Taylor puts his spin on classic tunes in "Covers"

DETROIT (Billboard) - Cover songs are hardly foreign to James Taylor's repertoire. In fact, the veteran troubadour's top 40 roster is populated with his distinctive versions of such songs as Marvin Gaye's "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)," the Drifters' "Up on the Roof," Jimmy Jones and Otis Blackwell's "Handy Man" and Carole King's "You've Got a Friend," among others.

But with his appropriately titled "Covers," due September 30 on Hear Music, Taylor indulges himself entirely in interpretations of other artists' material.

"This is an album that needed to get made," he said. "It's something that I've had in mind for about the past 10 years or so."

Taylor recorded 20 songs for "Covers," from which 12 were selected. The recording sessions took place in January at a barn on the singer-songwriter's property in Lenox, Massachusetts, during a 10-day session with his 12-member Band of Legends. He said that the project was conceived as a set of R&B covers. But while it heads in that direction with such tracks as the Temptations' "It's Growing," the concept was expanded when the group decided to take on material like Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," John Anderson's "Seminole Wind," Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman" (written by Jimmy Webb) and a Big Mama Thornton-inspired version of "Hound Dog."

"A lot of them we just picked up on the spot," Taylor recalled. "They're 'head' arrangements, which means we didn't have (formal) charts or anything. It's an amazingly flexible group; we would do seven takes of a song like 'Wichita Lineman' or 'It's Growing' and, by God, there they were."

A special QVC edition of the album includes four more songs -- Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour," Eddie Floyd's "Knock on Wood," the Silhouettes' "Get a Job" and "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" from "Oklahoma" -- which may also be made available as a digital EP for buyers of the regular version of "Covers."

"We just throw these things out there and take a run at them," Taylor said. "There's something about this band and the context in which we recorded (the songs), the sort of live energy that the thing had, that makes this very special. I think that translates into what people will hear."

Reuters/Billboard