Chip Taylor, the singer and Songwriters Hall of Fame member who laid the foundation for The Troggs’ “Wild Thing,” Joyce Newton’s “Angel of the Morning” and Janis Joplin’s “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder),” has died. He was 86 years old.
Taylor died Monday night at a nursing home, according to an Instagram post by Grammy-winning singer Billy Vera, with his daughters Kelly and Christiane confirming the news. In 2023, he underwent treatment for throat cancer, which he wrote and sang about in his album Behind the skyreleased in February 2024.
One of Taylor’s older brothers is Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight, and one of his nieces is Voight’s daughter, Academy Award-winning actress Angelina Jolie.
The highly regarded Taylor sang, played guitar and recorded nearly two dozen albums during a remarkable six-decade career, when he wasn’t earning a living as a professional gambler.
He began his career in a rockabilly band, not in the South, but in his hometown of Yonkers, New York, and then spent some time as a writer and producer at April Blackwood Music, the publishing arm of CBS, where he signed Vera and James Taylor.
Taylor’s extensive songwriting resume also included “I Can’t Let Go” recorded by frequent collaborator Evie Sands, The Hollies, and Linda Ronstadt; “I Can Do It With You” (Pozo Seco Singers, Jackie DeShannon); “Welcome Home” (Walter Jackson, Dusty Springfield); “Sneaking Up on You” (Peggy Lee); “On My Word” (Cliff Richard); and two tunes performed by Vera and Judy Clay, “Country Girl City Man” and “Storybook Children.”
“I’m the type of person who doesn’t think too much about what I write about,” he said in 2000 about his style of music.
Taylor’s first hit was the rock anthem “Wild Thing” which British group The Troggs went to number one in July 1966 and the Jimi Hendrix Experience performed the following June at the Monterey Pop Festival. When Hendrix finished, he lit his guitar on fire.
“I think The Troggs’ record was a really funky record. You can’t beat that,” Taylor noted in a 2006 interview. “It was like a demo, except they played it with an electric guitar. The feeling was exactly what it should have been. To me, that was the beginning of punk.”
“Angel of the Morning,” a song about premarital sex, was first recorded by Sands in 1967 before Merrilee Rush & the Turnabouts’ version reached No. 7 on the Hot 100 in June 1968. Thirteen years later, Newton’s song sold over a million copies and peaked at No. 4 as the first country song played on MTV.
(Fun fact: Rush’s version was used in the 1999 film Girl, stopWhich starred Jolie in her Oscar-winning role. Watch Taylor perform his song here.)
In 1969, Joplin recorded “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)”, written by Taylor and Jerry Rajavoy, and used it as the opening track on her debut album, You’ve got the Dem Ol’ Kozmic blues back, mama!And as a distinctive tune in a concert.
James Wesley Voight, the third of three boys, was born on March 21, 1940. His brothers, Barry Voight, a geologist who invented a formula to predict when a volcano would erupt, and John were born in 1937 and 1938, respectively.
Their father, Elmer, was a golfer who played in the U.S. Open in 1928 and 1929 and then worked as a professional at Sunningdale Country Club in Scarsdale, New York. Their mother, Barbara, was a teacher and swimming coach.
“The three of us were very close in age, and we did all these things growing up,” Taylor told NPR in 2010. “Our mom and dad were very supportive of us being crazy, so we had great days together.”
Taylor said his “hardcore turn toward music” came when he was seven or eight years old and his parents took him to see him My wild Irish rose.
“I didn’t want to go to the show, but I was fascinated by the music,” he recalls. “I remember driving back that night, I didn’t want to talk, I just wanted to preserve the physical feeling that I had when I heard the music sitting in the fourth row. So I felt, that night, that something had changed inside me.”
He became a fan of country and southern blues music by listening late at night to a radio station in Wheeling, West Virginia, and while still a student at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, he wrote songs in the Brill Building at 1650 Broadway.
In 1957, he and his band Wes Voight & the Town and Country Brothers signed to King Records, which was predominantly home to black artists.
Now known as Chip Taylor — label executives were concerned that DJs would have trouble pronouncing “Voight” — he recorded a few hit singles before moving to Warner Bros. Records. Records in 1962, when he reached the Hot 100 with “Here I Am.”
However, he said, “It was not a time to make money for me. Rather, the question was: How will I survive to stay in this business?” “That’s when I decided I was going to make a real effort to write for other people.”
He wrote “He Sits at Your Table,” which Willie Nelson recorded, and then sent other songs to country music executives Chet Atkins and Jerry Tiefer. This led to him becoming a staff writer (mostly working with Al Giorgione and Ted Darrell) at April Blackwood Music.
Taylor said he was asked to write a song for Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones in 1965 Bulletin board In 2016, “he hung up the phone, started looking out the window and thinking about some girls, some of the wild things I’d known in my life. I don’t remember which one I was thinking about at that moment, but the chorus [‘Wild Thing’] It came right to me.
“I loved the sound of the strings and the feel of the strings. I went into the studio without finishing and asked the engineer to turn off the lights, and I tried to put myself in the mindset of whatever I wanted to say to that girl. And it was very simple. I didn’t say much, but it felt right, and it was powerful.”
He said his three favorite versions of “Wild Thing” were performed by The Troggs, Hendrix and the X-rendition heard when Charlie Sheen arrives from the bullpen in Major League (1989).
In 1967, Taylor and Giorgione formed Rainy Day Records and released the single “Night Owl” by the Flying Machine, a group that included James Taylor. However, the singer would depart to become the first non-British act to sign with the Beatles’ Apple Records.
Other artists who have covered Chip Taylor’s songs include Frank Sinatra, Waylon Jennings, Barbara Lewis, Lita Ford, American Breed, Lorraine Ellison, Bobby Fuller Four, Marshall Crenshaw, the Fleetwoods, Emmylou Harris and Anne Murray.
Taylor recorded seven solo albums in the 1970s, including the gem “Last Chance”, and appeared on Jonathan Demme’s album. Melvin and Howard (1980) before stepping away from music in 1981 when he said Capitol Records refused to promote his single “One Night Out With the Boys”, which he believed was a sure hit.
He then went from part-time gambler to full-time gambler, with horse racing and card counting, resulting in him being banned from several casinos, his specialty. “If I said did I make a lot of money, could I have survived and lived with that? Yes, I could have,” he said. CBS Sunday Morning In 2008.
Taylor resumed his music career in 1995 and launched an independent label, Train Wreck Records, in 2007, where he composed intimate Americana tunes with the likes of singer and violinist Cary Rodriguez, guitarist John Platania, bassist Tony Mercadante, and singer-violinist Kendall Carson.
His 2011 children’s album, Golden rules for childrenHis granddaughters Kate, Samantha and Riley appeared. After he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016, they all took to the stage to perform “Wild Thing.”
In addition to his daughters, brothers and five grandchildren, survivors include his wife, Joan; They married in 1964, divorced and remarried.
“His last days were peaceful,” his children wrote. “Chip loved the amazing blessing of connecting with people through music and truly appreciated this community. He considered you all his assets.” Daqaa. “We will miss him very much.”
Donations in his memory may be made to the Metropolitan Golf Association Scholarship Fund.
“I just try to let my soul go somewhere,” Taylor said in 2010. “And then I try to catch up with it, to see where we’re going with it.”
