Sweet Baby James

Taylor wrote it for his brother Alex's baby son, who had been named James after him. He decided a cowboy lullaby was the right thing, and told Paul Zollo that the song put itself together while he was driving down to see the child. It is a waltz with an echo of Rock-a-bye Baby in the chorus, and Taylor said its verses use his most intricate rhyme scheme. The line about the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston ties it to the Berkshires, where he had been treated at Austen Riggs, and he said he really did drive that road. The second half, he told Rolling Stone, is about what music means to him: "I think it's my best song."

Recorded at Sunset Sound in December 1969, it opened the album and came out as a single backed with Suite for 20 G, but did not chart.

Live

He plays it at almost every concert, often as the last solo encore, and setlist.fm counts more than 900 performances since February 1970. He sang it on The Johnny Cash Show in 1971, on Saturday Night Live in 1976 and 1991, and on Jay Leno's last Tonight Show in 2009, at Leno's request. Zac Brown Band recorded it in 2021. The upload in the hypersongs web is not the studio take: it is a solo performance from the BBC's In Concert, broadcast on 16 November 1970, when Taylor was 22, restored and posted by his official channel in 2023.