homes, and restaurants in Martha's Vineyard, Confederacy, and can point to a proud legacy New York, Los Angeles, and North Carolina, illu- of an enlightened press, an excellent health care minates Taylor's unique ties to the Southland and hospital network, and progressive, pro -civil that first inspired his songwriting. rights governors like Terry Sanford and Hunt. Yet A place of contrasts and paradoxes, North as recently as the late 1970s, North Carolina he amber -hued, late- afternoon sun Carolina has long been a province of hard -work- remained a virulent bastion of the Ku Klux Klan, "Put your shoes on of a North Carolina day is streaming past the ing, small- acreage Scottish and Scots -Irish farm- refused in both 1973 and '82 to ratify the Equal Walk with me into this light .. . high foliage surrounding the governor's man- ers rather than land -rich colonial aristocracy. It Rights Amendment, has stubbornly supported I'm feeling whole again sion. It forms a perfect copper path through the boasted the first state university in the nation, the careers of ultra -conservative Republicans It was a hell of a night. gates just as guest of honor James Vernon Tay- opened in 1795 (namely the University of North like Jesse Helms and John East, and is enriched Just to be with you by my side lor arrives by charter bus, the angled beams cre- Carolina at Chapel Hill, where James' father, economically by the operations of the country's Just to have you near in my sight ating a corridor of light that the singer can fol- Isaac "Ike" Taylor, would later teach), had fewer four leading cigarette manufacturers. Com- low up the front steps and into a reception slaves during the Civil War than any state in the pelling and complex, absorbing and mystifying, Just to walk a while in this light sponsored by the liberal Democratic guberna- Just to know that life goes on. uplifting in its essence and all too human in its torial incumbent, James B. Hunt Jr. frailties, the state, like the man, is a feast for the Another day It's Monday Nov. 9, roughly a half-hour before thoughtful inquisitor and the open- hearted devo- Another chance that we may an impeccable afterglow falls like a crepe cur- tee. And for North Carolina's people, as well as Finally find our way tain around the populace of Raleigh, capital of for its part-Yankee troubadour /poet, it's fervent- The sun has begun the Tar Heel State, Northern Piedmont seat of its ly believed down here that the best days are yet To melt all our fears away. government, and site of the annual North Car- to come. Another day." olina Awards, in which Taylor and six other exemplars in public service and the arts and sci- What's your earliest memory? ences will be recognized for their historic con- "Another Day," James Taylor, 1997 I think my earliest memory is trying to walk on tributions to their home turf. the crust on top of the snow when I was really lit- The other distinguished honorees -including tle, like 2 years old, and breaking in, falling Nobel Prize -winning scientist Martin Rodbell, through the snow up to my waist. I remember novelist Kaye Gibbons, beloved folk craftsman the delicacy of the snow and wondering when Robert W. Gray, and respected local social it would cave in.

activists Lunsford Richardson Preyer and wife I had some little woolen helmet on my head Emily Harris Preyer -are busy greeting guests that itched like hell. And a flannelized puffy and fielding congratulations from dignitaries, but snowsuit with some rubber boots, and mittens everyone immediately turns to look at the rather safety- pinned to my sleeves. That's the way we Lincoln -esque walking man who slips bashfully were bundled up and thrown outside into the through the portico and into the parlor. snow, looking like the Michelin Man, looking like "There, " says the aged but buoyant Preyer as you were packed to be shipped a long distance. she points with glee, "is the man we're all real- At the time, this was in Weston, Mass., not far AP RTRAIT OF THE ARTIST from where my brother Livingston lives today. I was born when my parents were living in Milton, BY TIMOTHY WHITE Mass., but then they bought a house in Weston, a couple of towns over; it was a modestly sized ly here to see -James Taylor!" contemporary house. I guess at that point my Indeed, while Taylor has been in line to sister Kate was a year old, and my mom was receive a host of Grammys and other honors pregnant with Liv. since his official designation as the 1998 recip- But wait -I may have an earlier memory! It's ient of Billboard's Century Award (which was dis- from Randolph Street in Milton, where I was closed to his mother on Thanksgiving Day 1997, being scolded for eating peanut butter out of a but not publicly announced until May of this year, bird feeder! And I also think I remember a Christ- with the hand -struck bronze trophy to be pre- mas tree at that Milton house. sented at the Billboard Awards, Dec. 7 in Las Vegas), the citizens of the 12th state admitted What were the Taylor family's Christmas rit- to the Union prefer not to take a back seat to uals like? any flatterers in the mounting rush to lionize their We opened all the presents on Christmas favorite son. morning. Mostly, I remember the Christmases in As Taylor's mother, Trudy, later puts it, "North North Carolina. We moved down there when I Carolina likes to call itself 'a vale of humility be- was about 3 years old. My father took a job tween two mountains of conceit,' meaning the down there. He was basically doing research at boastful South Carolina and Virginia that sit on that point and was hired as an assistant profes- either side of the state, but the award cere- sor in the department of internal medicine at the monies here indicate it still knows how to show University of North Carolina Medical School. At its pride in itself." that point, there was only a two -year medical At a banquet later in the evening, James is school available there. He had already graduat- told that "Carolina In My Mind" is North Caroli- The Chapel Hill cellist and clan: A photo gallery. ed from medical school and done his residency na's unofficial anthem, and friends and admir- This page, clockwise from top right: Gertrude and internship fin Boston. But he went down Woodard, the future ers from the Appalachian Mountains near Ashe- Mrs. Trudy Taylor, spring there for a while to teach physical diagnosis and 1941, Newburyport High School; Jamie with ville to the coastal plains around New Bern cheer banjo in a "kitchen concert" at the Morgan do research. and /or wipe away tears as Taylor explains that, Creek Road house, early 1960s; Isaac Montrose I remember hüs office in his laboratory, and although he was born (on March 12, 1948) in Taylor, 1945; J.T., fifth- grader, at University of occasionally on a Sunday he would take us by Boston, he was mainly raised here and still fun- North Carolina-Chapel Hill recital; 14-year-old the laboratory, where there were some radioac- damentally considers himself "a Carolinian." James at Milton Academy. Opposite page, cen- tive isotopes and a freezer which held hamsters ter, from left: Alex, James, Kate, Liv, and Hugh The interview that follows, conducted over the He Taylor, 1956, in their Chapel Hill backyard. that were hibernating. was involved in some course of the past 12 months in taxis, buses, (Photos courtesy of Trudy Taylor) kind of research project involving animal hiber-

16 BILLBOARD DECEMBER 5, 1998 www.americanradiohistory.com