A Brother You Might Not Have Heard

Song 196: Today's song is Sit on Back by Livingston Taylor, who also wrote the tune, but I didn't add it to the YouTube playlist because the YT video link, which you can find at DaveElder.com, plays a video that starts with this song but includes all the tracks from LT's first 3 albums. I had listened to James Taylor's album Sweet Baby James a lot over the summer of 1970, so when I heard later in the fall that he had a brother with a new album out as well, I did something I almost never did, and almost never could afford to do -- I bought Livingston Taylor's debut LP without first hearing even one track from it. When I put the record on the turntable, this song, being the opening cut, was the first one I heard, and from the very start I felt pretty good about my investment -- I knew the album would be a good one. I felt even better as it went along, and I found that I liked every song on the LP. I could hear some similarities with his brother, both in the singing and the songwriting, but Livingston was clearly charting his own direction. I also liked the fact that Liv would mix up the moods and the tempos more than James, and that he had more upbeat songs on his record than James had on his. As much as I liked the SBJ album, I also felt that it leaned very heavily to the low key end, and I liked the fact that Liv's first album didn't. Thanks to the internet, recently I found the lyrics to this song, which I couldn't do in 1970, and finally knowing the words, I do wish he'd worked a bit harder on some of them, for his lines on this one don't seem to have the evocative quality of his brother's songs from the same era. Still, he makes his lyrical points well enough, and clearly enough, so my advice is to Sit on Back and enjoy. If you let the Capricorn playlist go on long enough, you'll hear the whole LP, plus a couple of others, even if all you'll see will be the album covers, and I guarantee that if you like the singer/songwriter genre and you haven't heard the Livingston Taylor LP (with him on the cover looking down from a box car door), it will be worth your time.