James Taylor

JAMES TAYLOR
 
 
James Taylor  (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.  A five-time Grammy Award winner, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.  He is one of the best-selling artists of all time, and he has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.  Taylor achieved his breakthrough in 1970 with the No. 3 single “Fire and Rain” and had his first No. 1 hit the following year with “You’ve Got a Friend”, a recording of Carole King’s classic song.  His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million US copies.  Following his 1977 album, JT, he has retained a large audience over the decades.  Every album that he released from 1977 to 2006 sold over a million copies.  His chart performance had a resurgence during the late 1990s and 2000s, when he recorded some of his most-awarded work (including Hourglass, October Road, and Covers).  He achieved his first number one album in the US in 2015 with his recording Before This World.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 

As a producer, Peter Asher was second to none in the 1970’s; James Taylor was his other main client.  Together with his work with Linda Ronstadt, Asher helped create the Southern California sound of that time period by producing albums for J. D. Souther, Andrew Gold and Bonnie Raitt.  

 

(October 2013)

 

*       *       *

 

After being dropped by Capitol Records, Crystal Mansion finally added a bass guitarist, Billy Crawford and released a single in 1970 for Colossus Records, the same label that released records in America by the Dutch band Shocking Blue, including their mega-hit “Venus”, also in 1970. The 45 was released under the name Crystal Mansion Featuring Johnny Caswell, with the “A” side being the James Taylor song “Carolina in My Mind” and an original song (by Johnny Caswell and Sal Rota) called “If I Live” on the flip. When Collectables Records reissued the 1971 album The Crystal Mansion on CD in 1994, “Carolina in My Mind” was included as a bonus track.
 
“Carolina in My Mind” is one of James Taylor’s best known and most critically praised songs and is a frankly homesick remembrance of growing up in North Carolina (Chapel Hill specifically). He wrote the song while recording at the Beatles’ Apple Records studios in London. The song appeared on his 1968 debut album for Apple, James Taylor. Wikipedia says of this song: “Strongly tied to a sense of geographic place, ‘Carolina in My Mind’ has been called an unofficial state anthem for North Carolina. It is also an unofficial song of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, being played at athletic events and pep rallies and sung by the graduating class at every university commencement.”
 
(August 2015)
* * *
For some reason, over the years the 1970’s have gotten a reputation as a poor decade for music. (So do the 1950’s, for that matter, even though that is where rock and roll came from). It certainly cannot be because everything sounded the same. Most of the British Invasion bands were still active. The top American acts were still going strong as well – Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, Linda Ronstadt, the Beach Boys, the Band, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, etc. – and major stars who arrived in the 1970’s include Elton John, Michael Jackson, Queen, ABBA, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Prince, James Taylor, and Tom Petty. Anyone who says they are a music fan has to be able to find someone, and probably several someones on that list that they like a lot.
(December 2016)