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One Part Genius...The Trail to October Road

Craig W. Thomas, unpublished, 2002

WHEN I WAS 14 years old the person I most wanted to be was James Taylor. It's a long time ago now. 1971. I remember clearly playing Sweet Baby James over and over, once or twice a night for a year - longer. I was obsessed, both with the music and with the front cover image of the singer. The depth of the obsession increased later that year as I found the first album on a teenage "big trip" up to London, in the discount racks of a shop just off Oxford Street. Inevitably, I loved that too, despite its differences with the uncomplicated, mostly acoustical collection that was SBJ. Then I waited in painful suspension for weeks for Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon to be released from captivity to the record shops of Great Britain.

Total word count of piece: 5993

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