Birthdays - JAMES TAYLOR (78)

 Happy birthday to James Taylor, born in Boston, Massachusetts on this day in 1948.

Thanks for the reminder guys but I really don’t need to hear another version of Fire and Rain so . . . .

James Taylor - Whenever You're Ready (from Pull Over)

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VH-1 Storytellers (contd) James Taylor NY 1997 | ALBUMS THAT SHOULD EXIST

James Taylor - VH-1 Storytellers, VH-1 Storytellers Studio, New York City, 5-31-1997

Paul says: Next up for "VH-1 Storytellers" is an episode featuring singer-songwriter James Taylor.

This one is twice as long as a typical episode of this TV show. I don't know if that's because it was broken into two episodes or if it's a bootleg that contained the full concert. But either way, we get lots of music.

In 1997, Taylor released the studio album "Hourglass," his first studio album in six years. It was seen as a comeback for him, both commercially and critically. It was his first Top Ten album in the U.S. in 16 years, selling over a million copies. It also won him a Grammy Award for Best Pop Album. 

He performed six songs from his new album: "Line 'Em Up," "Hangnail," "Jump Up Behind Me," "Enough to Be on Your Way," "Little More Time with You," and "Another Day." His other songs were generally classics from older albums. On some songs he played solo acoustic, while on others he was backed by a small band.

Note that one song from this performance was officially released: "Mexico." It appeared on a various artists collection of Storytellers highlights.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long. 

01 talk 
02 Carolina in My Mind 
03 talk 
04 Sweet Baby James 
05 talk
06 Jump Up Behind Me 
07 talk 
08 Mexico 
09 talk 
10 Mona 
11 talk
12 Enough to Be on Your Way
13 talk
14 Little More Time with You 
15 talk
16 Steamroller 
17 Copperline 
18 talk 
19 The Frozen Man 
20 talk
21 Riding on the Railroad 
22 talk 
23 Hangnail 
24 talk 
25 Fire and Rain 
26 talk
27 Another Day
28 talk
29 Line 'Em Up
30 talk 
31 Valentine's Day 
32 talk 
33 Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMES TAYLOR [74] - You’ve Got A Friend (with Carole King 1971) | Route Publishers

 

James Taylor and Carole King ‘You’ve Got A Friend’ live 1971

Happy birthday to James Taylor, born in Boston, Massachusetts on this day in 1948. Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you got to do is call.

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 In this HARDtalk interview from 2008, he talks to Stephen Sackur about why he writes, his struggles with drugs since his teenage years and why live performances are more important now than ever.

Song of the Day II : : Mockingbird -- Charlie & Inez Foxx (1963)

 CLASSIC ROCK 'N' ROLL REVISITED!

Damn! Well I'd buy her a Mockingbird too!

So if it becomes so classic that Carly Simon and main squeeze James Taylor cover it you KNOW it's a HIT!

James Taylor on writing You Can Close Your Eyes - O MY SOUL

“I was making a movie—the only movie of my life, ‘Two-Lane Blacktop.’ Joni was traveling with me at the time, just for company and she was knitting me a sweater—A ‘two-lane blacktop’ sweater—one of the arms was like this long and the other was here…but it was really a beautiful thing, I wish I knew where it was—So I was traveling with Joni…we were staying in a hotel/motel outside of Santa Fe, and she was asleep in the bed and I was sitting on the side, playing the guitar and I wrote that song.“—And you played it for her when she woke up?—"Yeah, she seemed to like it.”

— James Taylor in response to the question: “Did you really write, ‘[You Can] Close Your Eyes,’ for Joni Mitchell while she was asleep in the back seat of a car you were driving down the Pacific Coast Highway?”—Stephen Colbert, The Late Show, February 2020.

In this restored footage of "James Taylor In Concert," James performs his song "You Can Close Your Eyes“ on the popular BBC series "In Concert" on November 16, 1970. "In Concert" was produced by the BBC in the early '70s and featured performances from legendary acts of the time. In November 1970, James was 22 years old and his second studio album "Sweet Baby James" had released earlier that same year. Well, the sun is surely sinkin’ down But the moon is slowly risin’ So this old world must still be spinnin’ ’round Yes, and I still love you So close your eyes You can close your eyes It’s all righ tI don’t know no love songs And I can’t sing the blues anymore Yes, but I can sing this song And you can sing this song when I’m gone It won’t be long before another day We’re gonna have a good time And no one’s gonna take that time away You can stay as long as you like Only close your eyes You can close your eyes It’s all right Oh, I don’t know no love songs And I can’t sing the blues anymore Sure, but I can sing this song Yes, and you can sing this song when I’m gone #JamesTaylor

Footage licensed from BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. All rights reserved.

'Two Lane Blacktop' director Monte Hellman dies at 91

 

Monte Hellman, Cult Director of ‘Two-Lane Blacktop,’ Dies at 91 

Monte Hellman, whose terse action films, epitomized by the 1971 road movie “Two-Lane Blacktop,” made him a cult hero of the American independent film movement, died on Tuesday in California. He was executive producer on Tarantino's 'Reservoir Dogs' amongst other things and seems to have tried to use the incomparable Warren Oates in every movie he ever made! He was 91.

Warren Oates, as G.T.O., confronting Dennis Wilson, James Taylor and Laurie Bird in a scene from the movie “Two-Lane Blacktop.”

I loved this movie and not least because it starred two musicians in James Taylor and Dennis Wilson. I saw it when it came out over here and rate amongst my top thirty greatest films and curiously for me I love the petrol head roles in it and it ranks alongs 'Duel' as one of my favourite road movies of all time (Easy Rider etc)  I dreamed if ever I owned a car it would look like this . . . . . . . 

Two-Lane Blacktop (1971, 102 minutes)

Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop has four principal characters known only as “the driver” (James Taylor, a singer signed to the Beatles’ Apple label), “the mechanic” (Beach Boys drummer and sometimes composer Dennis Wilson), “GTO” (veteran film and TV actor Warren Oates) and “the girl” (novice actress Laurie Bird). “Oddly enough, the only one who sang in the picture was Bird, and she couldn’t sing,” notes Hellman. It was, instead, a road film about a two-car transcontinental race down old Route 66, all the way to Washington D.C.

The mechanic, hands in his pockets on a blustery autumn night, watches carefully as the beefy guys in the embroidered car-club jackets shine flashlights on the big block 454 of the primer-coated, innocent looking ’55 Chevy (except for the sheet metal covering the tunnel ram intake manifold with dual quads protruding through the hood).

With everything checked out, the driver guns it briefly to warm up his pair of oversized Firestone racing tires as an opponent next to him does the same. The fat guy in front of them turns on a flashlight, and they’re off in a cloud of exhaust, tortured rubber and the deafening howl of powerful engines, down a quarter-mile run. Before the pay-off, the siren of an LAPD squad car, screaming toward the impromptu dragstrip, abruptly ends the evening for everybody.

The ’55 Chevy pulls up to Mary’s Cafe somewhere in Arizona, so the driver and the mechanic can grab a bite to eat. With the juke box blaring out “Hit The Road Jack,” they down their sandwiches as a skinny girl in her early 20s climbs out of a panel truck with a garish mural painted on the side. She slings her duffle bag into the ’55 Chevy, then follows it into the back seat. The driver and the mechanic take off, completely ignoring the girl. Finally, she pipes up: “It’s really bumpy back here. What kind of car is this, anyway?” The pair in front says nothing. “You guys aren’t the Zodiac killers or anything, are you?” she asks. The mechanic turns around and says, “Just passing through.”

They pull into a small town in New Mexico for the night and cruise the main drag before finding a lime green ’32 coupe street rod parked at a Lyons Root Beer drive-in. Playing the hayseed card, the driver tells the coupe’s owner, “Gee, mister, I’ll bet it’s pretty quick.” The owner, in his 30s, balding with a mustache, says, “You wanna find out?” Dropping all pretense, the driver says, “Normally I’d jump at the opportunity, but I’m not in the habit of seeing the Chevy work against a two-bit piece of junk.” “Let’s make it 50!” says the coupe’s owner. The driver snaps back, “Make it three yards, motherfucker, and we’ll have an automobile race!”

Magnet Magazine

Another gem from Big O this morning with James Taylor on a radio broadcast supreme quality set to advertise his new covering of the Great American Songbook. Get it now it's a truly lovely set, chilled and relaxed but this band is TIGHT like that!

JAMES TAYLOR

James Taylor - iHEART Radio New York 2020

James Taylor

Sweet Baby James

'FIRE & RAIN'

Not an easy listening song as may at first be thought but about grief and loss and the realisation that life is momentary, fleeting and we are going to lose people along the way and how we cope with that . . . . . . 
This songs has resonance towards too many losses . . . . . .and yes I bought the album when it came out. Fire and Rain concerns itself with loss of a friend from a mental institution and the references from Taylor about junk and coping with such stuff hit a chord and are hardly the stuff of romantic MOR country




so I stuck with him pretty much all the way through to today and paused for some fun along the way


that'll do for a Blue Tuesday . . . . . . . 


plain & fancy has sweet baby james here . . . .

JAMES TAYLOR - CARNEGIE HALL 1974

lovely set from Big O this Sunday morning . . . . . . I thought I had this Carnegie Hall concert on boot somewhere down in the vaults but not of this quality it is pre-FM broadcast quality and well worth checking for James Taylor fans and for those who maybe need to be! 

"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"

James Taylor - Carnegie Hall 1974

Track 01. You Can Close Your Eyes 2:50

check the line up:

Lineup:

James Taylor - guitar, piano & vocals

Hugh McCracken - guitar & harmonica

Dave Spinozza - guitar

Andy Muson - bass

Don Grolnick - keyboards

Rick Marotta - drums, vibraphone & percussion

Jon Faddis- trumpet

Alan Rubin- trumpet

Barry Rogers - trombone

George Young -alto saxophone

Frank Vacari - tenor saxophone

Kenny Berger- baritone saxophone

Howard Johnson - tuba

Carly Simon - vocals

Peter Asher - vocals

"practice . . . . . . . . . "

Classic songs of all time . . . this one by Carole King

On this day in music history: July 31, 1971 - “You’ve Got A Friend” by James Taylor hits #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for 1 week. Written by Carole King, it is the biggest hit for the Boston, MA born singer, songwriter and musician. After the major breakthrough success James Taylor has with his second studio album “Sweet Baby James” in 1970, he and producer Peter Asher (Peter & Gordon) return to the studio in January of 1971 to begin recording the follow up. While working on his third album, Taylor contributes background vocals and guitar to his friend Carole King’s album “Tapestry”, which she is working on at the same time. King records the song “You’ve Got A Friend” on her album first, and after hearing it, James asks if he can record it for his album and King says “yes”. Issued as the first single from Taylor’s third album “Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon” in May of 1971, it quickly becomes an instant classic and a mainstay on top 40 pop radio. Entering the Hot 100 at #80 on June 5, 1971, it reaches the top of the chart eight weeks later. “You’ve Got A Friend” also wins Taylor his first Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, as well as winning songwriter Carole King the Grammy Award for Song Of The Year in 1972. “You’ve Got A Friend” is certified Gold in the US by the RIAA.

thanks as ever to Jeff Harris at his wondrous Behind The Grooves