with King and members of his original band sold over 700,000 tickets and grossed over $59 million, moving him into large arenas.

  His public performances marked national moments. On the 24th of April 2013 he sang "The Water is Wide" and "Shower the People" at the MIT memorial service for slain police officer Sean Collier. In 2011 he sang "Fire and Rain" with Taylor Swift, who was named after him, at the final concert of her Speak Now World Tour.

  The chart story has a late twist. Before This World, released on the 16th of June 2015 through Concord Records, topped the Billboard 200 more than 45 years after Sweet Baby James first appeared on it. Its first week earned 97,000 equivalent album units. In 2020 American Standard debuted at No. 4, making him the first act with a top 10 album in each of six decades, and it won Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the 63rd Grammy Awards. That January he also released an audio memoir, Break Shot: My First 21 Years. In 2017 he cancelled a concert in Manila to protest the extrajudicial killings in the Philippine drug war.

  He has long supported environmental and liberal causes. In October 2004 he joined the Vote for Change tour with the Dixie Chicks, organized by MoveOn.org to mobilize voters in swing states. In October 2008 he played free concerts in five North Carolina cities for Barack Obama, and in 2012 he opened the Democratic National Convention. On the 24th of October 2024 he sang at a Tim Walz rally in Wilmington, North Carolina.

  The honors accumulated. He entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2003 the Chapel Hill Museum opened a permanent exhibit for him, and the Morgan Creek bridge from "Copperline" was named in his honor. He received the National Medal of Arts in 2010, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2016. In 2006 MusiCares named him Person of the Year, and Bruce Springsteen, Sting and Bonnie Raitt were among those who played his songs. Now a six-time Grammy winner, he continues to tour as of 2025, and his son Henry has toured as his backing vocalist.

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