Eric Taylor (September 25, 1949 – March 9, 2020) was an American singer-songwriter from Texas, known for his storytelling style, combining spoken word with anecdotal songs to create a theater-style performance. In addition to Taylor's nine solo releases, his songs have been recorded by
Nanci Griffith
Nanci Caroline Griffith (July 6, 1953 – August 13, 2021) was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She appeared many times on the PBS music program ''Austin City Limits'' starting in 1985 (season 10). In 1994 she won a Grammy Award fo ...
,
Lyle Lovett
Lyle Pearce Lovett (born November 1, 1957) Lyle Lovett Pageat Allmusic – Lovett's Genre and Styles. Retrieved February 2, 2007 is an American singer, songwriter, actor and record producer. Active since 1980, he has recorded 13 albums and relea ...
, Peter Cooper, and others.
Early life
Taylor was born in
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
,
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
. He began playing guitar as a child and performed in a racially-integrated
soul music
Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the African American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It has its roots in African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues. Soul music became po ...
band in high school. He briefly attended
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...
before dropping out and moving to Houston to pursue a career in music.
Career
Taylor toured extensively in the United States and Europe, playing notable venues such as
Club Passim
Club Passim is an American folk music club in the Harvard Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was opened by Joyce Kalina (now Chopra) and Paula Kelley in 1958, when it was known as Club 47 (based on its then address, 47 Mount Auburn Str ...
,
The Bottom Line,
Caffe Lena Caffe may refer to:
* Caffè, the Italian word for coffee, used as an alternative spelling of café
* Caffe (software)
Caffe (Convolutional Architecture for Fast Feature Embedding) is a deep learning framework, originally developed at Universit ...
,
Bluebird Café
The Bluebird Café is a 90-seat music club in Nashville, Tennessee that opened in 1982. The club features acoustic music performed by both established singer-songwriters, and cover artists. The Bluebird receives over 70,000 visitors annually. T ...
, Red Clay Theatre, Bridger Folk,
The Ark, CSPS,
The Freight and Salvage
The Freight and Salvage (known as "The Freight") is a nonprofit musical performance venue in Berkeley, California that primarily hosts Americana music and world music acts.
History
The Freight was founded in 1968 and derived its name from the ...
,
Paradiso (Amsterdam)
Paradiso is a Dutch music venue and cultural centre located in Amsterdam.
History
It is housed in a converted former church building that dates from the nineteenth century and that was used until 1965 as the meeting hall for a liberal Dutch ...
, Theatre Kikker (
Utrecht
Utrecht ( , , ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city and a List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, pro ...
), Berlin Guitars (
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
), The Real Music Club (
Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...
), DC Music Club (
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
), Hotel du Nord (
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
) and The Bein Inn (
Perth
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth is ...
). Festival appearances include
Kerrville Folk Festival
The Kerrville Folk Festival is a music festival held for 18 consecutive days in the late spring/early summer at Quiet Valley Ranch near Kerrville, Texas. The Kerrville Folk Festival was founded in 1972 by the husband-wife team of Rod Kennedy an ...
,
Newport Folk Festival
Newport Folk Festival is an annual American folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the Newport Jazz Festival. It was one of the first modern music festivals in America, and remains a foca ...
, Glasgow Americana Festival (Scotland),
Woody Guthrie Folk Festival
The Woody Guthrie Folk Festival is held annually in mid-July to commemorate the life and music of Woody Guthrie. The festival is held on the weekend closest to July 14 - the date of Guthrie's birth - in Guthrie's hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma. Da ...
, 1st Americana Fest (Austria), Take Root Festival (The Netherlands), and Roots of Heaven Festival (The Netherlands). He taught at the
Kerrville
Kerrville is a city in, and the county seat of, Kerr County, Texas, United States. The population of Kerrville was 24,278 at the 2020 census. Kerrville is named after James Kerr, a major in the Texas Revolution, and friend of settler- ...
Song School, and conducted songwriting workshops throughout the United States and in Europe. Taylor was married to singer-songwriter
Nanci Griffith
Nanci Caroline Griffith (July 6, 1953 – August 13, 2021) was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter. She appeared many times on the PBS music program ''Austin City Limits'' starting in 1985 (season 10). In 1994 she won a Grammy Award fo ...
from 1976 to 1982.
In 2009, Lovett released ''Natural Forces'', his second album of covered songs, and again included a Taylor song. This time it was "Whooping Crane," from Taylor's 1995 self-titled album.
[Arthur Wood]
Eric Taylor
''Folkwax'' (link requires free subscription) Lovett's 2012 ''Release Me'' album, also has one of Taylor's songs "Understand You."
Taylor's last release was ''Studio 10'' in 2013, recorded at the Red Shack Studio in Houston and features nine original songs and a cover of Tim Grimm's "Cover These Bones."
In 2016, Taylor was nominated for an
Emmy Award
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
for Musical Composition for songs he wrote for the Storyworks television documentary, ''Road Kid to Writer: The Tracks of Jim Tully.''
Taylor died on March 9, 2020, at the age of 70 from liver disease.
Discography
* ''Through The Dark Nightly'' (1976) –
air Retail Records, compilation with other Houston songwriters: Bill Cade, Stephen Jarrard, Lynn Langman, Don Sanders* ''Shameless Love'' (1981, Featherbed; reissued 2004, Blue Ruby Music)
* ''Eric Taylor'' (1995,
Watermelon
Watermelon (''Citrullus lanatus'') is a flowering plant species of the Cucurbitaceae family and the name of its edible fruit. A scrambling and trailing vine-like plant, it is a highly cultivated fruit worldwide, with more than 1,000 varieti ...
)
* ''Resurrect'' (1998,
E1 Music
MNRK Music Group (pronounced "monarch", formerly known as Koch Records and eOne Music) is a New York City-based independent record label and music management company. It was formed in 2009 from the music assets of Koch Entertainment, which had b ...
)
* ''Scuffletown'' (2001, Eminent Records)
* ''The Kerrville Tapes'' (2003, Silverwolf)
* ''The Great Divide'' (2005, Blue Ruby Music)
* ''Hollywood Pocketknife'' (2007, Blue Ruby Music)
* ''Live at the Red Shack'' (2011, Blue Ruby Music)
* ''Studio 10'' (2013, Blue Ruby Music)
References
External links
Blue Ruby Music: Official website for Eric Taylor
{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Eric
1949 births
2020 deaths
American folk singers
American male singer-songwriters
Singer-songwriters from Texas
Musicians from Atlanta
20th-century American singers
20th-century American male singers
21st-century American singers
Singer-songwriters from Georgia (U.S. state)
Lyle Lovett and His Large Band members