Ep. 21 - CHIP TAYLOR ("Wild Thing")

Though a prolific singer/songwriter in his own right, Chip Taylor’s music has been covered by a wide range of artists, including Fats Domino, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Johnny Cash, George Strait, Nina Simone, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, The Pretenders, Jackie DeShannon, Ronnie Spector, Cheap Trick, and many others. He has written 39 songs that have appeared on Billboard’s pop, R&B, country, or adult contemporary charts, with many of them appearing on multiple charts simultaneously. Chip was born James Wesley Voight in Yonkers, New York, He joined a country band in high school, started writing songs, and signed a contract with King Records while still a teenager. As a songwriter he began finding success in the early 1960s with recordings by Johnny Tillotson, Aretha Franklin, and Willie Nelson. In 1966 The Troggs took Taylor’s “Wild Thing” to the #1 spot, which caught the attention of Jimi Hendrix, who covered it the following year. In 1968 he wrote “Angel of the Morning,” which became a hit for several artists, including Merilee Rush and Juice Newton. Chip also wrote “Try (Just a Little Bit Harder),” best known for the version Janis Joplin recorded in 1970. As the decade progressed he found continued success in the country field with Waylon Jennings’ Top 10 hit “Sweet Dream Woman,” and Anne Murray’s Top 5 “Son of a Rotten Gambler.” He returned to the studio as an artist in the early 1970s, and his LP Chip Taylor’s Last Chance, was named one of the best albums of the year by Rolling Stone magazine. Chip eventually left the music business behind, spending the 1980s as a highly successful professional gambler. He returned to the recording studio once again in the mid-1990s, and remains as prolific as ever, releasing an average of at least one album per year.