Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Could have been titled, "James Taylor, Friends, and Family.", May 20, 2001
Still one of my favorite albums to this day. As an aspiring musician in the early 70s, and already a fan of JT, this album knocked my socks off. It convinced me that music should, above all, be fun.If only music today could be as imaginative and fanciful. The songs on side two are more like movements in one long song than like individual selections. With Alex, Hugh, and Kate Taylor, Carole King, Carly Simon, Dash Crofts, John Hartford, Red Rhodes, Randy and Michael Brecker, John McLaughlin and Linda Rondstadt, as well as producer, Peter Asher, it's a virtual who's who of late-sixties, early-seventies folk rock musicians, with a little jazz thrown in. One Man Dog featured his most reliable and long-standing group of sidemen, Danny Kortchmar, Russ Kunkel, Craig Doerge, and Leland Sklar. When I turned to bass, later in my own career, Sklar's primo bass licks on this album served as inspiration. Any fan of James Taylor who doesn't have this album should definitely add this one to his collection.
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33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage James Taylor With A Lesser Known Album!, October 20, 2000
I was lucky enough to first see James Taylor live in a small outdoor venue called Avaloch in rural Lenox, Massachusetts in the summer of 1970, after his first album recorded by the Beatles in London had been released and just before the release of the fabulously successful "Sweet Baby James" album by Warner Brothers. He appeared alone on-stage with a full head of long, long hair in a simple denim shirt and cut-up jeans with his four or five acoustic guitars, and for two and a half hours proceeded to absolutely enchant the sprawling lawn-full of hundreds of audience members with a spellbinding performance of all of the work from both of those albums. Although virtually unknown at the time, word of mouth had spread so quickly in the Berkshires area (who still considers him one of their own) that many of us went out to get this album to play before he appeared. The rest, as they say, is history. Everyone there became lifelong James Taylor fans.This particular album is a curious one for Taylor, following in the wake of such extraordinary albums as "Sweet Baby James" and "Mudslide Slim", and it is a rather minor tone in a career with many such mellow, quiet moments as are occasioned by many of the songs presented here. Yet it is also a very memorable album, and most of us who owned the original vinyl version of this album have upgraded to the CD as it has become available. It seems to showcase different aspects of his talents in that he is much more somber, reflective, and open about his own uncertainties and personal troubles in the songs he sings, and in the delivery as well. But several of my favorites are here, including a spare and lean version of "Don't Let Me be Lonely Tonight", "Back On The Street Again", and "Fool For You". It, like most of his albums, has weathered the ravages of age very well, and it is as welcome on my CD as anything else I can think of. No one sings quite like Taylor, and it is a wonderful album to have playing as you are working your way through a quiet Saturday at home, reading or doing chores or kicking back with a Sam Adams and a few friends. Come on back to a better time, friend; sit on down with us and listen a while. This is vintage James Taylor.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of his best, May 29, 1998
I never tire of listening to this music. One the record, Side 2 is basically one large work, each song transitioning to the next. The variety of musical styles illustrate the depth and range of James Taylor's composition and performance genius.
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is James Taylor's 
