Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in the United Kingdom which publishes books and academic journals. It is a division of Informa plc, a United Kingdom-based publisher and conference company.^[1]

Overview[link]

Previous Taylor & Francis logo from a 1900 publication

The company was founded in 1852 when William Francis joined Richard Taylor in his publishing business. Taylor initially founded his company in 1798. Their subjects covered include agriculture, chemistry, education, engineering, geography, law, mathematics, medicine, and social sciences among others.

Taylor & Francis publishes more than 1,000 journals, and over 1,800 new books each year, with a backlist of over 20,000 titles. The group has at least nine offices, in the United Kingdom, New York, Boca Raton, Philadelphia, Singapore, Sydney, and India.

Taylor & Francis merged with Informa in 2004 to create a new company called T&F Informa, since renamed back to Informa. Taylor & Francis Group is now the academic publishing arm of Informa.

The old Taylor and Francis logo depicts a hand pouring oil into a lit lamp, along with the Latin phrase "alere flammam" (to feed the flame). The modern logo is a stylised oil lamp in a circle.

Acquired companies[link]

• Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (acquired in 2006)
• Routledge (acquired in 1998)
• BIOS Scientific Publishers
• Brunner-Routledge
• Brunner-Mazel
• Carfax
• Cavendish
• CRC Press
• Curzon
• David Fulton Press
• Earthscan
• Europa Publications (acquired in 1999)
• Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers (acquired in 2002)
• Frank Cass
• Gordon & Breach
• Heldref Publications (Except World Affairs) (acquired in 2009)
• Marcel Dekker
• Martin Dunitz
• Parthenon Publishing
• Psychology Press
• RFF Press
• Spon Press
• Swets and Zeitlinger Publishers
• Taylor Graham Journals
• Haworth Press
• Garland Science

See also[link]

• List of Taylor & Francis journals

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Munroe, Mary H. (2007). "Taylor & Francis (Informa Group plc)". The Academic Publishing Industry: A Story of Merger and Acquisition. Northern Illinois University Libraries. http://www.ulib.niu.edu/publishers/TaylorFrancis.htm. Retrieved 2008-06-20. 

External links[link]

• Taylor & Francis official website

James Taylor
Taylor in April 2011
Background information
Birth name	James Vernon Taylor
Born	(1948-03-12) March 12, 1948 (age 64) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Origin	Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Genres	Folk rock, rock, pop, soft rock, country
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, harmonica[1]
Years active	1966–present
Labels	Apple, Capitol, EMI, Warner Bros., Columbia, SME, Hear Music
Associated acts	Carole King, Carly Simon, Eric Clapton, Joe Walsh
Website	www.jamestaylor.com

James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. 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.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

James Taylor was born at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 12, 1948, where his father, Isaac M. Taylor, was a resident physician.^[2][3] His father was from a well-off family of Southern Scottish ancestry.^[2] 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.^[2][4] James was the second of five children, the others being Alex (1947-1993), Kate (born 1949), Livingston (born 1950), and Hugh (born 1952).^[5]

In 1951, when James was three years old, the family moved to what was then the countryside of Chapel Hill, North Carolina,^[6] when Isaac took a job as Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.^[7] They built a house in the Morgan Creek area off of what is now Morgan Creek Road, which was sparsely populated.^[8] 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."^[8] James attended public primary school in Chapel Hill.^[2] 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.^[9] Isaac Taylor later rose to become Dean of the UNC School of Medicine from 1964 to 1971.^[10] The family spent summers on Martha's Vineyard beginning in 1953.^[11]

Taylor first learned to play the cello as a child in North Carolina, and switched to the guitar in 1960.^[12] 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."^[13] 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.^[14] 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."^[15] Taylor wrote his first song on guitar at age 14, and continued to learn the instrument effortlessly.^[13] By the summer of 1963, he and Kortchmar were playing coffeehouses around the Vineyard, billed as "Jamie & Kootch".^[16]

Taylor faltered during his junior year at Milton, not feeling at ease in the high-pressured college prep environment despite having good scholastic performance.^[17] The Milton principal would later say, "James was more sensitive and less goal oriented than most students of his day."^[18] He returned home to North Carolina to finish out the semester at Chapel Hill High School.^[17] There he joined a band his brother Alex had formed called The Corsayers (later The Fabulous Corsairs), playing electric guitar; in 1964 they cut a single in Raleigh that featured James's song "Cha Cha Blues" on the B-side.^[17] Having lost touch with his former school friends in North Carolina, Taylor returned to Milton for his senior year.^[17]

There, Taylor started applying to colleges,^[19] but soon descended into depression; his grades collapsed, he slept twenty hours a day, and he felt part of a "life that I [was] unable to lead."^[17][20] In late 1965 he committed himself to the renowned McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts,^[17] where he was treated with Thorazine and where the organized days began to give him a sense of time and structure.^[18][20] As the Vietnam War built up, Taylor received a psychological rejection from Selective Service System when he appeared before them with two white-suited McLean assistants and was uncommunicative.^[21] Taylor earned a high school diploma in 1966 from the hospital's associated Arlington School.^[21] He would later view his nine-month stay at McLean as "a lifesaver ... like a pardon or like a reprieve,"^[20] and both his brother Livingston and sister Kate would later be patients and students there as well.^[18] As for his mental health struggles, Taylor would think of them as innate, and say: "It's an inseparable part of my personality that I have these feelings."^[19]

1966–1969: Early career[link]

Taylor checked himself out of McLean and, at Kortchmar's urging, moved to New York City to form a band.^[21] They recruited Joel O'Brien, formerly of Kortchmar's old band The King Bees, to play drums, and Taylor's childhood friend Zachary Wiesner (son of noted academic Jerome Wiesner) to play bass, and – after Taylor rejected the notion of naming the group after him – called themselves The Flying Machine.^[18][22] They played songs that Taylor had written at and about McLean, such as "Knocking 'Round the Zoo", "Don't Talk Now", and "The Blues Is Just a Bad Dream".^[20][22] In some other songs, Taylor romanticized his life, although he was plagued by self-doubt.^[23] By summer 1966 they were performing regularly at the high-visibility Night Owl Cafe in Greenwich Village alongside acts such as The Turtles and Lothar and the Hand People.^[24]

Taylor associated with a motley collection of people and began using heroin, to Kortchmar's dismay, and wrote the "Paint It, Black"-influenced "Rainy Day Man" to depict his drug experience.^[18][24] In a hasty recording session in late 1966, the group cut a single, Taylor's "Brighten Your Night with My Day" backed with his "Night Owl".^[25] Released on Jay Gee Records, a subsidiary of Jubilee Records, it received some radio airplay in the Northeast,^[25] but only charted to #102 nationally.^[26] Other songs had been recorded during the same session, but Jubilee declined to go forward with an album.^[25] After a series of poorly chosen appearances outside New York, culminating with a three-week stay at a failing nightspot in Freeport, Bahamas for which they were never paid, The Flying Machine broke up.^[25] (A UK band with the same name emerged in 1969 with the hit song "Smile a Little Smile for Me." The New York band's recordings were later released in 1971 as James Taylor and the Original Flying Machine.)

Taylor would later say of this New York period, "I learned a lot about music and too much about drugs."^[23] Indeed, his drug use had developed into full-blown heroin addiction during the final Flying Machine period: "I just fell into it, since it was as easy to get high in the Village as get a drink."^[25] He hung out in Washington Square Park, playing guitar to ward off depression and then passing out, letting runaways and criminals stay at his apartment.^[27] Finally out of money and abandoned by his manager, he made a desperate call one night to his father. Isaac Taylor flew to New York and staged a rescue, renting a car and driving all night back to North Carolina with James and his possessions.^[27] Taylor spent six months getting treatment and making a tentative recovery; he also required a throat operation to fix vocal cords damaged from singing too harshly.^[28]

Taylor decided to try being a solo act and a change of scenery. In late 1967, funded by a small family inheritance, he moved to London, living variously in Notting Hill, Belgravia, and Chelsea.^[29] He recorded some demos in Soho and, capitalizing on Kortchmar's connection to The King Bees (who once opened for Peter and Gordon), brought the demos to Peter Asher, who was A&R head for The Beatles' newly formed label Apple Records.^[30] Asher showed the demos to Paul McCartney, who later said, "I just heard his voice and his guitar and I thought he was great ... and he came and played live, so it was just like, 'Wow, he's great.'"^[30] Taylor became the first non-British act signed to Apple.^[30] Living chaotically in various places with various women, Taylor wrote additional material, including "Carolina in My Mind", and rehearsed with a new backing band.^[31] Taylor recorded what would become his first album from July to October 1968 at Trident Studios, at the same time The Beatles were recording The White Album.^[31][32] McCartney and an uncredited George Harrison guested on "Carolina in My Mind", whose lyric holy host of others standing around me referred to the Beatles, while the title phrase of Taylor's "Something in the Way She Moves" provided the lyrical starting point for Harrison's classic "Something."^[33][34] McCartney and Asher brought in arranger Richard Hewson to add both orchestrations to several of the songs and unusual "link" passages between them; these would receive a mixed reception at best.^[33][35]

During the recording sessions, Taylor fell back into his drug habit, using heroin and methedrine.^[33] He underwent physeptone treatment in a British program, returned to New York and was hospitalized there, and then finally committed himself to the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which emphasized cultural and historical factors in trying to treat difficult psychiatric disorders.^[36] Meanwhile, Apple released his debut album, James Taylor, in December 1968 in the UK and February 1969 in the U.S.^[36] Critical reaction was generally good, including a very positive Jon Landau review in Rolling Stone which said "this album is the coolest breath of fresh air I've inhaled in a good long while. It knocks me out."^[35] The record's commercial potential suffered from Taylor's inability to promote it due to his hospitalization and it sold poorly; "Carolina in My Mind" was released as a single, but failed to chart in the UK and only reached #118 in the U.S.^[36]

Apple Corps itself had fallen into chaos, with anarchic business planning and freeloaders taking advantage of it in every direction.^[37] In early 1969, to clean up the situation, three of the Beatles brought in Allen Klein, who began purging Apple personnel.^[38] Asher did not like Klein; he resigned of his own accord and offered to manage Taylor, to which Taylor agreed.^[39] Klein wanted to hit Taylor with a $5 million lawsuit for leaving,^[40] but McCartney (a Klein antagonist) and then the other Beatles, overruled him on the grounds that artists should not be holding each other to contracts.^[39]

In July 1969 Taylor headlined a six-night stand at The Troubadour in Los Angeles. On July 20 he performed at the Newport Folk Festival as the last act, and was cheered by thousands of fans who stayed in the rain to hear him.^[41][42] Shortly thereafter, he broke both hands and both feet in a motorcycle accident on Martha's Vineyard and was forced to stop playing for several months.^[43] But while recovering, he continued to write songs and in October 1969, signed a new deal with Warner Bros. Records.^[43]

1970–1973: Breakthrough[link]

Taylor in the early 1970s.

Once recovered, Taylor moved to California, keeping Asher as his manager and record producer. In December 1969, he held the recording sessions for his second album there. Entitled Sweet Baby James, and with the participation of Carole King, the album was released in February 1970 and was Taylor's critical and popular triumph, buoyed by the single "Fire and Rain", a song about Taylor's experience in psychiatric institutions and the suicide of his friend, Suzanne Schnerr. Both the album and the single reached #3 in the Billboard charts, with Sweet Baby James selling more than 1½ million copies in its first year^[18] and eventually more than 3 million in the United States alone. Sweet Baby James was received at its time as a folk-rock masterpiece, an album that effectively showcased Taylor's talents to the mainstream public, marked the direction he would take in following years, and made Taylor one of the main forces of the nascent movement. It earned several Grammy Award nominations including one for Album of the Year. (It would be listed at #103 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time in 2003, with "Fire and Rain" listed as #227 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time the year after.)

Mise en scène for Two-Lane Blacktop: Boswell, Oklahoma

During the time Sweet Baby James was released, Taylor appeared with Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys in a Monte Hellman film, Two-Lane Blacktop. In October 1970, he performed with Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, and the Canadian band Chilliwack at a Vancouver benefit concert that funded Greenpeace's protests of 1971 nuclear weapons tests by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission at Amchitka, Alaska. (This performance would be released in 2009 on the album Amchitka, The 1970 Concert That Launched Greenpeace.) In January 1971, sessions for Taylor's next album began.

His career success so far, and appeal to female fans of various ages, piqued tremendous interest in Taylor, prompting a March 1, 1971, Time magazine cover story.^[18] It compared his strong-but-brooding persona to that of Wuthering Heights's Heathcliff and to The Sorrows of Young Werther, and said that, "Taylor's use of elemental imagery—darkness and sunlight, references to roads traveled and untraveled. to fears spoken and left unsaid—reaches a level both of intimacy and controlled emotion rarely achieved in purely pop music."^[18] Released in April, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon also gained massive critical acclaim and contained Taylor's biggest hit single in the U.S., a version of the Carole King standard "You've Got a Friend" (featuring backing vocals by Joni Mitchell), which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late July. The album itself reached #2 in the album charts, which would be Taylor's highest position ever on this list. In early 1972, Taylor received his first Grammy Award, for (Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male) for "You've Got a Friend" (King also won Song of the Year for the same song in that ceremony). The album went on to sell 2½ million copies in the United States alone.

November 1972 saw the release of Taylor's fourth album, One Man Dog. A concept album primarily recorded in his home recording studio, it featured cameos by Linda Ronstadt and consisted of eighteen short pieces of music put together. It was received with generally lukewarm reviews and, despite making the Top 10 of the Billboard Album Charts, overall sales were disappointing. The lead single "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" peaked at #18 on the Hot 100, and the follow-up, "One Man Parade", barely reached the Top 75. Almost simultaneously, Taylor married fellow singer-songwriter Carly Simon on November 3, in a small ceremony at her Murray Hill, Manhattan apartment.^[44] A post-concert party following a Taylor performance at Radio City Music Hall turned into a large-scale wedding party, and the Simon-Taylor marriage would find much public attention over the following years.^[44] They had two children, Sarah Maria "Sally" Taylor, born January 7, 1974, and Benjamin Simon "Ben" Taylor, born January 22, 1977.^[45]

1974–1976: Career ups and downs[link]

Taylor spent most of 1973 enjoying his new life as a married man, and he did not return to the recording studio until January 1974, when sessions for his fifth album began. Walking Man was released in June and featured appearances of Paul and Linda McCartney and guitarist David Spinozza. The album was a critical and commercial disaster, being his first album to miss the Top 5 since his contract with Warner. It received poor reviews and sold a mere 300,000 copies in the United States. The title track was a huge disappointment, and failed to even appear on the Top 100 – nevertheless, it stands today as an often reprised fan favorite in concerts.^{[citation needed]}

However, James Taylor's artistic fortunes spiked again in 1975 when the Gold album Gorilla reached #6 and provided one of his biggest hit singles, a cover version of Marvin Gaye's "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)", which featured wife Carly in backing vocals and reached #5 in America and #1 in Canada. On the Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart, the track also reached the top, and the follow-up single, the feel-good "Mexico" also reached the Top 5 of that list. A critically very well received album, Gorilla showcased Taylor's electric, lighter side that was evident on Walking Man. However, it was arguably a more consistent and fresher-sounding Taylor, with classics such as "Wandering" and "Angry Blues." It also featured a song about his daughter Sally, "Sarah Maria".

Gorilla was followed in 1976 by In the Pocket, Taylor's last studio album to be released under Warner Bros. Records. The album found him with many colleagues and friends, including Art Garfunkel, David Crosby, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Wonder (who co-wrote a song with Taylor and contributed a harmonica solo). A very melodic album, it was highlighted with the single "Shower the People", an enduring classic that hit #1 Adult Contemporary and almost hit the Top 20 of the Pop Charts. But the album was not very well received, reaching only #16 and being highly criticized, particularly by Rolling Stone. Nevertheless 1976 was a huge boom year in the recording business — the year of inception of the "Platinum" disc — and In The Pocket was certified Gold.

With the close of Taylor's contract with Warner, in November the label released Greatest Hits, the album that comprised most of his best work between 1970 and 1976. It became with time his best-selling album, ever. It was certified eleven times Platinum in the US, earning a Diamond certification by the RIAA and eventually selling close to twenty million copies worldwide. It still stands as the best-selling folk album by any artist.^{[citation needed]}

1977–1981: Move to Columbia and maintained success[link]

In 1977 Taylor signed with Columbia Records. Between March and April, he quickly recorded his first album for the label. JT, released that June, gave Taylor his best reviews since Sweet Baby James, earning a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year in 1978. Rolling Stone was particularly favorable to the album – "JT is the least stiff and by far the most various album Taylor has done. That's not meant to criticize Taylor's earlier efforts [...]. But it's nice to hear him sounding so healthy."^[46] JT reached #4 in the Billboard charts, selling more than 3 million copies in the United States alone. The album's Triple Platinum status ties it with Sweet Baby James as Taylor's all-time biggest selling studio album. It was propelled by the highly successful cover of Jimmy Jones and Otis Blackwell's "Handy Man", which hit #1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart and reached #4 on the Hot 100, earning Taylor another Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for his cover version. The song also topped the Canadian charts. The success of the album propelled the release of two further singles – the up-tempo pop "Your Smiling Face" (an enduring live favorite) reached the American Top 20; however, "Honey Don't Leave L.A.," penned by Danny Kortchmar did not enjoy much success, barely reaching the Top 75.

Back in the forefront of popular music, Taylor collaborated with Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in the recording of a cover of Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World", which reached the Top 20 in the U.S. and topped the AC charts in early 1978. After briefly working on Broadway, he took a one-year break, reappearing in the summer of 1979 with the cover-studded Platinum album Flag, featuring a Top 30 version of Gerry Goffin and Carole King's "Up on the Roof". (Two selections from Flag, "Millworker" and "Brother Trucker," were featured on the PBS production of the Broadway musical based on Studs Terkel's non-fiction book Working, and James himself appeared in that production as a trucker; he performed "Brother Trucker" in character.) Taylor also appeared on the No Nukes concert in Madison Square Garden, where he made a memorable live performance of "Mockingbird" with his wife Carly. The concert appeared on both the No Nukes album and film.

On December 7, 1980, Taylor had an encounter with Mark David Chapman who would assassinate John Lennon. Taylor told the BBC in 2010 "The guy had sort of pinned me to the wall and was glistening with maniacal sweat and talking some freak speak about what he was going to do and his stuff with how John was interested, and he was going to get in touch with John Lennon. And it was surreal to actually have contact with the guy 24 hours before he shot John." The next night Taylor, who lived in the next building from Lennon, heard the assassination occur. Taylor commented "I heard him shot — five, just as quick as you could pull the trigger, about five explosions".^[47]

In March 1981, James Taylor released the album Dad Loves His Work, whose themes concerned his relationship with his father, the course his ancestors had taken, and the effect he and Simon had had on each other.^[48] The album was another Platinum success, reaching #10 and providing Taylor's final real hit single in a duet with J. D. Souther, "Her Town Too," which reached #5 Adult Contemporary and #11 on the Hot 100 in Billboard. The album's title was, in part, drawn from the reasons for Taylor's divorce from Carly Simon. She gave him an ultimatum: cut back on his music and touring, and spend more time with her and their children, or the marriage was through. The album's title was Taylor's answer, and Simon asked for divorce. (The emotional repercussions of the divorce likely served as at least part of the inspiration for "Her Town Too.")

1981–1996: Troubled times and new beginnings[link]

Simon announced her separation from Taylor in September 1981 – saying "Our needs are different; it seem[s] impossible to stay together" – and their divorce became final in 1983.^[49] Taylor was living on West End Avenue in Manhattan and on a methadone maintenance program.^[50] Over the course of four months starting in September 1983, spurred on in part by the deaths of his friends John Belushi and Dennis Wilson and in part by the desire to be a better father to his children, he dropped methadone and finally kicked his habit for good.^[50]

Taylor had thoughts of retiring by the time he played the massive Rock in Rio festival in Rio de Janeiro in January 1985.^[51] He was encouraged by the nascent democracy in Brazil at the time, buoyed by the positive reception he got from the large crowd and other musicians, and musically energized by the sounds and nature of Brazilian music.^[52] "I had... sort of bottomed-out in a drug habit, my marriage with Carly had dissolved, and I had basically been depressed and lost for a while, " he recalled in 1995. "I sort of hit a low spot. I was asked to go down to Rio de Janeiro to play in this festival down there. We put the band together and went down and it was just an amazing response. I played to 300,000 people. They not only knew my music, they knew things about it and were interested in aspects of it that to that point had only interested me. To have that kind of validation right about then was really what I needed. It helped get me back on track." ^[53] The song "Only a Dream in Rio" was written in tribute to that night, with lines like I was there that very day and my heart came back alive.^[52] The October 1985 album, That's Why I'm Here, from which that song came, started a series of studio recordings that, while spaced further apart than his previous records, showed a more consistent level of quality and fewer covers, most notably the Buddy Holly song "Everyday", released as a single reached #61.

On December 14, 1985, Taylor married actress Kathryn Walker at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York.^[54] Taylor's next albums were partially successful – in 1988, he released Never Die Young, highlighted with the charting title track, and in 1991, the platinum New Moon Shine provided Taylor some popular songs with the melancholic "Copperline" and the upbeat "(I've Got to) Stop Thinkin' About That", both hit singles in the AC radio. During the late 1980s, he began touring regularly, especially on the summer amphitheater circuit. His later concerts feature songs from throughout his career and are marked by the musicianship of his band and backup singers. The 1993 two-disc Live album captures this, with a highlight being Arnold McCuller's descants in the codas of "Shower the People" and "I Will Follow." In 1995, Taylor performed the role of the Lord in Randy Newman's Faust.

1997–2003: Successful comeback[link]

Taylor in 1999

After 6 years since his last studio album, Taylor released Hourglass, an introspective album that gave him the best critical reviews in almost twenty years. The album had much of its focus on Taylor's troubled past and family. "Jump Up Behind Me" paid tribute to his father's rescue of him after The Flying Machine days, and the long drive from New York City back to his home in Chapel Hill.^[55] "Enough To Be On Your Way" was inspired by the alcoholism-related death of his brother Alex earlier in the decade.^[56] The themes were also inspired by Taylor and Walker's divorce, which took place in 1996.^[57] Rolling Stone found that "one of the themes of this record is disbelief", while Taylor told the magazine that it was "spirituals for agnostics."^[58] Critics embraced the dark themes on the album, and Hourglass was a huge commercial success, reaching #9 on the Billboard 200 (Taylor's first Top 10 album in sixteen years) and also provided a big adult contemporary hit on "Little More Time With You". The album also gave Taylor his first Grammy since JT, when he was honored with Best Pop Album in 1998.

Taylor and wife Caroline "Kim" Smedvig, seen in 2008

On February 18, 2001, at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Boston, Taylor wed for the third time, marrying Caroline ("Kim") Smedvig, the director of public relations and marketing for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.^[59] They had begun dating in 1995, when they met as he appeared with John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra.^[59] Part of their relationship was worked into the album October Road, on the song "On the 4th of July."^[60] The couple reside in the town of Washington, Massachusetts^[61] with their twin boys, Rufus and Henry, born in April 2001 to a surrogate mother via in vitro fertilization.^[59]

Flanked by two greatest hit releases, Taylor's Platinum-certified October Road appeared in 2002 to a receptive audience. It featured a number of quiet instrumental accompaniments and passages. Overall, it found Taylor in a more peaceful frame of mind; rather than facing a crisis now, Taylor said in an interview that "I thought I'd passed the midpoint of my life when I was 17."^[62] The album appeared in two versions, a single-disc version and a "limited edition" two-disc version which contained three extra songs including a duet with Mark Knopfler, "Sailing to Philadelphia," which also appeared on Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia album. Also in 2002, Taylor teamed with bluegrass musician Alison Krauss in singing "The Boxer" at the Kennedy Center Honors Tribute to Paul Simon. They later recorded the Louvin Brothers duet, "How's the World Treating You?" In 2004, after he chose not to renew his record contract with Columbia/Sony, he released James Taylor: A Christmas Album with distribution through Hallmark Cards.

Current events[link]

Always visibly active in environmental and liberal causes, in October 2004 Taylor joined the "Vote for Change" tour playing a series of concerts in American swing states. These concerts were organized by MoveOn.org with the goal of mobilizing people to vote for John Kerry and against George W. Bush in that year's Presidential campaign. Taylor's appearances were joint performances with the Dixie Chicks.

Taylor performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Game 2 of the World Series in Boston on October 24, 2004, and again on October 25, 2007. In December 2004, he appeared as himself in an episode of The West Wing entitled "A Change Is Gonna Come". He sang Sam Cooke's classic "A Change Is Gonna Come" at an event honoring an artist played by Taylor's wife Caroline. Later on, he appeared on CMT's Crossroads alongside the Dixie Chicks. In early 2006, MusiCares honored Taylor with performances of his songs by an array of notable musicians. Before a performance by the Dixie Chicks, lead singer Natalie Maines acknowledged that he had always been one of their musical heroes, and had for them lived up to their once-imagined reputation of him.^[63] They performed his song, "Shower the People", with a surprise appearance by Arnold McCuller, who has sung backing vocals on Taylor's live tours and albums for many years.

In the fall of 2006, Taylor released a repackaged and slightly different version of his Hallmark Christmas album, now entitled James Taylor at Christmas, and distributed by Columbia/Sony. In 2006, Taylor performed Randy Newman's song "Our Town" for the Disney animated film Cars. The song was nominated for the 2007 Academy Award for the best Original Song. On January 1, 2007, Taylor headlined the inaugural concert at the Times Union Center in Albany, New York, honoring newly sworn in Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer.

Taylor's next album, One Man Band was released on CD and DVD in November 2007 on Starbucks' Hear Music Label, where he joined with Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell. The introspective album grew out of a three-year tour of the United States and Europe—featuring some of Taylor's most beloved songs and anecdotes about their creative origins—accompanied solely by the "one man band" of his longtime pianist/keyboardist, Larry Goldings. The digital discrete 5.1 surround sound mix of One Man Band won a TEC Award for best surround sound recording in 2008.^[64]

November 28–30, 2007, Taylor, accompanied by his original band and Carole King, headlined a series of six shows at The Troubadour. The appearances marked the 50th anniversary of the venue, where Taylor, King and many others, such as Tom Waits, Neil Diamond, and Elton John, began their music careers. Proceeds from the concert went to benefit the Natural Resources Defense Council, MusiCares, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, and the Los Angeles Regional Foodbank, a member of America's Second Harvest — The Nation's Food Bank Network. Parts of the performance shown on CBS Sunday Morning in the December 23, 2007, broadcast showed Taylor alluding to his early drug problems by saying, "I played here a number of times in the 70s, allegedly..." Taylor has used versions of this joke on other occasions, and it appears as part of his One Man Band DVD and tour performances.

Taylor with his Band of Legends performing on July 3, 2008, during one of their many shows at Tanglewood

In December 2007 James Taylor at Christmas was nominated for a Grammy Award. In January 2008 Taylor recorded approximately 20 songs by others for a new album with a band including Luis Conte, Michael Landau, Lou Marini, Arnold McCuller, Jimmy Johnson, David Lasley, Walt Fowler, Andrea Zonn, Kate Markowitz, Steve Gadd and Larry Goldings. The resulting live-in-studio album, named Covers, was released in September 2008.^[65] This album forays into country and soul while being the latest proof that Taylor is a more versatile singer than his best known hits might suggest. The Covers sessions stretched to include "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," from the musical Oklahoma - a song that his grandmother had caught him singing over and over at the top of his lungs when he was seven years old.^[66] Meanwhile, in summer 2008, Taylor and this band toured 34 North American cities with a tour entitled James Taylor and His Band of Legends. An additional album, called Other Covers, came out in April 2009, containing songs that were recorded during the same sessions as the original Covers but had not been put out to the full public yet.^[67]

During October 19–21, 2008, Taylor performed a series of free concerts in five North Carolina cities in support of Barack Obama's presidential bid.^[68][69] On Sunday, January 18, 2009, he performed at the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial, singing "Shower the People" with John Legend and Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland.^[70]

Taylor performed on the final The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on May 29, 2009, distinguishing himself further as the final musician to appear in Leno's original 17-year run.

Taylor and Carole King performing "You've Got a Friend" together during their Troubadour Reunion Tour in 2010.

On September 8, 2009, Taylor made an appearance at the twenty-fourth season premiere block party of The Oprah Winfrey Show on Chicago's Michigan Avenue.

On January 1, 2010, Taylor sang the American national anthem at the NHL Winter Classic at Fenway Park, while Daniel Powter sang the Canadian national anthem.

On March 7, 2010, Taylor sang The Beatles' "In My Life" in tribute to deceased artists at the 82nd Academy Awards.

Taylor at the October 16, 2011 Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial dedication concert

In March 2010 he commenced the Troubadour Reunion Tour with Carole King and members of his original band, including Russ Kunkel, Leland Sklar, and Danny Kortchmar. They played shows in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and North America, with the final night being at the Honda Center, in Anaheim, CA. The tour was a major commercial success, and in some locations found Taylor playing arenas instead of his usual theaters or amphitheaters. Ticket sales amounted to over 700,000 and the tour grossed over 59 million dollars. It was one of the most successful tours of the year.^[71]

Taylor owns a house in the Berkshire County town of Washington, Massachusetts.

On September 11, 2011, Taylor performed 'You Can Close Your Eyes' in New York City at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

On November 22, 2011, Taylor performed "Fire and Rain" with Taylor Swift at the last concert of her Speak Now World Tour in Madison Square Garden, as well as her own song "Fifteen".

Musicians in the family[link]

Taylor's four siblings—Alex, Livingston, Hugh, and Kate—have also been musicians with recorded albums. Livingston is still an active musician; Kate was active in the 1970s but did not record another album until 2003; Hugh operates a bed-and-breakfast with his wife, The Outermost Inn in Aquinnah on Martha's Vineyard; and Alex died in 1993. Taylor's children with Carly Simon—Ben and Sally—have also embarked on musical careers.

Awards and recognition[link]

Grammy Awards[link]

• 1971 — Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, "You've Got a Friend"
• 1977 — Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, "Handy Man"
• 1998 — Best Pop Album, Hourglass
• 2001 — Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male, "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight"
• 2003 — Best Country Collaboration With Vocals, "How's the World Treating You" with Alison Krauss
• 2006 — Grammy Award-sponsored MusiCares Person of the Year. At a black tie ceremony held in Los Angeles, musicians from several eras paid tribute to Taylor by performing his songs, often prefacing them with remarks on his influence on their decisions to become musicians. These artists included Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Taj Mahal, Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Sheryl Crow, India.Arie, the Dixie Chicks, Jerry Douglas, Alison Krauss, and Keith Urban. Paul Simon performed as well, although he was not included in the televised program; Taylor's brother Livingston appeared on stage as a "backup singer" for the finale, along with Taylor's twin boys, Rufus and Henry.

In 2010 James Taylor was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

Other recognition[link]

James Taylor Bridge, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

• 1995 — Honorary doctorate of music from the Berklee College of Music, Boston, 1995.
• 2000 — Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 2000.
• 2000 — Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, 2000.
• 2003 — The Chapel Hill Museum in Chapel Hill, North Carolina opened a permanent exhibit dedicated to Taylor. At the same occasion the US-15-501 highway bridge over Morgan Creek, near the site of the Taylor family home and mentioned in Taylor's song "Copperline", was named in honor of Taylor.
• 2004 — George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement, UCLA Spring Sing.^[72]
• 2004 — Ranked 84th in Rolling Stone's list of "The Immortals: 100 Greatest Artists of All Time."^[73]
• 2009 — Honorary Doctorate of Music from Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Discography[link]

Taylor at Tanglewood, July 2008

U.S. Billboard Top 10 Albums

• 1970 – Sweet Baby James (#3)
• 1971 – Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon (#2)
• 1972 – One Man Dog (#4)
• 1974 - Walking Man
• 1975 – Gorilla (#6)
• 1976 – In The Pocket
• 1977 – JT (#4)
• 1979 – Flag (#10)
• 1981 – Dad Loves His Work (#10)
• 1997 – Hourglass (#9)
• 2002 – October Road (#4)
• 2008 – Covers (#4)
• 2010 – Live at the Troubadour (with Carole King) (#4)

U.S. Billboard Top 10 'Pop' Singles

• 1970 – "Fire and Rain" (#3)
• 1971 – "You've Got a Friend" (#1)
• 1974 – "Mockingbird" (with Carly Simon) (#5)
• 1975 – "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" (#5)
• 1977 – "Handy Man" (#4)

Other appearances[link]

• He provided acoustic guitar accompaniment for several tracks on Joni Mitchell's 1971 album Blue.
• He provided a guest voice to The Simpsons episode "Deep Space Homer" where he played some of his songs to Homer, Buzz Aldrin, and Race Bannon when they were in space. He also appeared later on in the series when the family put together a jigsaw puzzle. His face was the missing final piece.
• Performed "Second Star to the Right" on Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films in 1988.
• Taylor performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Game 2 of the World Series in Boston on October 25, 2007, at Game 1 of the 2008 NBA Finals in Boston on June 5, 2008, and at the NHL's Winter Classic game between the Philadelphia Flyers and Boston Bruins.
• He appeared on Sesame Street performing the song "Your Smiling Face" although the song was sung "Your Grouchy Face" as he sang it to Oscar the Grouch. He also appeared on the Sesame Street video compilation Silly Songs, and the album In Harmony: A Sesame Street Record, performing the song "Jellyman Kelly".
• Has appeared on NBC's Saturday Night Live six times as a musical guest
• He appeared on The West Wing where he played Sam Cooke's A Change is Gonna Come.
• He appeared on the The Johnny Cash Show, singing "Sweet Baby James", "Fire and Rain", and "Country Road", on February 17, 1971.
• His song "Fire and Rain" was in the movie Remember the Titans and the movie " Running on Empty" in 1988 .
• He provided vocals for the song First Me, Second Me by the Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese
• He made his debut for his 24th album Other Covers on The Oprah Winfrey Show on April 10, 2009.
• He appeared on the final of Star Académie, the Quebec version of American Idol, on April 13, 2009.
• On May 29, 2009, he made a guest appearance and sang Sweet Baby James on the final episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno before Leno was replaced by Conan O'Brien.
• Taylor appeared briefly in the 2009 movie Funny People, where he played Carolina in My Mind for a MySpace corporate event as the opening act for the main character.^[74]
• He appeared in 2011 in the ABC comedy Mr.Sunshine as the ex-husband of the character played by Allison Janney; they exchange some sardonic dialogue and then perform a duet of sorts on Leon Russell's 1970 classic "A Song for You".
• On January 19, 2012 Taylor performed a version of "Carolina in my Mind" with Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report."

Bibliography[link]

• Moritz, Charles (ed.) (1973). Current Biography Yearbook 1972. H. W. Wilson Company. 
• Risberg, Joel (2005). The James Taylor Encyclopedia. GeekTV Press. ISBN 1-4116-3477-2. 
• White, Timothy (2002). James Taylor: Long Ago and Far Away. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-9193-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=u9D0Mj_uJRoC&printsec=frontcover. 

References[link]

External links[link]

Main[link]

• Official website
• James Taylor Online
• James Taylor on Facebook
• James Taylor discography at Discogs
• James Taylor discography at Music City
• James Taylor at the Internet Movie Database
• James Taylor at the Internet Broadway Database
• James Taylor at the Notable Names Database

Interviews, other[link]

• Dedication of James Taylor Bridge
• "Carolina in My Mind" — The James Taylor Story at the Chapel Hill Museum
• 2006 Grammy MusiCares Person of the Year
• James Taylor Tabs
• BBC Radio 2, "The James Taylor Story: Parts I & II, presented by Bob Harris, 13 & 20 January 2004

Francis Cabrel
Background information
Born	(1953-11-23) 23 November 1953 (age 58) Agen, France
Origin	Agen, France
Genres	Folk, pop, blues
Occupations	Singer, songwriter
Years active	1974–present
Labels	CBS, Columbia

Francis Cabrel (born 23 November 1953 in Agen, France) is a French singer-songwriter and guitarist.^[1] He has released a number of albums falling mostly within the realm of folk, with occasional forays into blues or country. Several of his songs, such as "L'encre de tes yeux" and "Petite Marie" have become enduring favourites in French music.^{[citation needed]} Others, such as "C'était l'hiver", about the suicide of a young girl, have since been covered by other artists such as Canadian Isabelle Boulay.

Biography[link]

Cabrel was born into a modest family, his father was employed as a blue-collar worker and his mother was a cashier. He has a sister, Martine, and a brother, Philippe. His paternal grandfather, Prospero Cabrel, immigrated to Gascony from Friuli, Italy, in the 1920s with his wife and six children. Cabrel's mother, Denise Nin, was born in Gascony to an Italian family who had also immigrated from Friuli. The family's original surname, Cabrelli, was abandoned in the 18th century.

A shy teenager, Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" inspired him to pick up a guitar and start writing his own songs. At 16, enthralled by music, he started to sing the songs of Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Dylan. He also learned English by translating the lyrics. He would later say that his guitar enabled him to appear more interesting to others.

Expelled from secondary school in Agen for lack of discipline, he went to work in a shoe shop while playing gigs with a group named "Ray Frank and Jazzmen," which later became known as "les Gaulois" because every member of the band had a moustache. Indeed, at that time, Cabrel's appearance was that of a hippie, with long hair and a moustache.

In 1974 he took part in a song contest organised by Sud Radio and performed in front of a panel of judges, which included Daniel and Richard Seff. With his own song "Petite Marie", dedicated to his wife Mariette, he won the contest and was signed to a record deal by CBS.

In 1977, during CBS's "New French Song" campaign, his first record "Ma ville" was released. However, he quickly realized that CBS, having tampered with the accent of his singing voice on "Petite Marie", had thus interfered with the expression of his true personality. That version of the song is disavowed by Cabrel today.

At the Paris Olympia he opened for Dave for one month. He also won the "prix du Public" at the Festival de Spa in Belgium in 1978.

Although he writes predominantly for himself, he has written for other artists, in particular Rose Laurens ("Quand tu pars", 1986). Cabrel is involved in the politics of Astaffort commune in Lot-et-Garonne and was elected its councilor in March 1989.

While Cabrel is best known for singing in the French language, he has also recorded Spanish renditions of many of his most popular compositions.

In 1989, Cabrel's album Sarbacane was released. The singer spent months honing the new songs on Sarbacane to perfection, working out the musical arrangements and recording part of them in a makeshift studio he had set up in his own home. Sarbacane, undoubtedly one of Cabrel's finest works, proved an enormous hit with the public, selling almost 2 million copies. The singles "Sarbacane" (dedicated to his daughter) and "C'est écrit" also did incredibly well in the charts. By now Francis Cabrel had become one of the most popular recording stars on the French music scene and his life was one busy whirl of TV and radio interviews, autograph signing and promotion. Naturally, a tour was called for and Cabrel soon set off on an extensive tour – which included hundreds of dates in the provinces as well as several concerts at the Zénith in Paris – accompanied by his faithful musicians Gérard Bikialo (on keyboards), Denys Lable (on guitar) and Bernard Paganotti (on bass).

Meanwhile, Cabrel continued his work on behalf of humanitarian associations and charities, taking part in the famous "Soirée des Enfoirés" to raise money for the Restos du Coeur (the charity set up by the late great comedian Coluche to help the homeless). He also recorded compilation albums with other French stars on behalf of AIDS charities such as Sol En Si (Solidarité Enfant Sida) and Urgence. In 1990 Cabrel embarked upon a mini tour with singer Dick Rivers, delighting audiences with their re-worked versions of American rock'n'roll classics. This mini tour, performed without the slightest bit of publicity in smaller, more intimate venues such as the Bataclan in Paris, allowed Cabrel to make closer contact with his fans and wind down a little after his busy promotional schedule earlier in the year.

Following several more months of intensive touring, which took Cabrel all over Europe, South America and Quebec, the singer released a triple live album entitled D'une ombre à l'autre. The 43 tracks on this mega opus included memorable acoustic versions of Cabrel's greatest hits.

Cabrel fans had to wait another three years for the release of any new Cabrel material, the renowned perfectionist shutting himself away in the studio for months on end to work on his next album. Samedi soir sur la terre, the singer's eagerly-awaited 8th album, was finally released in 1994. Musically things had changed little from the early days – Cabrel was still surrounded by his loyal group of musicians and the guitar remained the most distinctive feature of the "Cabrel" sound. But the song-writing was more expressive than ever. Twenty years after "Petite Marie" the new singles "Je t'aimais, je t'aime, je t'aimerai" and "La Cabane du pêcheur" displayed extremely mature, sophisticated lyrics. One of the most outstanding tracks on the new album was undoubtedly "Corrida", Cabrel's attack on the cruel sport of bull-fighting. The album was followed by a new tour and a series of memorable concerts in Paris – at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, the Olympia and the Zénith. In February 1995 the music profession honoured Cabrel at the annual "Victoires de la Musique" awards ceremony, presenting him with an award for Best Album of 94 (for "Un samedi soir sur la terre"). Later that year Cabrel went on to win Le Trophée RFI/ Conseil de la Francophonie for his hit single "Je t'aimais, je t'aime, je t'aimerai".

Throughout his career Cabrel has tried hard to keep out of the media spotlight, leading a quiet life with his wife and two daughters. Yet the singer was prepared to become a prominent figure in his local community, working as a councillor and organising cultural events in Astaffort. It was Cabrel, for instance, who organised the "Rencontres d'Astaffort', a gathering of young singer/songwriters who came to the town for training and advice. Cabrel also proved himself to be an enthusiastic entrepreneur, setting up his own label Cargo with Charles Talar in 1995. The first artists the pair signed to their new label were Vincent Baguian and Michel Françoise.

In 1997 Cabrel continued his charity work, performing a tour with a host of French stars including Maurane, Michel Jonasz and Maxime Le Forestier, to raise money for the children's AIDS charity Sol en Si. Cabrel's live performances continued to attract a huge turn-out, his fans rightly suspecting that a new Cabrel album would not appear for another few years.

1997 also saw the publication of Hors Saison, a photo album of Cabrel portraits taken by Claude Gassian. A special bonus CD accompanied the book, featuring the duet "Vengo a ofrecer mi corazon", which Cabrel recorded in Spanish with the Argentinian star Mercedes Sosa. The song, recorded at the Francofolies Festival in Buenos Aires, received a massive amount of airplay which encouraged Cabrel to release it as a single. (This was not the first time that the singer had recorded his songs in Spanish. The release of the album Sarbacane coincided with the recording of an entire album in Spanish, which featured new versions of the singer's greatest hits).

Cabrel rocketed back into the French music news on 30 March 1999 with a new CD album entitled Hors Saison (Out of Season). The album generated a huge amount of interest among fans and music critics alike, as it was Cabrel's first new album in five years. Recorded with the same crack team who had joined the singer in the studio for his last two albums (i.e. Manu Katché, Gérard Bikialo and Bernard Paganotti), Hors Saison did not mark a radical departure from Cabrel's usual style. Not surprisingly, "Presque rien", the first single release, received an impressive amount of airplay on French radio. And a few months later sales of the album topped the 1 million mark, earning Cabrel a diamond disc.

Encouraged by the success of Hors Saison, Cabrel kicked off a new tour at Le Zénith in Caen, going on to perform a long stint at the Olympia in Paris (28 September – 9 October). Ten days later Cabrel brought the house down at Le Zénith in Paris. Appearing on stage against a pared-down minimalist décor with eight musicians, the singer was supported by Québécois diva Isabelle Boulay who, once her own set was finished, joined Cabrel on stage for a special duet. Cabrel brought his highly successful tour to a close in December '99.

The atmosphere of Cabrel's acoustic/electric tour was captured on a 3-CD live album, Double tour, released in 2000. In January 2000 and 2001 the singer went on to take part in the "Enfoirés" fund-raising tours, from which all profits were donated to "Les Restaurants du cœur" (a feed-the-homeless charity set up by the late French comedian Coluche).

Cabrel, who has built up a huge following of loyal fans both at home and abroad, is renowned for his modesty. Throughout his career the singer has done his utmost to keep his personal life out of the media spotlight and in his early interviews he showed himself to be an extremely shy person. In more recent interviews this timidity has given way to a more relaxed attitude and a mischievous sense of humour, which has only served to increase Cabrel's immense popularity.

While Cabrel continued his involvement with humanitarian projects, he eventually dropped his role in local politics. Considering that he had achieved his goals (which included renovating and re-opening an arts venue and a school), the singer did not stand in the next elections to prolong his position on Astaffort's local council.

Meanwhile, on the music front, Cabrel returned to the stage to take part in a series of concerts entitled "Autour du blues." These concerts, where Cabrel performed alongside international artists such as Patrick Verbeke, Tanya Saint Val and Beverly Jo Scott, resulted in two live albums (released in 2001 and 2003). The "Autour du blues" concerts also gave Cabrel the opportunity of working with the American musician David Johnson, who guested as sax-player on Cabrel's following album, Les Beaux Dégâts (released in May 2004). This album, produced in collaboration with Cabrel's loyal pianist, Gérard Bikialo, featured a new addition to the Cabrel sound in the form of a vibrant brass section.

The album proved to be a huge success, selling over 600,000 copies within a few months of its release. In the autumn of that year, the "bluesman" from the south-west of France hit the road on a tour he vowed would be on a human scale. Cabrel refused to play anything other than small or medium-sized venues, preferring to maintain direct contact with his audience. Needless to say, as this was the first tour Cabrel had performed in four years, tickets were all sold out weeks in advance. The tour, which kept Cabrel on the road until the end of the year, included a sold-out stint at Le Casino de Paris (2–14 November 2004).

In 2005, Les Editions Delcourt published a cartoon-strip tribute to Cabrel. Cabrel-Les Beaux Dessins featured eye-catching illustrations of twelve of his songs.

Cabrel returned to the live circuit with his "Bodegas Tour" in the spring of 2005, playing dates across France and Switzerland right through until June of that year. On 7 November Cabrel took to the stage on a very special occasion, organising a fund-raising concert for New Orleans, the home of jazz and blues, which had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The concert, staged at the Palais des Congrès in Paris, featured an all-star line-up including Garou, Alain Souchon, De Palmas and Véronique Sanson.

A few days after the New Orleans concert, "La tournée des Bodegas" was released as a CD featuring live versions of songs from the album Les Beaux Dégâts.

Cabrel kept a relatively low profile on the French music scene throughout 2006. He did join Michel Delpech in the studio to record a duet ("Le Loir et Cher") which appeared on the album Michel Delpech &…. And he agreed to play one of the colourful characters in Louis Chédid’s musical Le Soldat Rose, taking to the stage at Le Grand Rex, in Paris, on 12 November that year alongside a host of famous French music stars including M, Alain Souchon and Vanessa Paradis. In 2007, Cabrel marked the thirtieth anniversary of his career with the release of a double album entitled L'essentiel 1997–2007.

On 31 March 2008, Cabrel released a brand new album of original material entitled Des roses et des orties (Roses and nettles). This album, the eleventh of his career, revolved around a vibrant mix of electric and acoustic guitars and sultry blues arrangements and was recorded, as per usual, in his studio-barn in Astaffort. While Cabrel’s lyric-writing remained as sensitive and poetic as ever, the tone of this new album was ostensibly harder-hitting than his previous work.

The songs on Des roses et des orties tackled a range of serious social and political issues such as immigration ("African Tour"), religion ("Les Cardinaux en costume") and poverty and social exclusion ("Le Cygne blanc"). Cabrel also examined the artist’s role in society ("Gens formidables") and even delved a little into his own personal life for inspiration, addressing a song to the biological mother of the young Vietnamese girl he had adopted in 2004 ("Mademoiselle l'aventure"). The singer also included a number of interesting cover versions on this new album, performing French adaptations of Bob Dylan’s "She Belongs to Me", Creedence Clearwater Revival’s "Born on the Bayou" and JJ Cale’s "Mama Don't."

Trivia[link]

• Cabrel is an avid Dylan fan, and knows Dylan's entire^{[citation needed]} recorded works by heart.
• Cabrel has around fifty guitars which he has collected (not counting his own performance guitars which he has had made by luthiers).
• Cabrel has been an active organizer and participant in concerts for charity, including repeat appearances in Les Enfoirés.
• Cabrel actively plays tennis and supports MSTY.
• Cabrel's cover of Jackson Browne's "Rosie" (on Sarbacane) is a faithful translation, except for the chorus, which (intentionally or not) avoids the double-entendres of the original.
• His song "L'Edition Speciale" was featured in the 1987 film Broadcast News, in which the character of Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) plays it on his record player and sings along.

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

• Francis Cabrel (also known as Les Murs De Poussière) (1977, CBS)
• Les chemins de traverse (1979, CBS)
• Fragile (1980, CBS)
• Carte Postale (1981, CBS)
• Quelqu'un de l'intérieur (1983, CBS)
• Photos de voyages (1985, CBS)
• Sarbacane (1989, CBS)
• Samedi soir sur la terre (1994, Columbia)
• Hors-saison (1999, Columbia)
• Les beaux dégâts (2004, Columbia)
• Des roses et des orties (2008, Columbia)

Live albums[link]

• Cabrel Public (1984, CBS)
• D'une ombre à l'Autre (1991, Columbia)
• Double tour (Électrique & acoustique) (2000, Columbia, 3 CDs)
• La tournée des bodegas (2005, Columbia)

Compilations[link]

• Cabrel 77–87 (1987, CBS)
• L'Essentiel 1977–2007 (2007, Chandelle Production)
• Lo Mejor de los Mejores (1994, Sony Music, Special Marketing)
• Concierto en Bogotá, Colombia (1991)

Singles[link]

• "Petite Marie" (1977)
• "Pas trop de peine" (1978)
• "Les Murs de poussière" (1978)
• "Je l'aime à mourir" (1979)
• "Je rêve" (1979)
• "L'Encre de tes yeux" (1980)
• "Je pense encore à toi" (1980)
• "La dame de Haute-Savoie" (1981)
• "Carte postale" (1981)
• "Répondez-moi" (1982)
• "La fille qui m'accompagne" (1983)
• "Saïd et Mohamed" (live) (1984)
• "Je te suivrai" (1985)
• "Encore et encore" (1985)
• "Tourner les hélicos" (1985)
• "Il faudra leur dire" (1986)
• "C'est écrit (1989)
• "Animal" (1989)
• "Sarbacane" (1989)
• "Tout le monde y pense" (1990)
• "Petite Marie" (live) (1990)
• "La corrida" (1994)
• "Je t'aimais, je t'aime, je t'aimerai" (1994)
• "Samedi soir sur la Terre" (1995)
• "La cabane du pêcheur" (1995)
• "Octobre" (1995)
• "Presque rien" (1999)
• "Le reste du temps" (1999)
• "Hors-saison" (1999)
• "Le monde est sourd" (2000)
• "Ma place dans le trafic" (live) (2000)
• "Bonne nouvelle" (2004)
• "Qu'est-ce que t'en dis?" (2004)
• "Tu me corresponds" (2004)
• "Les gens absents" (2005)
• "Je pense encore à toi" (live) (2005)
• "Le gorille" (2007)
• "La robe et l'échelle" (2008)
• "Le chêne liège" (2008)
• "Des hommes pareils" (2009)
• "Né dans le Bayou" (2009)
• "Les cardinaux en costume" (2010)

Videography[link]

• Sarbacane tour (1989)

References[link]

External links[link]

• (French) Official Francis Cabrel website
• Biography of Francis Cabrel, from Radio France Internationale