1. Sweet Baby James

2. Lo And Behold

3. Sunny Skies

4. Steamroller

5. Country Road

6. Ohsusannah

7. Fire And Rain

8. Blossom

9. Anywhere Like Heaven

10. Oh Babydon't Loose Your Lip On Me

11. Suite For 20 g

 

Rolling Stone

Last August James Taylor was quoted in Rolling Stone thusly: "I hope my next album will be simpler. It has to be, because the music is simple and a big production job just buries all my intentions." Well, this first post-Apple album dovetails nicely with that anticipation, even down to the inclusion of Stephen Foster's "Oh, Susannah," buck-wheat cakes in her mouth and all.

Peter Asher (formerly at Apple with Taylor ) produced this album, as well as Taylor 's first, and, one can hear, let Taylor have free rein this time. Echoes of the Band, the Byrds, country Dylan and folksified Dion abound, yet somehow Taylor pulls through it all with a very listenable record that is all his own. The gentle, intelligent manipulation of piano, steel guitar, fiddle and a few brass arrangements alone deserve a close listening to by any erstwhile producers.

And it is hard to fault Taylor 's lyrics. "Sweet Baby James," with its "cowboys waiting for summer/his pastures to change" and "Fire and Rain" with its "Sweet dreams and fire machines in pieces on the ground" are just a few of the images that Taylor develops. Throughout, his vocal stance is low-key and perfectly matched to the country-styled guitar work. No acute solos or overstressed melodies appear as musicians and vocalist together manage to mandala their way through Taylor 's persistent lonely prairie/lovely Heaven visions that, at times, work their way up to the intensity of a haiku or the complexity of a parable.

Taylor only shifts from this stance a couple of times. "Oh Baby, Don't You Loose Your Lip On Me" is less than two minutes long; bluesy yet random, it sounds like studio hi-jinks used to fill out an album. But the other exception, "Steam Roller," is a different story. Here Taylor is earthy and lowdown with definitely crude electric guitar behind him as he moans "I'm gonna inject your soul with some sweet rock and roll and shoot you full of rhythm and blues." Then a miasmic, brass riff to make sure things stay tough, followed by a particularly timely and potent couple of verses: "I'm a napalm bomb for you baby/stone guaranteed to blow your mind/ and if I can't have your love for my own sweet child/there won't be nothing left behind." A double-entendre tour-de-force pulled off effortlessly.

This is a hard album to argue with; it does a good job of proving that his first effort was no fluke. This one gets off the ground just as nicely, as Taylor seems to have found the ideal musical vehicle to say what he has to say.

All Music

The heart of James Taylor's appeal is that you can take him two ways. On the one hand, his music, including that warm voice, is soothing; its minor key melodies and restrained playing draw in the listener. On the other hand, his world view, especially on such songs as "Fire and Rain," reflects the pessimism and desperation of the 1960s hangover that was the early '70s. That may not be intentional: "Fire and Rain" was about the suicide of a fellow inmate of Taylor's at a mental institution, not the national malaise. But Taylor's sense of wounded hopelessness — "I'm all in pieces, you can have your own choice," he sings in "Country Road" — struck a chord with music fans, especially because of its attractive mixture of folk, country, gospel, and blues elements, all of them carefully understated and distanced. Taylor didn't break your heart, he understood that it was already broken, as was his own, and he offered comfort. As a result, Sweet Baby James sold millions of copies, spawned a Top Ten hit in "Fire and Rain" and a Top 40 hit in "Country Road," and launched not only Taylor's career as a pop superstar but also the entire singer/songwriter movement of the early '70s that included Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens, and others. A second legacy became clear two decades later, when country stars like Garth Brooks began to cite Taylor, with his use of steel guitar, references to Jesus, and rural and Western imagery on Sweet Baby James, as a major influence.