Released in February 1970, James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James became one of a handful of albums that defined the pop and rock landscape in the immediate wake of the Beatles’ breakup.
Decades later, this second studio effort still holds up well, and it does so by going against a lot of prevailing trends of the time: Rock by the end of the decade had gotten louder, longer and more political. James Taylor wasn’t any of those things – and he still isn’t today.
In hindsight and put in the context of its turbulent era, Sweet Baby James is a marvel to listen to – this quiet defiance of trends that catapulted Taylor from obscurity to superstardom. And, the album transcends the time it was made in.
He was coming off a short-lived stint with the Beatles’ Apple Records and a 1968 self-titled debut album that stiffed, despite some critical acclaim and two bona fide classic Taylor tunes in “Something In the Way She Moves” and “Carolina On My Mind.” Taylor took manager Pater Asher of Peter and Gordon fame with him to Warner Bros. to try something different.
Effortlessly straddling the divides between folk, blues, gospel and rock, Peter Asher’s production of Sweet Baby James put Taylor’s voice, acoustic guitar and his songs well above anything else – including even the star-studded musicians like Carole King, Russ Kunkel, Randy Meisner, and Danny Kortchmar who appear on this record.
Taylor’s no-fuss approach to his craft belies an original and effectual finger-picking style, memorable and smooth flowing lyrics, and that warm, slightly nasally croon that can’t be mistaken for anyone else. (Except, on occasion, his brother Livingston.) Those features remain the hallmarks of every James Taylor album, but perhaps never illuminated better than on this classic.
Drawing largely from his own experiences, a young life filled with personal tragedies and up until then, only a handful of small triumphs, Taylor’s themes contrasted with the prevailing hippie mindset of eternal sunshine. His songs resided in darkness, but were always reaching for the light. Sweet Baby James does it all from a personal point of view, rather than making grand, sweeping statements. People connected with that, attaching to it whatever sweeping or personal statements that they wanted to.
The No. 3 Top 40 hit “Fire and Rain” – one of Taylor’s many autobiographical songs, and still his best – became an anthem for those suffering from ’60s fatigue. But the song everyone knows doesn’t alone make Sweet Baby James special. The title song, written for his newborn nephew named after him, is a sweet, cowpoke lullaby-within-lullaby. Gently furbished by Red Rhodes’ steel guitar, James Taylor’s lyrics and narration are syllable-perfect. It’s a song that’s as cozy as sitting in front of a lit fireplace on a cold winter’s day.
Taylor also proves to have mastered the blues: The short but rousing “Oh Baby, Don’t You Loose Your Lip On Me” is fun just to hear “poor ol’ JT” get worked up. Meanwhile, “Steamroller Blues,” with its road-construction equipment metaphors and memorable lines like “churning urn of burning funk,” attracted the attention of Elvis Presley, who turned it into a Top 20 hit for himself.
The more intriguing deep cuts are songs that fit snugly with his core folk/gospel style. “Lo and Behold,” “Sunny Sides” and “Blossom” weren’t hits, but are just as well written. And then there’s “Country Road,” maybe his best deep cut of all time, and a perennial concert favorite.
The lone cover goes farther back, hit or otherwise, than any other cover James Taylor would later record: Stephen Foster’s 19th Century ditty “Oh, Susannah.” This song merely serves to illuminate what an incredible interpreter Taylor is; armed with only his acoustic six-string, he re-harmonizes it into his own personality without erasing the original melody or meaning of the song.
A subsequent Audio Fidelity remaster of Sweet Baby James, released in 2011, didn’t bring out any dramatic improvements, but there are several subtle ones: The horns on “Steamroller Blues” have more punch; the odd bass lines picked from Taylor’s guitar are more noticeable on “Sunny Skies,” as is the cello and Kunkel’s magnificent drum work on “Fire and Rain.” By and large, though, Peter Asher’s light production touch and Bill Lazarus’ quality engineering already left little room for improvement. The original artwork was preserved, including the hand-written lyrics and several publicity shots of the 21-year-old revolutionary.
What, wait, James Taylor, a revolutionary? You bet. Sweet Baby James, a simple, unassuming paragon of soft rock, set the stage for a robust period of softer music: The singer-songwriter era attracted a sizable audience who didn’t want hot licks, booming sonics, pie-in-the-sky optimism or lectures. Just honest, straightforward tunes. That starts right here.
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