Chip Taylor, the singer and member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame who laid the groundwork for \u201cWild Thing\u201d by The Troggs, \u201cAngel of the Morning\u201d by Juice Newton and \u201cTry (Just a Little Bit Harder)\u201d by Janis Joplin, has died. He was 86.<\/p>\n
Taylor died Monday night in hospice care, according to an Instagram post<\/a> from Grammy-winning singer\u00a0Billy Vera. In 2023, he underwent treatment for throat cancer, which he wrote and sang about on his album Behind the Sky, released in February 2024.<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n One of Taylor\u2019s older brothers is Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight, and one of his nieces is Voight\u2019s daughter, Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie.<\/p>\n The much-appreciated Taylor sang, played guitar and recorded some two dozen albums during a remarkable six-decade career \u2014 that is, when he was not carving out a living as a professional gambler.<\/p>\n He started out in a rockabilly band born, not in the South, but in his hometown of Yonkers, New York, then spent time as a writer and producer at April Blackwood Music, the publishing arm at CBS, where he signed Vera and James Taylor.<\/p>\n Taylor\u2019s expansive songwriting r\u00e9sum\u00e9 also included \u201cI Can\u2019t Let Go,\u201d recorded by frequent collaborator Evie Sands, The Hollies and Linda Ronstadt; \u201cI Can Make It With You\u201d (The Pozo-Seco Singers, Jackie DeShannon); \u201cWelcome Home\u201d (Walter Jackson, Dusty Springfield); \u201cSneakin\u2019 Up on You\u201d (Peggy Lee); \u201cOn My Word\u201d (Cliff Richard); and two tunes performed by Vera and Judy Clay, \u201cCountry Girl City Man\u201d and \u201cStorybook Children.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m the kind of writer who doesn\u2019t think too much about what he\u2019s writing about,\u201d he said<\/a> in 2000 of his approach to music.<\/p>\n Taylor\u2019s first big hit was the rock anthem \u201cWild Thing,\u201d which the British group The Troggs took to No. 1<\/a> in July 1966 and the Jimi Hendrix Experience performed the following June at the Monterey Pop Festival. When Hendrix was through with it, he famously set his guitar on fire<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI think The Troggs\u2019 record was a right funky record. You couldn\u2019t beat that,\u201d Taylor noted<\/a> in a 2006 interview. \u201cIt was like the demo, except they played it with an electric guitar. The feeling was exactly the way it should have been. To me, that was the start of punk.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAngel of the Morning,\u201d a song about premarital sex, was first recorded by Sands in 1967 before Merrilee Rush & the Turnabouts\u2019 version made it to No. 7 on the Hot 100 in June 1968. Thirteen years later, Newton\u2019s take<\/a> sold more than a million copies and peaked at No. 4 as the first country song to play on MTV.<\/p>\n (Fun fact: Rush\u2019s version was used in the 1999 film Girl, Interrupted, which starred Jolie in her Oscar-winning turn. Watch Taylor perform his song here<\/span>.)<\/p>\n In 1969, Joplin recorded \u201cTry (Just a Little Bit Harder),\u201d<\/a> written by Taylor and Jerry Ragavoy, and used it as the opening track on her debut album, I Got Dem Ol\u2019 Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, and as a signature tune in concert.<\/p>\n The third of three boys, James Wesley Voight was born on March 21, 1940. His brothers, Barry Voight, a geologist who invented a formula to predict when a volcano will erupt, and Jon were born in 1937 and 1938, respectively.<\/p>\n Their father, Elmer, was a golfer who played in the U.S. Open in 1928 and 1929 and then served as the pro at the Sunningdale Country Club in Scarsdale, New York. Their mother, Barbara, was a teacher and a swim instructor.<\/p>\n \u201cThe three of us were very close in age, and we did all this stuff growing up,\u201d Taylor told<\/a> NPR in 2010. \u201cOur mom and dad were very supportive of us being crazy, so we have wonderful days together.\u201d<\/p>\n Taylor said his \u201chardcore turn toward music\u201d came when he was 7 or 8 and his parents took him to see My Wild Irish Rose.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to go to the show, but I was just mesmerized by the music,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI remember going back in the car that night, I didn\u2019t want to talk, I just wanted to keep the physical feeling I felt when I heard the music sitting in the fourth row. So I felt, that night, that something changed in me.\u201d<\/p>\n He became a fan of country music and Southern blues by listening late at night to a radio station in Wheeling, West Virginia, and while still a student at Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, he wrote songs at the Brill Building at 1650 Broadway.<\/p>\n In 1957, he and his band, Wes Voight & the Town and Country Brothers, were signed by King Records, then predominately a home for Black artists.<\/p>\n Now known as Chip Taylor \u2014 execs at the label were worried DJs would have trouble pronouncing \u201cVoight\u201d \u2014 he recorded a few singles that went nowhere before moving to Warner Bros. Records in 1962, when he made it on the Hot 100 with \u201cHere I Am.\u201d<\/p>\n However, \u201cIt wasn\u2019t any moneymaking time for me. It was still, \u2018How am I going to survive to stay in this business?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s when I decided I was going to really make an effort to write for other people.\u201d<\/p>\n He wrote \u201cHe Sits at Your Table,\u201d recorded by Willie Nelson, then sent other songs to country music execs Chet Atkins and Gerry Teifer. That led to him becoming a staff writer (working often with Al Gorgoni and Ted Daryll) at April Blackwood Music.<\/p>\n Asked to write a song for Jordan Christopher and the Wild Ones in 1965, Taylor told<\/a> Billboard in 2016 that he \u201chung the phone up, started looking out the window and thinking about some girls, some wild things I had known in my life. I don\u2019t remember which one I was thinking of at that moment, but the chorus for [\u2018Wild Thing\u2019] came right to me.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved the sound of the chords and the feeling of the chords. I went in the studio without it being finished and just asked the engineer to turn the lights out, and I tried to put myself in the mindset of whatever the heck I wanted to say to that girl. And it was very simple. I didn\u2019t say much, but it felt right, it was powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n He said his three favorite versions of \u201cWild Thing\u201d were done by The Troggs, Hendrix and the X rendition that\u2019s heard as Charlie Sheen arrives from the bullpen<\/a> in Major League (1989).<\/p>\n In 1967, Taylor and Gorgoni formed Rainy Day Records and released the song \u201cNight Owl\u201d by the Flying Machine, a group that included James Taylor. The singer, however, would depart to become the first non-British act to sign with The Beatles\u2019 Apple Records.<\/p>\n Other artists covering Chip Taylor\u2019s songs included Frank Sinatra, Waylon Jennings, Barbara Lewis, Lita Ford, American Breed, Lorraine Ellison, the Bobby Fuller Four, Marshall Crenshaw, The Fleetwoods, Emmylou Harris and Anne Murray.<\/p>\n Taylor recorded seven solo albums in the 1970s, included the gem \u201cLast Chance,\u201d and appeared in Jonathan Demme\u2019s Melvin and Howard (1980) before stepping away from music in 1981 when he said Capitol Records refused to promote his single \u201cOne Night Out With the Boys,\u201d which he thought was a sure-fire hit.<\/p>\n He then went from a part-time gambler to a full-time one, with horse racing and card counting, which got him banned from many casinos, his specialty. \u201cTo say did I make a lot of money, could I have survived and just lived with that? Yeah, I could have,\u201d he told<\/a> CBS Sunday Morning in 2008.<\/p>\n Taylor resumed his music career in 1995 and launched an independent label, Train Wreck Records, in 2007, intimate, Americana tunes with the likes of singer-violinist Carrie Rodriguez, guitarist John Platania, bassist Tony Mercadante and singer-fiddler Kendel Carson.<\/p>\n His 2011 children\u2019s album, Golden Kids Rules, featured his granddaughters Kate, Samantha and Riley. And after he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016, they all took the stage to perform \u201cWild Thing.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to his brothers and granddaughters, survivors include his wife, Joan (they first married in 1964, got divorced and remarried), and his children, Kelly and Kristian.<\/p>\n \u201cI just try to let my spirit go someplace,\u201d he said in 2010. \u201cAnd then I try to catch up to it, to find out where we\u2019re going with it.\u201d<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/div>\n