James Taylor

James Taylor didn't sing at the original Woodstock. Hard to have imagined "Fire and Rain" or "Sweet Baby James" going over big with the mud set. James Taylor didn't sing at Woodstock last week, either.James sings tonight at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia. I'll be there on the lawn because this is what I do. We must maintain our passionate habits. James Taylor is my habit.I've seen his act before. Eight times. Oct. 25, 1975, was the first time. He sang at the University of Florida's gym, which had all the acoustics and comfort of a rain gutter.

Carole King's new memoir, "A Natural Woman," was released today, and she's making the rounds wuith television and radio interviews. The book chronicles her rise from a New York childhood influenced by music, to her discovery of rhythm and blues on the radio shows of legendary DJ Alan Freed , to acclaim with the hit album "Tapestry," (a hallmark of my generation) and through her troubled marriages. (In two weeks, King is scheduled to release "The Legendary Demos," an album of her early recordings, including " Yours Until Tomorrow.

Even if we humans don't want to admit it, "we are curious monkeys," says state bureaucrat, poet, teacher and sideshow historian James Taylor. A chronicler of human oddities, and co-founder of Baltimore's American Dime Museum, Taylor readily admits his fascination with living torsos, lobster people and midgets. And he challenges anyone unwilling to admit to sharing that fascination to come clean. A sideshow devotee from an early age, Taylor, now 51, was inspired to document the world of novelty and variety entertainment after hearing the strange-but-true tales of a veteran carny.

When Sen. Barack Obama (above) clinched the Democratic Party presidential nomination last week, it was a moment of overwhelming joy for some - and devastating disappointment for others. A sampling of the reactions around the country: "Perhaps we are getting to that day Martin Luther King talked about. It's a day that goes down in history, no matter what happens." - N. Charles Anderson, president of the Detroit Urban League "This is about feeling that the party completely disrespected us, let us down, and we don't feel that we want to be with the party."

James Taylor is the sort of man who pines for the day when you could lay down 35 cents or so for the chance to gawk at deformed people. Only that's not the term he uses for them. To him, they're "human oddities." Sometimes, it's just "freaks."Attention PC Police: You missed one in Baltimore.Taylor is the chronicler -- extoller is probably the more apt description -- of that most puerile of entertainments, the carnival sideshow. Twice a year, he publishes Shocked and Amazed, a periodical that delves into that all but extinct phenomenon, which in an age before television, not to mention good taste, attracted tens of thousands of spectators eager to be rendered slack-jawed or, better yet, nauseated.

Rock and roll doesn't often make itself at home at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall -- particularly not when the Baltimore Symphony is in residence. But after hearing the orchestra perform with legendary singer/songwriter James Taylor Wednesday night, it was hard not to wish that rock were a more regular visitor.Not that the Taylor concert was a rock show in the traditional sense. Yes, there were guitar, bass and drums, but the guitar was acoustic and the other two instruments tastefully understated, with no massive amplifier stacks obscuring the viola section.

Not everyone gets what they deserve at Christmas, but this holiday season we've been blessed with an appropriately poignant and reflective song. Not a carol and hardly a jingle, reliable handyman James Taylor's low-key remake of the 1943 standard "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" has stood out on radio stations this year like a still-rooted pine among garish Christmas trees. Old but new, borrowed and a little blue, it's timeless yet just right for right now. It's an unintended masterpiece.

On June 24, 2004, ELEANORA A. TAYLOR, loving mother of James B. Taylor, Sr. Cherished grandmother of Jennifer Lally, Jaime, David and James Taylor, Jr., beloved great-grandmother of three great-grandchildren. Loving sister of Louis, Charles and the late Edward and Aflred Rutkowski Relatives and friends are invited to call at the Shimunek Funeral Home, Inc., 9705 Belair Road (Perry Hall), on Sunday from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. where a Funeral Liturgy will be held on Monday at 10 A.M. Interment Sacred Heart of Mary Cemetery

Jim Rose's "Freaks Like Me: Real, Raw and Dangerous" and "Freaks, Geeks and Strange Girls: Side Show Banners of the Great American Midway," a collection of essays. Both are new - "instant classic" is written all over them. Rose is the sideshow man for Generation X, his is an autobiography. The second has color plates, beautiful, high gloss reproductions that will knock your eyes out.MA - James Taylor, co-founder and publisher, Dolphin-Moon Press

On August 23, 2003 EUGENIA E. MELVIN of Columbia, MD. Loving wife of David Melvin; sister of Daisy Lindsay, Annie Gaillard and James Taylor; sister-in-law of Dora Melvin, Evelyn and Presper Melvin, Katie and Marie Taylor; also survived by many other relatives and friends. Visitation Friday, August 29 from 6:30 to 9 P.M. at Wilde Lake Interfaith Center, 10431 Twin River Rd., Columbia, MD, and Saturday, August 30 from 8:30 A.M. until hour of Service 10 A.M. at Mt Zion Baptist Church, 5101 14th St., NW. Arrangements by J.B. JENKINS FUNERAL HOME.

TELEVISION THE D.C. SNIPER'S WIFE: A BARBARA KOPPLE FILM / / 9 p.m. Saturday. TruTV. ....................... Barbara Kopple, who twice won Academy Awards for socially conscious documentaries in Harlan County USA (1976) and American Dream (1990), takes viewers back to 2002 and the fear that gripped suburban Maryland and Virginia during a string of Beltway and Interstate killings. Her entree to the story is Mildred Muhammad, the ex-wife of John Allen Muhammad. He, along with a young accomplice, was convicted of the serial killings.

At card parties that my family and neighbors threw during the Arkansas summers nights of my childhood, there was one artist whose music always solicited shouts throughout the room: Bobby Womack. Sometimes, the loud card game - which always became heated as expletives flew through the smoky air - stopped completely. "Turn that Bobby Womack record up!" my aunt Phyl would command. "I gotta hear this. Stop the game, y'all." The participants didn't seem to mind as everybody sang along to the record on the old hi-fi: If you get anything out of life/You got to put up with the toils and strife ... Eventually, the bid whist game and loud cussing would resume.

PRESIDENT, INSIGHT 180 WENDY BAIRD WENDY BAIRD IS THE PRESIDENT and co-owner of Insight180, a branding company that offers design and strategic methods of communications for companies. In her free time, she loves singing and acting, and she'll be performing in the musical Vanishing Point by the Dignity Players of Annapolis, which opens Friday. Baird resides in Columbia with her 15-year-old son. 1 Hybrid car "It's a good thing to do. ... It's important for us to respond to environmental impacts and community environmental issues."

It's not unheard of for a married couple to go into business together. While some might open a bakery or sell antiques, others eat fire, swallow swords and dance on stage with a 12-foot albino Burmese python. For Tyler "Fyre" and "Thrill Kill" Jill Fleet, performing these kinds of death-defying stunts is all in a day's work. They will bring their awe-inspiring routine to the Lo-Fi Social Club tomorrow to celebrate the publication of volume nine of James Taylor's Shocked and Amazed On and Off the Midway, a Baltimore-based periodical devoted to sideshow and variety entertainment.

One of the ways a poet makes art from his or her experience is through the use of unique, specific and particular detail. This poem by Rick Snyder thrives on such details. It's not just baseball caps, it's Tasmanian Devil caps; it's not just music on the intercom, it's James Taylor. And Snyder's poem also caught my interest with the humor of its flat, sardonic tone. - Ted Kooser "How are you Doing?" As much as you deserve it, I wouldn't wish this Sunday night on you - not the Osco at closing, not its two tired women and shaky security guard, not its bin of flip-flops and Tasmanian Devil baseball caps, not its freshly mopped floors and fluorescent lights, not its endless James Taylor song on the intercom, and not its last pint of chocolate mint ice cream, which I carried down Milwaukee Ave. past a man in an unbuttoned baseball shirt, who stepped out of a shadow to whisper, How are you doing?

Here's probably the only fact you need to know about JimmyO and April Monique Burril: They were married on Halloween 1998 in costume. She was dressed as some sort of demented fairy-type thing, he as a werewolf. Need another fact? Try this one: They've made a movie together, Chainsaw Sally, that has nothing to do with chopping wood. Yep, they're one of those couples. "In this neighborhood, we're definitely the weirdos on the corner," says April, 32, chatting amiably at the dining-room table of their Perryville home, an unassuming end-of-the-row duplex a stone's heave from where the Susquehanna River flows through town.

One of the ways a poet makes art from his or her experience is through the use of unique, specific and particular detail. This poem by Rick Snyder thrives on such details. It's not just baseball caps, it's Tasmanian Devil caps; it's not just music on the intercom, it's James Taylor. And Snyder's poem also caught my interest with the humor of its flat, sardonic tone. - Ted Kooser "How are you Doing?" As much as you deserve it, I wouldn't wish this Sunday night on you - not the Osco at closing, not its two tired women and shaky security guard, not its bin of flip-flops and Tasmanian Devil baseball caps, not its freshly mopped floors and fluorescent lights, not its endless James Taylor song on the intercom, and not its last pint of chocolate mint ice cream, which I carried down Milwaukee Ave. past a man in an unbuttoned baseball shirt, who stepped out of a shadow to whisper, How are you doing?

Northeast's third-ranked heavyweight wrestler, James Taylor, a favorite to win this year's 3A-4A state title with a 23-0 record that includes 18 pins, has been declared athletically ineligible, his father, Scott Taylor, said last night. The elder Taylor said he was informed yesterday by Northeast athletic director Roger Stitt that his son was ineligible because this is his fourth season of wrestling since his sophomore year. The elder Taylor said he has retained an attorney to contest his son's case based on the contention that he was informed by Northeast principal Roy Skiles and Stitt last spring that Taylor still had one season of eligibility left.

On June 24, 2004, ELEANORA A. TAYLOR, loving mother of James B. Taylor, Sr. Cherished grandmother of Jennifer Lally, Jaime, David and James Taylor, Jr., beloved great-grandmother of three great-grandchildren. Loving sister of Louis, Charles and the late Edward and Aflred Rutkowski Relatives and friends are invited to call at the Shimunek Funeral Home, Inc., 9705 Belair Road (Perry Hall), on Sunday from 3 to 5 and 7 to 9 P.M. where a Funeral Liturgy will be held on Monday at 10 A.M. Interment Sacred Heart of Mary Cemetery

There was a time, decades ago, when jazz was pop music, when the vocalists and instrumentalists graced the covers of major magazines. But in this bombastic, hip-hopped era, few players are known outside tight circles. To some, the genre, particularly jazz singing, has become a stuffy closet -- elitist and exclusive. The standards are revisited over and over and over again. You rarely hear about the adventurous ones, the artists who take real risks with the music. Which is what jazz is all about: pushing forward, dismantling a song and putting it back together with a fresh perspective, an individual and communal touch.