March 9, 1970
The N. C. Essay
Page 2 *
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James Taylor has a new album:
it's on Warner Brothers and it's
called Sweet Baby James. Very impor
tant in and of itself, this album
proves that there is a new, sig
nificant talent in the realm of
folk-rock.
The first James Taylor album
is also notable as a forerunner of
Abbey Road. Paul McCartney was
involved in the production of this
album and it shows. In the musi
cal bridges between songs, one
glimpses the developing Beatle
notion of an album side as an organ
ic piece of music. This concept and
its execution are, of course,
what makes side two of Abbey Road a
rock milestone.
James Taylor subsequently left
Apple, both for administrative and
artistic reasons. He had not been
signed to a regular contract and
had trouble getting back into the
studio to record his second album.
Perhaps more importantly, Taylor
differed with the organic production
concept which implies, at bottom, a
lot of production and planning.
This, of course, does not mean
that Taylor is against all that is
organic and integrated. He evi
dently felt that idea that the music
in a song should relate integrally
to the music in the next song was a
conception not especially suited to
folk-rock, or at least not to James
Taylor music. There is, very
definitely, a subject coherence which
pervades this album.
The album's title. Sweet Baby
JameSy is no accident or whim. What
is contained inside the jacket is
a personal testament. Careful con
sideration of the album will reveal
James Taylor's outlook on life, poli
tics, loneliness, emotional in
volvement, alienation, as well as
all those things that I didn't see.
There are references to the ideas of
others involved in making the'music
we roughly refer to as rock. In
short, there is an incredible amount
happening on this record.
The album opens with the title
song, Sueet Baby James. We find
James out in the country, alone by
choice: "Deep greens and blues
are the colors I choose." Which is
to say that he chooses the pastoral
setting and he chooses to be alone.
The line "Good night you mooij light
ladies" has, actually two objects;
the cattle which had just been
bedded down and the companionship
James misses. His mind is in both
places.
Lo and Behold follows. The
phrase "Down in my dreams" is
repeated from the first song. It
becomes apparent that he has set
himself apart to thinking things
out. "You can't kill for Jesus"
harkens back to Dylan's With God On
Out Side. Even if you're on the
"right" side, killing isn't justi
fied. The implicit question is this:
What good is the revolution if we
become, in the process, as human
istically bankrupt as the establish
ment?
Taylor says "everyone's
talking 'bout the gospel story, some
shall sink and some shall rise."
This refers to thinking and songs
(such as The Times They ave a Changin’)
which cataclysmically conceptualizes
salvation as arriving through the
clash of two groups. But if you wait
for this sort of salvation, it'll
be a "long time till it gets to you
baby."
The song Sunny Skies injects the
thought that just keeping to oneself
isn't necessarily a good thing, lest
one think James antisocial. Unless
social isolation is used to get one's
head together, it can lead to lone
liness and wasting away one's time.
The song closes with the line "Wonder
ing if where I've been is worth the
things I've been through." Are lone
liness revelations worth having been
alone?
Streamroller starts out as an
acoustic blues. The first verse is
about the counter culture's aspir
ations concerning this society.
"I'm going to inject your soul with
rock 'n roll and shoot you full of
rhythm 'n blues." The acoustic
guitar becomes almost obscured, how
ever, as the song moves into the
following two verses, which deal
with the destructiveness and inhuman-
The Molly Maguires was a secret
terrorist group dedicated to the over
throw of the white society that ruled
Pennsylvania's anthracite pits in the
late nineteenth century. The Mollies
were white by birth - Irish Catholic
immigrants - but colored by trade.
With coal dust on their faces and
coal dust in their lungs, they played
in a grisly underground minstrel show
and wore flickering footlight on
their caps. Contemporary parallels
immediately suggest themselves, not
only the most obvious ones with the
Black Panthers, say, but parallels
between slum life then and now,
niggerhood then and now. And the more
you reflect on these parallels, the
more you regret the glum clumsiness
of the drama.
Writer Walter Bernstein and
director Martin Ritt have centered
their story on an informer (Richard
Harris) who's hired by management
to infiltrate the Mollies and finger
their chief militants. The battle-
lines are clear, and the clarity is
useful enough until it becomes the
ity which this society had dedicated
its technology. And the youth
culture is told "if I can't have
your love, won't be nothing left
behind."
The therapy of travelling is
the theme of Country Road, which
recalls much of the work of Jerry
Jeff Walker. Travelling, in the
minds of both these song writers,
can help to make clear which are your
own thoughts and which you've borrowed
slavishly from others. It can make
clearer who you are and who you're
not.
"Sail on home to Jesus won't
you good girls and boys" again
raises the theme of }Jith God On Our.
Side, this time warning the counter
culture against it. In contrast,
James is "all in pieces" - uncertain,
self-analyzing, self-criticizing.
You must choose which path to take,
but as for James, he can feel in
which direction his salvation lies.
A very refreshing and very
brief version of Stephen Foster's
Oh Susanna closes the first side.
One sees it in a new light, as an
illustration of what the previous song
was saying.
Side two opens with Fire and
Rain, which is a rather nice title
for a song about a love which was
deemed very important and is now
(Cont. on page Z)
I
monotony of an unacknowledged moral
ity play that culminates on Harris's
Judas coming to Sean Connery's Christ
for an absolution.
Social consciousness is one
thing. Social self-consciousness is
another, and this movie is painfully
aware of its own didactic self. Yet
Harris plays the spy remarkably well
as a hoarse, knowing volunteer who's
down on his luck and his self -
esteem. Samantha Eggar's work is
attractive and intelligent as his
girl. Connery gives a strong, re
strained performance as the Mollies'
leader, and Frank Finlay's company
police captain is the perfect picture
of a man whose sould has gone out.
Ritt has done well by his limited dra
matic material, and he and cinema
tographer James Wong Howe have
utilized their elaborate pictorial
material: the bleak faces in the
mole tunnels, the clattering carts of
a freight roller coaster, the simmer
ing green of trees in the grey town.
It's not a successful movie, but in
its darkly handsome way it sometimes
looks like one. _ '
F'rom JjniSt