The singer-songwriter James Taylor makes sweet music—sometimes too sweet. More than a few critics have accused him of ladling on the sentimental treacle a little too lavishly at times, but when he hits the right balance—as he did 50 years ago, with his third album Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon—he writes songs that will twang the heartstrings of even the hardest-hearted rocker.
Twanging strings of a different kind, Taylor’s bassist Leland ‘Lee’ Sklar pulled off the tricky task on this album of laying down exactly the right kind of bass-line for the sleek, acoustic songs in which his boss specialized. On this 1971 record, the bass benefits from that luscious production that only crackly old vinyl can really reproduce.