Sunny skies (James Taylor) (LP 4068 - 4074)

James Taylor  Sweet Baby James (Vinyl and CD, Warner Bros. Records, 1970) *****  

James Taylor  Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon (CD, Warner Bros. Records, 1971) ***  

James Taylor  One Man Dog (CD, Warner Bros. Records, 1972) **** 

James Taylor  Walking Man (Vinyl, Warner Bros. Records, 1974) **

James Taylor  Gorilla (Vinyl, Warner Bros. Records, 1975) **** 

James Taylor  In the Pocket (Vinyl, Warner Bros. Records, 1976) *** 

James Taylor  JT (CD, Columbia Records, 1977) **** 

Genre: Folk rock, pop 

Places I remember: Marbecks Records, Real Groovy Records.

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Sweet Baby James

Gear costume: Fire and Rain (SBJ), Secret O'Life (JT)

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6

Active compensatory factors: James Taylor has appeared already - when I covered my Apple Records section I wrote about his debut album. Now we launch into his post Apple mega success years. 

My children have always ribbed me (gently) about my James Taylor collection. For them he symbolises laid back cruisiness, but I notice they have mellowed their attitudes towards JT as they age.

I have quite a number of his albums, so I'll need to create a few posts to cover them all. Starting off with his seventies' albums.

Sweet Baby James isn't a million miles away from the Apple debut - just a less busy arrangement really. Stripping things back a bit to his key strengths - James' fluid guitar and easy warm vocals worked a treat for songs like Country Road, Sweet Baby James and Fire and Rain most notably.

The album went mega because of those songs and those strengths. James Taylor was on his way in spectacular fashion, launching the sensitive singer-songwriter genre of the seventies at the same time. Plenty of folk owe him big-time!

Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon was completed quickly after Sweet Baby James. It includes the huge hit - You've Got a Friend (by Carole King who plays on the album, as she did on SBJ). I find Mud Slide Slim to be a weaker effort on the whole. It's good, but not great. Maybe he needed some time to write some more songs?

I'm a big fan of One Man Dog. He'd taken the time to write, get married (to Carly Simon) and get clean and sober. It contained another hit (Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight) but more importantly a whole sequence of very catchy, likeable songs that grew on me the more I played the album. 

This is one of my JT go-tos - his relaxed persona is genuine on One Man Dog although he's still a tad buttoned up. The cover is perfect - JT standing in a boat with his dog and looking cool in an unusual situation, and wearing formal clothes. The tie is the genius touch.

Walking Man wasn't as successful as the previous three albums. Even Paul and Linda McCartney providing backing vocals (along with Carly) on a couple of tracks couldn't generate much enthusiasm from the record buying public, as Walking Man is his worst selling album.

Interesting. It starts off with the beautiful title song but then it becomes a bit meh. Some fluctuating quality control means it feels a bit cobbled together.

Much, much better was Gorilla. Both singles lifted from the album were super successful - Mexico and How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You). The rest of the songs were strong too, without the filler that appeared on Walking Man. It also helped that Mexico and Lighthouse featured superb harmony vocals from David Crosby and Graham Nash. Glorious!

The title track is one of his occasional 'funny' songs (like I'm a Steamroller) which don't tend to travel well. Aside from that, this is a return to form.

In the Pocket maintained the flow of celebrity guests. This time Crosby and Carly returned (she was also on Gorilla) and Art Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder, Linda Ronstadt, and Bonnie Raitt joined in on the fun. You can't really go wrong with that kind of stellar support, but the album still needed more killer songs. Shower the People was the deserved hit single that allowed the album to continue JT's success record.

JT was a major return to peak form. The songs were uniformly good to great (Secret O' Life, Handy Man, Your Smiling Face, Honey Don't Leave LA).  The album was commercially successful as well - his best seller since Sweet Baby James.

Where do they all belong? The only album missing from this seventies lot is Flag from 1979. I'm not sure now why I bypassed it - I was working at Marbecks at the time so I definitely would have played it in the shop, so I can't have been too impressed.