James Taylor

James Taylor was born on March 12, 1948, in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where his father was a physician and dean of the University of North Carolina medical school. His upbringing was outwardly comfortable and intellectually stimulating, but Taylor struggled privately from an early age with depression. At seventeen, he voluntarily committed himself to McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, one of the country's most prominent psychiatric facilities, where he spent approximately nine months.^[1] It was during this period that his commitment to music deepened.

After leaving McLean, Taylor moved to New York's East Village and formed the Flying Machine with guitarist Danny Kortchmar. The group made recordings but never broke through commercially, and Taylor's involvement with heroin, which he later described as a natural outgrowth of the Village scene of the mid-1960s, contributed to the band's dissolution.^[2]

In 1967, Taylor moved to London, where Peter Asher, then head of A&R at the Beatles' Apple Records, heard his demos and signed him. Taylor's self-titled debut album was released on Apple in late 1968 but made little commercial impact.^[3] He returned to the United States that year in the grip of serious heroin addiction, was hospitalized in New York, and then spent approximately five months at Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. During and after that stay, he wrote most of the songs that would become his breakthrough record.

Released in February 1970, Sweet Baby James (produced by Peter Asher on Warner Bros. Records) reached number 3 on the Billboard album chart and helped launch the singer-songwriter movement of the early 1970s. Its single "Fire and Rain" reached number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.^[4] Carole King, who played piano on the album, cited it as a direct inspiration for her own landmark record Tapestry.

Taylor went on to become one of the best-selling recording artists of all time, known for a warm, intimate style that drew on folk, country, and soft rock. He continued to struggle with addiction throughout the 1970s and 1980s before achieving sobriety. Over his career he has won five Grammy Awards and sold over 100 million records worldwide.^[1]