I met James Taylor through his cover of Carole King’s song ‘You’ve Got a Friend’. The fingerstyle guitar work on the song really caught my attention as it was a time when I was working on my finger playing technique. I started to learn more about the artist and found more fingerstyle oriented music on his ‘Greatest Hits’ album. As I soon found out, the album was certified diamond and had sold over 11 million copies worldwide. I really enjoyed listening to the album, which features most of his best work from the 1970s.
Although best known for his singing on such perennial tracks as Fire and Rain, Carolina In My Mind and You’ve Got a Friend, James Taylor is also a virtuoso fingerstyle guitarist in his own right. His intricate finger playing style can be heard throughout his songs and is not easy for untrained ears to imitate. I still remember hearing the intro to Fire and Rain for the first time and I thought it was one of the best acoustic guitar intros he had ever heard. For anyone who has been looking for an easy way to learn some of his classic tunes on the guitar, there is now a TAB book that can teach you how to play them!
‘The New Best of James Taylor for Guitar: Easy TAB Deluxe’ is a highly accurate transcription of some of the best songs recorded by the artist. It is notated with a guitar ‘TAB’ and also features full lyrics for each track. With this book you can expect to learn 12 songs which are: Cooperline, Country Road, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight, Fire and Rain, Mexico, Millworker, Shower the People, Steamroller, Sweet Baby James, Walking Man, You Have a friend and your smiling face.
If you are a complete beginner, it would be a good idea to spend some time on dedicated finger playing lessons, as a thorough understanding of the basics of this style of playing will help you a great deal when working through this book.
The one thing about TAB books is that they will only be more useful when you already know what a particular song should sound like before you study it. For that reason, you’ll need the original recording by your side for reference. By the way, nothing better than listening to an original recording by James Taylor himself.