James Taylor

James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is a Grammy Award winning American singer-songwriter and guitarist born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Carrboro, North Carolina.[1] He currently owns a home in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.

Taylor's career began in the mid-1960s, but his commercial and critical breakthrough came with the 1970 album Sweet Baby James, a collection of sensitive and introspective songs ranked among the greatest folk rock albums ever.[who?] He was part of a wave of singer-songwriters of the time that also included Cat Stevens, Carole King, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Tom Rush, and Jackson Browne, as well as Carly Simon, whom Taylor later married, although the marriage did not last.

During the early seventies his work achieved success among critics[who?] and the public, with hit singles like Fire and Rain and the U.S. number-one You've Got a Friend, a cover of Carole King's song. His 1976 album Greatest Hits was certified diamond and has sold more than 11 million copies.[2] After the very successful JT (1977), he retained a large audience over the decades. His commercial achievements slipped down until a big resurgence during the late nineties and early 2000s, when some of his best-selling and most-awarded albums (Hourglass, October Road and Covers) were released.

In 1977 Taylor signed with Columbia Records. Between March and April, he quickly recorded the first album for the label. JT, released that June, gave Taylor his best reviews since Sweet Baby James, earning a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year in 1978. Rolling Stone was particularly favorable to the album – "JT is the least stiff and by far the most various album Taylor has done. That's not meant to criticize Taylor's earlier efforts [...]. But it's nice to hear him sounding so healthy." [47] JT reached #4 in the Billboard charts, supported with the highly successful cover of Jimmy Jones and Otis Blackwell's "Handy Man", which also reached #4 (also topping the adult contemporary charts) and earning Taylor another Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his cover version. The album also provided another Top 20 hit single, "Your Smiling Face.

Back in the forefront of popular music, Taylor collaborated with Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in the recording of a cover of Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World", which reached the Top 20 in the U.S. in early 1978. After briefly working on Broadway, he took a one-year break, reappearing in May 1979 with the cover-studded album Flag, featuring a Top 40 version of Gerry Goffin and Carole King's "Up on the Roof." Taylor also performed at the No Nukes concert in Madison Square Garden and appeared on the album and the film from the concert.

In March 1981, James Taylor released the album Dad Loves His Work, whose themes concerned his relationship with his father, the course his ancestors had taken, and the effect he and Simon had had on each other.[48]The album was another success, reaching #10 and providing a hit single in a duet with J. D. Souther, "Her Town Too", which reached #11 in Billboard. The album's title was, in part, drawn from the reasons for Taylor's divorce from Carly Simon. She gave him an ultimatum: cut back on his music and touring, and spend more time with her and their children, or the marriage was through. The album's title was Taylor's answer, and Simon asked for divorce. (The emotional repercussions of the divorce likely served as at least part of the inspiration for "Her Town Too".)

Simon announced her separation from Taylor in September 1981 – saying "Our needs are different; it seem[s] impossible to stay together" – and their divorce became final in 1983.[49] Taylor was living on West End Avenue in Manhattan and on a methadone maintenance program.[50] Over the course of four months starting in September 1983, spurred on in part by the deaths of his friends John Belushi and Dennis Wilson and in part by the desire to be a better father to his children, he dropped methadone and finally kicked his drug habit for good.[50]

Taylor had thoughts of retiring by the time he played the massive Rock in Rio festival in Rio de Janeiro in January 1985.[51] He was encouraged by the nascent democracy in Brazil at the time, buoyed by the positive reception he got from the large crowd and other musicians, and musically energized by the sounds and nature of Brazilian music.[52] "I had... sort of bottomed-out in a drug habit, my marriage with Carly had dissolved, and I had basically had been depressed and lost for a while, " he recalled in 1995. "I sort of hit a low spot. I was asked to go down to Rio de Janeiro to play in this festival down there. We put the band together and went down and it was just an amazing response. I played to 300,000 people. 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. To have that kind of validation right about then was really what I needed. It helped get me back on track." [53] The song "Only a Dream in Rio" was written in tribute to that night, with verses like I was there that very day and my heart came back alive.[52] The October 1985 album, That's Why I'm Here, from which that song came, started a series of studio recordings that, while spaced further apart than his previous records, showed a more consistent level of quality and fewer covers.

On December 14, 1985, Taylor married actress Kathryn Walker at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.[54] Taylor's next albums were partially successful – in 1988, he released Never Die Young and in 1991, the platinum New Moon Shine. During the late eighties, he began touring regularly, especially on the summer amphitheater circuit. His later concerts feature songs from throughout his career and are marked by the musicianship of his band and backup singers. The 1993 two-disc (LIVE) album captures this, with a highlight being Arnold McCuller's descants in the codas of "Shower the People" and "I Will Follow." In 1995, Taylor performed the role of Lord in Randy Newman's Faust.

After six years since his last studio album, Taylor released Hourglass, an introspective album that gave him the best critical reviews in almost twenty years. The album had much of its focus on Taylor's troubled past and family. "Jump Up Behind Me" paid tribute to his father's rescue of him after The Flying Machine days, and the long drive from New York City back to his home in Chapel Hill.[55] "Enough To Be On Your Way" was inspired by the alcoholism-related death of his brother Alex earlier in the decade.[56] The themes were also inspired by Taylor and Walker's divorce, which tooke place in 1996.[57] Critics embraced the dark themes on the album, and Hourglass was a huge commercial success, reaching #9 on the Billboard 200 (Taylor's first Top 10 album in sixteen years) and also provided a big adult contemporary hit on "Little More Time With You". The album also gave Taylor his first Grammy since JT, when was honored with Best Pop Album in 1998.

On February 18, 2001 at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Boston, Taylor wed for the third time, marrying Caroline ("Kim") Smedvig, the director of public relations and marketing for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.[58] They had begun dating in 1995, when they met as he appeared with John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra.[58] Part of their relationship was worked into the album October Road, on the song "On the 4th of July."[59] The couple reside in the town of Washington, Massachusetts[60] with their twin boys, Rufus and Henry, born in April 2001 to a surrogate mother via in vitro fertilization.[58]

Flanked by two greatest hit releases, October Road appeared in 2002 to a receptive audience. It featured a number of quiet instrumental accompaniments and passages. Overall, it found Taylor in a more peaceful frame of mind; rather than facing a crisis now, Taylor said in an interview that "I thought I'd passed the midpoint of my life when I was 17."[61] The album appeared in two versions, a single-disc version and a "limited edition" two-disc version which contained three extra songs including a duet with Mark Knopfler, "Sailing to Philadelphia," which also appeared on Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia album. Also in 2002, Taylor teamed with bluegrass musician Alison Krauss in singing "The Boxer" at the Kennedy Center Honors Tribute to Paul Simon. They later recorded the Louvin Brothers duet, "How's the World Treating You?" In 2004, after he chose not to renew his record contract with Columbia/Sony, he released James Taylor: A Christmas Album with distribution through Hallmark Cards.

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