James Taylor

James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, born in Belmont, Massachusetts. Taylor's career began in the mid-1960s, but he found his audience in the early 1970s, singing sensitive and gentle acoustic songs. He was part of a wave of singer-songwriters of the time that also included Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Carole King, as well as Carly Simon, whom Taylor later married. He grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where his father, Dr. Isaac M. Taylor, was the dean of the University of North Carolina Medical School from 1964 to 1971. Taylor first learned to play the cello as a child in Chapel Hill, and switched to the guitar in 1960. At 16 he dropped out of school and formed a band called The Fabulous Corsairs with his brother, Alex. Later, he was committed to a psychiatric hospital for depression. He earned a high school diploma while in the hospital, and then left and formed a band called the Flying Machine with Kortchmar and Joel O'Brien in New York City. While living in New York City, Taylor became addicted to heroin. In 1968, Taylor moved to London to escape his addiction. He was signed to Apple Records after sending a demo tape to Peter Asher (of Peter & Gordon) and released his debut album, James Taylor. Moving back to the United States, Taylor checked into a hospital to treat his drug problem. By 1969 he was well enough to perform live, at the Troubadour Club in Los Angeles. On July 20, 1969 he performed at the Newport Folk Festival. Shortly thereafter he broke both hands in a motorcycle accident on Martha's Vineyard and was forced to stop playing for several months. Once recovered, Taylor signed to Warner Bros. Records and moved to California keeping Asher as his manager and record producer. His second album, Sweet Baby James, was a massive success, buoyed by the single "Fire and Rain", a song about his experience in an asylum and the suicide of his friend, Suzanne Schnerr. The success of this single and the album piqued interest in Taylor's first album, James Taylor, bringing the album and the single, "Carolina In My Mind", back into the charts. 1971 saw the release of Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon, another hit album. He won a Grammy Award for his version of Carole King's "You've Got A Friend". In 1972, Taylor returned with One Man Dog and married fellow singer-songwriter Carly Simon on November 3. By the early 80's his drug problem had resurfaced and the couple divorced in 1983. His 1976 album Greatest Hits (which remains his biggest seller) was certified diamond and has sold more than 11 million copies. He has retained a large audience well into the 1990s and 2000s, when some of his best-selling and most-awarded albums were released. James Taylor is one of my personal favorite recording artist. If I could take only a dozen albums with me to a desert island "Sweet Baby James" would be one of them. He is one of the few artist whose voice has only gotten "better" with age. Visit his site at: http://www.jamestaylor.com/

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