James Taylor - With a Little Help from My Friends

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"With a Little Help from My Friends" originally titled "A Little Help from My Friends") is a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, released on The Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. The song was written for and sung by The Beatles' drummer Ringo Starr as the character "Billy Shears"; it is ranked #304 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. McCartney and Starr performed this song for the first time together at the David Lynch Foundation Benefit Concert in the Radio City Music Hall, New York on 4 April 2009.

James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Carrboro, North Carolina. He owns a house in the Berkshire County town of Washington, Massachusetts. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Taylor was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000.

Taylor achieved his major breakthrough in 1970 with the #3 single "Fire and Rain" and had his first #1 hit the following year with "You've Got a Friend", a recording of Carole King's classic song. His 1976 Greatest Hits album was certified Diamond and has sold 12 million US copies. Following his 1977 album, JT, he has retained a large audience over the decades. His commercial achievements declined slightly until a big resurgence during the late 1990s and 2000s, when some of his best-selling and most-awarded albums (including Hourglass, October Road and Covers) were released.

James Taylor was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 12, 1948, where his father, Isaac M. Taylor, was a resident. His father was from a well-off family of Southern Scottish ancestry. His mother, the former Gertrude Woodard, had studied singing with Marie Sundelius at the New England Conservatory of Music and was an aspiring opera singer before the couple's marriage in 1946. James was the second of five children, the others being Alex (born 1947), Kate (born 1949), Livingston (born 1950), and Hugh (born 1952).

In 1951, when James was three years old, the family moved to the countryside of Carrboro, North Carolina, when Isaac took a job as Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. They built a house in the Morgan Creek area, which was sparsely populated. James would later say, "Chapel Hill, the piedmont, the outlying hills, were tranquil, rural, beautiful, but quiet. Thinking of the red soil, the seasons, the way things smelled down there, I feel as though my experience of coming of age there was more a matter of landscape and climate than people." James attended public primary school in Chapel Hill. Isaac's career prospered, but he was frequently away from home, either on military service at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland or as part of Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica during 1955--1956. Isaac Taylor later rose to become Dean of the UNC School of Medicine from 1964 to 1971. The family spent summers on Martha's Vineyard beginning in 1953.

Taylor first learned to play the cello as a child in North Carolina, and switched to the guitar in 1960. His style on that instrument evolved from listening to hymns, carols, and Woody Guthrie, while his technique derived from his bass clef-oriented cello training and from experimenting on his sister Kate's keyboards: "My style was a finger-picking style that was meant to be like a piano, as if my thumb were my left hand, and my first, second, and third fingers were my right hand." He began attending Milton Academy, a prep boarding school in Massachusetts in Fall 1961; summering before then with his family on Martha's Vineyard, he met Danny Kortchmar, an aspiring teenage guitarist from Larchmont, New York. The two began listening to and playing blues and folk music together, and Kortchmar quickly realized that Taylor's singing had a "natural sense of phrasing, every syllable beautifully in time. I knew James had that thing." Taylor wrote his first song on guitar at age 14, and continued to learn the instrument effortlessly. By the summer of 1963, he and Kortchmar were playing coffeehouses around the Vineyard, billed as "Jamie & Kootch."

Taylor faltered during his junior year at Milton, not feeling at ease in the high-pressured college prep environment despite having good scholastic performance. The Milton principal would later say, "James was more sensitive and less goal oriented than most students of his day."

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[markmarktarmann]

who else could cover a beatle tune and make it, if not better, something this special?. never heard this before. thanks!

[isbldayt]

JT's version is the coolest! 

[KawhackitaRag]

@KawhackitaRag and before I get any criticism on this... I love the Beatles' original version too. They are both excellent, I could not live without either version.

[KawhackitaRag]

Anyone who can take a song, especially one which is already profound (although maybe not obviously so), and make it MORE PROFOUND with their performance, is a hero in my book!!!

[stjo145]

PHENOMENAL!

[09malcla]

Do you know it you can buy this on itunes?

[LelouchLamperouge019]

This song (specifically James's version) is my anthem at the moment. Told me that I shouldn't let one person kill me and just be with my friends. :) And they help me, too.

[Baywoolbull]

What a humble guy. I like him a lot.

[marnemusic1]

A very James Taylor Beatle song.

[Pbon10]

@markmarktarmann You are so right mate, Mr Taylor is pure genius! :)