James Taylor — BBC In Concert 1970
Recorded 1970
BBC Television Centre · London · 
England
Setlist
Wrong timestamp?
Album featured at the showSweet Baby James1970The second album holds up a central part of the performance, with Fire and Rain, Steamroller Blues, Sunny Skies and the title track.“To meet James Taylor at 22 on the BBC, in the year Sweet Baby James widens his reach.”
Context
At 22, James Taylor comes to British television with two albums and a career gaining scale. Sweet Baby James had come out in February 1970. In the BBC's London studio, however, the performance is solo: the songwriter puts his own songs alongside the Beatles and folk tradition.
Taylor opens with With a Little Help from My Friends and moves on to Fire and Rain. Rainy Day Man and Carolina in My Mind bring back the first album; Sunny Skies and the track Sweet Baby James bring the meeting close to the second. Greensleeves and Tube Rose Snuff break up the run of his own songs.
Highway Song, Long Ago and Far Away, Riding on a Railroad and You Can Close Your Eyes point toward 1971's Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon. The TV recording is restored decades later. In 2025, the complete edition adds recovered footage of Sunny Skies and Sweet Baby James, widening the portrait of this phase.
- The complete edition recovers the performances of Sunny Skies and Sweet Baby James.
Lineup at this show
The lineup of this performance — not necessarily the current one.
- James TaylorVocals and acoustic guitar
Trivia
The complete version presented in 2025 recovers footage of Sweet Baby James and Sunny Skies missing from the restored edit released in 2020.
Sweet Baby James is a lullaby written for the singer's nephew, also named James.
More concerts by James Taylor
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