The Lure of Live James Taylor Recordings
An Introduction To Tapetrading By Steve Mallory

There exists in the world a huge number of unreleased recordings of musical performances by all kinds of artists, ranging from the Beatles to your next door neighbor. It is possible to find entire concerts, studio outtakes, live appearances on television, and radio shows featuring most great artists. JT is no exception. There are few things in life as thrilling to me as finding an unreleased James Taylor recording, but I have found a number of them.

I was a student at the University of Kentucky in the early 1970’s when bootleg recordings began to appear. The first ones I bought were by the Beatles. Before long bootleg JT LP’s started appearing. Most were of mediocre quality, but there were gems such as “In Perfect Harmony,” recorded on the BBC with Joni Mitchell in 1970. In the 1980’s and 90’s bootleg CD’s became available and the sound quality improved greatly. I bought as many of these as I could find.

A while back, even these bootleg CD’s didn’t seem to be enough. I have never been able to get my fill of JT music, so I was faced with only one alternative that I could think of, tape trading. I was aware that audio tapes existed of recordings which will never be released even on bootleg CD’s. I decided to start a webpage on the internet listing my bootleg CD’s and LP’s. After adding recordings taken from video I had taped off television over the years I went online. Almost immediately I started receiving trade offers from other tape traders.

At this point I have more than 30 JT tapes totaling in the vicinity of 40 hours of unreleased JT music, which is far more than his record companies have ever released. Most of these are concert recordings spanning the years 1970 through this year. I know what JT sounded like solo in 1970 because of the great Syracuse 1970 tape and “James Taylor Sings James Taylor,” which was recorded solo on the BBC. I also can enjoy hearing JT perform many songs he has never officially released, such as “Yesterday,” “With a Little Help From My Friends,” “Okie From Muskogee,” “Pretty Boy Floyd,” “16 Candles,” “Summertime Blues,” “Roadrunner,” “Hey Good Lookin’,” “Wild Mountain Thyme,” “Twelve Gates to the City,” and many more. The list goes on.

It is most interesting to see what songs JT performed on his different tours.You can hear his sound evolving from his early solo performances into his current more band-oriented sound. You discover who was playing with JT in many instances. Listening to the dialogue between songs you find that JT has always had his sense of humor. It is simply amazing to hear the many different arrangements JT has used when performing “Steamroller.”

If you stop to think about it, JT’s live performances are just as important a musical legacy as his official records and discs. Live performances are actually more “honest” in that these are real performances done in one take, mistakes and all (although I have found very few). These recordings are what he really sounds like with no overdubs or second chances.

There are many rewards to trading JT tapes. I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves the music of James Taylor as I do.

Steve Mallory, R.Ph., is a family man who loves JT. P.O. Box 636, Clay City, KY 40312 USA
frozenman@geocities.com
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Studio/7751/