Kate Taylor

Kate Taylor is a singer, sister, songwriter and mother. She was born in Boston and grew up with her four brothers –  Alex, James, Livingston and Hugh – in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where her father was the dean of the University of North Carolina Medical School.

A member of one of the most famous musical families in the world, she’s had a lot of success as a performer and recording artist. Talyor formed her first band at age 15 and landed her first record deal (with Atlantic) four years later. Her debut disc, Sister Kate, issued on the Atlantic sublabel Cotillion in 1971, was produced by Peter Asher, A&R chief at The Beatles’ Apple Records (and her manager at the time), who had several hits of his own as half of the duo Peter & Gordon in the ’60s.

Sister Kate background

Asked for some background on her debut LP, Taylor was happy to explain. “I met Peter Asher in 1969 when I went to London to visit my brother James when he was making, with Peter producing, his debut album for Apple,” she said. “James and I were invited to a tea party out at Peter’s summer cottage in the countryside. It was early June, and there was an empty, ancient swimming pool in the yard.

“JT and I went down in the bottom of that stone-lined pool and sang some songs that we’d been singing together since we were kids, Charlie and Inez Fox’s ‘Mockingbird’, among others. James, if you’re reading this, do you remember what others? A month or so later, I was back home on the Vineyard, where I was living at the time, and got a call from Peter saying he was moving out to Los Angeles and did I want to come out and make a record? Answer: YES! Over the next year, we worked on that record and signed a deal with Atlantic Records on their Cotillion label. Sister Kate had many great players contributing to it: Danny Kortchmar, Carole King, Lee Sklar, Bernie Leaden, John Hartford, Russ Kunkle, Linda Ronstadt. These folks are just amazing musicians.”

Kate Taylor, “It’s in His Kiss,” It’s In There and It’s Got to Come Out

Her second, self-titled album, produced by her brother James and engineered by Lew Hahn, was released in 1976 on Columbia Records. It did well, reaching #49 in the Billboard 200, and produced the charting hit “It’s In His Kiss (The Shoop Shoop Song),” recorded as a duet with James. “James and I recorded another couple of songs as duets for my [2003] Beautiful Road record,” she says. “Those were ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and ‘I Will Fly.’ Check them out!” In 1977, Columbia issued her third album, It’s In There and It’s Got to Come Out, produced by Barry Beckett at Muscle Shoals Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Tayor’s music shows strong Memphis-blues and Southern-soul influences, so recording there was the perfect fit, critics said.

Taylor then took a long break from performing and recording to raise her two daughters, Elizabeth and Aretha. “My daughter Elizabeth Witham is an extremely gifted storyteller, her medium being documentary film,” she says. “My daughter Aretha Brown graduated from Berklee College of Music. Her singing will bring you to cheers and tears and she’s a bright and shining light onstage.”

2000s albums

Since 2000, she’s recorded Beautiful Road (2002), Kate Taylor – Live At The Cutting Room (2005) and Fair Time! (2009) along with a DVD, Kate Taylor – Tunes from Tipi and Other Songs from Home. Fair Time! is a collection of tunes she wrote or co-wrote about her home, its places and its people, both common subject matter in her creative catalog’s compositions. Tunes From the Tipi traces the family’s musical history and journey from Chapel Hill to Martha’s Vineyard, where the Taylor family spent summers after moving from Belmont, Massachusetts to North Carolina in 1951.

As I said, Kate Taylor is a singer, sister, songwriter and mother. But she’s a tremendous talent, too. Here’s a non-musical Taylor family fun fact: All of the Taylor siblings are tattooed with a circular yin and yang-like tattoo with the words “Terra Nova” underneath. I’ve heard different explanations from the three family members I’ve asked about it, but Kate insists its origin is from when she was with James in England in the early ‘70s; another version is that the symbol was from the flag on their father’s boat.

(by A.J. Wachtel)