With a Holy Host of Others

Tonight's selection is a very well known song, from an artist that I grew up listening to.  For many of us who grew up in 80's and 90's Massachusetts, our parents listened to a lot of James Taylor.  Then again, "a lot" may be an understatement.  Live shows.  CD's.  Vinyl's.  A gathering of family members to watch one of his performances on PBS.  I think that it's our parents' listening to that era's singer-songwriters that has gotten my generation gravitating to them as well.

Despite my mom's headstart in knowing James Taylor's music, there was an album that I surprised her with one recent year.  It was his self-titled album from 1968.  He had the opportunity of recording with Beatles before the band broke up.  His song "Something in the Way She Moves" happened to inspire a great love song of George Harrison's for the Abbey Road album.  It gets weirder, and little more surreal.

The song "Carolina in My Mind" is something that folkies easily know to be an autobiographic song about homesickness, but when you understand the full context, the song makes even more sense.  You see, my parents (and probably many other people) listened to the song through JT's famous Greatest Hits album from '76.  But the song had been reworked, and was missing two very big components from the original studio recording.  George Harrison and Paul McCartney!  They are the "holy host of others" standing around him.  We tend to hold the Beatles in the highest regard, and in Sister Act, Whoopi Goldberg's character listed the fab four when asked to name the four gospel writers of the Bible.  As if that wasn't enough of a treat for music fans, you can hear these two Beatles in the recording for "Carolina in My Mind."  With Harrison singing in the background and McCartney's distinctive bass playing (all with Richard Hewson's contribution of woodwinds and strings), the recording feels like the perfect fusion between the now familiar James Taylor style and the later Beatles albums.

Although George (my favorite Beatle) passed away 15 years ago, I still hold out hope that James Taylor and Paul McCartney will perform "Carolina in My Mind" together at least once more.  Maybe in 2 years?  That would be the 50th anniversary of that debut album.  JT and Macca could perform at the Grammys, or the CMT awards, or Bonnaroo, or Tanglewood, or the Newport Folk Festival, or the Kate Wolf Festival,  ....  Some event.  Some location.  .... Come on!