Chip Taylor – HuffPost 12.20.10

[Note: This was taken from my interview with Chip Taylor and is presented here because it might be inspirational for new artists.]

Mike Ragogna: So, you were signed at 15?

Chip Taylor: Yes, at 15 or 16. I was signed to King Records at the time, and the New York division was the all black division. I was signed by a wonderful A&R guy named Henry Glover who had signed Hank Ballard and the Midnighters and James Brown. He had written “Sexy Ways” with Hank Ballard. He was something. We were trying like crazy just to get signed by anybody. My guitar player went door to door with our acetate demos or whatever you called them. Somehow or another, Hank let him in.

MR: How did it feel being signed at 15?

CT: It was a dream come true. I was just on fire when Henry Glover called me and said, “Son, you’re on King Records.” Man, oh my goodness what a thing this is you know. It was just a wonderful, wonderful period of time. The problem was I loved making the recordings, and augmented the band with Mickey Baker and Panama Francis. These were unbelievable characters and wonderful players. We didn’t sell enough records to hold that together. I did okay with one single on Warner Brothers, but I was desperately trying to stay in the business, so I started writing for other people just to jump the gun a little bit. One of the first people, in fact the first person that recorded one of my songs, was Willie Nelson. All of a sudden, I was in the business as a country writer and so happy to be doing that. The dream was always to be a singer, but boy, anyway to get into this business was good enough for me.

MR: Was that song “He Sits at My Table”?

CT: Yeah. Remember, it was a hit of sorts. I didn’t particularly like this record as it was one of those corny over-produced records, but Willie loved that song. When I came back to making music ten years ago, he saw me and came over to me and he welcomed me back. He said, “Welcome back, Chip. You know I recorded one of your songs years ago,” and I said, “Yeah, I couldn’t forget that, Willie!” So, he sang me two versus of the song right there in the parking lot. Really something.

MR: That was your transition into a major songwriter?

CT: Yeah. It was survival.