James Taylor

I can't sing the Blues anymore

As a child of the 70s I grew up listening to Joni Mitchel, Carly Simon, and Carol King. I didn’t have any of their albums when I was a kid but one of them always seemed to have a song that got tons of radio play: a bunch of songs from Carole King’s 1971 album Tapestry [especially Aretha Franklin’s cover of “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman”]; Simon’s “You’re So Vain” in 1972; and Mitchell’s “Help Me” in 1974, among others.

Eventually I would own almost all of their albums. On the other hand, I didn’t really know much about James Taylor. “Fire and Rain” and his cover of King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” from his Greatest Hits album released in 1976 were very popular at my summer camp but other than that I didn’t listen to his music growing up. In the early 80s I went to his concert at St. John’s University in Flushing, NY because the older brother of a friend of mine couldn’t use the tickets and gave them to us. I recognized very few of the songs. And I was really shocked at how rude the audience was. People kept calling out “We want Carly Simon!” Finally somebody screamed back, “Then go to a Carly Simon concert,” and the crowd laughed. Ironically, Carly Simon joined her husband on stage at the end of the concert and they sang “Mockingbird” together. But it was pretty uncomfortable.

Other than that, though, James Taylor’s music did not have a significant presence in my life. And then in 2002 I started taking guitar lessons. One of the first songs I learned to play after I started fingerpicking was Taylor’s song “Soldiers.” As I got better, I learned “You Can Close Your Eyes” and I was hooked.

And then there’s “Love Has Brought Me Around,” which has a great bridge (that I still have trouble playing) and is so upbeat and hopeful that it never fails to lift my mood.

BONUS TRACK

It’s just a coincidence that all three of my must listen songs come from the same album—Mud Slide Slim (1971)—and as I said, “Soldiers” is a song I learned to play very early on. The golden green waters remind me of Cape Cod Bay, and the juxtaposition between the beauty of nature and the horrors of war pretty much sums up the dilemma we seem to be facing lately (or perpetually).