James Taylor was the archetypal “sensitive” singer\/songwriter of the ’70s. His songs, especially his early ones, were tales of inner torment delivered in low-key tunes featuring Taylor’s understated tenor and his intricate acoustic guitar accompaniments that drew on folk and jazz. Taylor came across as relaxed, personable, and open; he was imitated by a horde of would-be confessionalists, although his best songs were as artful as they were emotional. They weren’t folk songs; they were pop compositions with folk dynamics, and in them Taylor put across more bitterness and resignation than reassurance. As he continued to record, Taylor split his albums between cover singles that were hits (\u201cHandy Man,\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ve Got a Friend\u201d) and his own songs, maturing into a laid-back artist with a large and devoted following of baby boomers.<\/p>\n
Born into a wealthy family, Taylor grew up in Boston. The family subsequently lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where James\u2019 father became dean of the medical school of the University of North Carolina, and on Martha\u2019s Vineyard off the coast of Cape Cod. Everyone in the family was musical; James initially played the cello. His older brother Alex introduced him to folk and country music, and James soon took up the guitar. When he was 15, summering on Martha\u2019s Vineyard, he met another budding guitarist, Danny Kortchmar. Taylor attended high school at a private academy outside Boston. Lonely away from his family, he took off a term in his junior year to return to Chapel Hill, where he played local gigs with Alex\u2019s rock band. In 1965 he committed himself to a mental institution – McLean Psychiatric Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts – to which his sister Kate and brother Livingston would later be admitted. There he began writing songs.<\/p>\n