By Chris Moore:

Welcome back for another installment in the session-a-day project at the best music blog on the Internet! Tonight’s Laptop Session is from a new artist to the blog — James Taylor. “Fire and Rain” is his second single, released in 1970 after “Carolina on My Mind.” And now it is one more acoustic cover song to be added to the Laptop Sessions’ list of covers!

I’ve always liked this song, since I first heard it on a seventies compilation early in high school. This is actually a funny story — I was just explaining it to Jim last week…

Growing up, I didn’t listen to a lot of music. My dad had tapes of his favorite artists and a few compilation tapes, but outside of this, I didn’t really focus that much on songs or especially albums. Then, by middle school, I was listening to the radio religiously, especially the morning show on Kiss 95.7 — one of my favorite parts of summer vacation was being able to listen to 8am-10am portion of the morning show. As I began to record my own “radio shows” on cassette tape, I also began buying CDs so that I would have a wide range of music to present.

Thus began my vast musical journey. My first CD was an Elvis greatest hits that my parents bought me to go along with my first CD player. Then, I got into sixties music briefly. I had an extended seventies period, picking up greatest hits of the 70s compilations and — yes, I’ll admit it now — disco CDs. If you listen to some of the earlier Moore Hits in the Morning shows on WCJM.com, you’ll find that disco music crept into my choices for best songs.

Suffice it to say that I, just like most other people in the free world, did indeed grow out of that phase!

I collected and listened to a lot of eighties music, as well. All throughout these whims, I was buying contemporary music, and I’ve since gone back to the sixties — Dylan, the Beach Boys, and the Beatles — for the core of my favorite music artists.

I’m not sure that everyone goes through a musical education quite like that, but I have a good laugh when I really think about the way I grew into music and experienced a lot of different styles and eras over a relatively short amount of time. So, tonight, I dig back to my favorite seventies tracks to bring you this great one from James Taylor. I hope you enjoy it!

And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for yet another awesome acoustic rock cover by the man, the myth, the legend — Jeff Copperthite…

See you next session!