[SYN-042]
You'd have to be hard-pressed to call James Taylor a country boy. Yes, he did spend several formative years in North Carolina, but he's a lot better associated with New England locales. Martha's Vineyard, say. Or Milton Academy. Or McLean Hospital. And yet songs like "Fire and Rain," "Carolina in My Mind" and "Sweet Baby James" have a plain-spoken, down-to-earth quality that doesn't correspond to any stuck-up Yankee blueblood caricatures. It's a quality that's also well suited to country music - or, for that matter, country interpretation. Which brings us to what we have here: 12 Taylor classics retooled in fine bluegrass style by a crack team of Nashville pros. A nifty idea, and one that allows bassist Charlie Chadwick, guitarist Jerry Cortez and their colleagues to shower the people with down-home picking. — Mac Randall