Carolina In My Mind James Taylor

Carolina In My Mind Album: James Taylor (1968)
by James Taylor

Growing up I would hear about “Bull Street.” The South Carolina State Hospital in Columbia dates back to 1821 and was first known as the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum. It was never called the South Carolina Mental Hospital or any other name, it was always just called “Bull Street”. It was always understood by us, at that time, that this is the place where people were sent if they were ‘crazy’. I understood what went on there, do you?

In 1822, the corner stone for the South Carolina Lunatic Asylum was laid. It became an asylum of such notoriety that to say you were at “Bull Street” captured the image in the public mind and in Carolina vernacular. Its time came and went with the introduction of antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs and localized mental health service. The building had been designed by the the "famous" architect, Robert Mills. This made South Carolina the second state in the country at that time to put money aside for such a building for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. That one building quickly grew into a ‘mini’ city of its own accord.

Men and women were held in separate buildings. Slaves and servants had their own building. During the Civil War, the grounds were used as a prison camp for Union officers until 1865. After the war, things were on a teeter-totter at the asylum. Money was running short and supplies for the patients were hard to obtain.

In the 1950’s it held over 5,000 patients! However, the population declined to a more manageable 3,000 by the 1970’s. Guess where mum did her graduate studies and eventual employment throughout much of my later childhood? As the South Carolina State Hospital shrank she moved with my father's law practice to Florence South Carolina and Pee Dee Mental Health Center...

William S. Hall Psychiatric Institute (where my mother was trained and I spent time there as she came and went.) opened its doors in 1964, as a result of the dedicated efforts of William S. Hall, M.D., South Carolina's Department of Mental Health's first state commissioner. Legislation in 1965 amended the SC Code of Laws to make a special provision for Hall Institute to be maintained as a teaching hospital for the primary purposes of training mental health personnel and conducting psychiatric research.

This hospital was licensed by the state of South Carolina as a Specialized Hospital with a separately-licensed 37 bed Residential Treatment Facility for Children and Adolescents. It provided in-patient psychiatric services, treatment for alcoholism and drug abuse or addiction, and residential treatment for adolescents. Patients are admitted from throughout the state with referrals from community mental health centers, juvenile parole boards, Department of Social Services, the family court system and the Department of Juvenile Justice. The majority of patients are admitted through probate court, family court, or are voluntary admissions. Outpatient services include the Assessment and Resource Center. The facility was located on the property of the former South Carolina State Hospital, it had moved to the campus of the Werber Bryan Psychiatric Hospital.

"Carolina in My Mind" is a song originally written and performed by the American singer-songwriter James Taylor. It was Taylor's second single from his 1968 self-titled debut album. Taylor wrote Carolina in My Mind while in England recording for the Beatles' label Apple Records, and the song's themes reflect his homesickness at the time. Released as a single in 1969, the song earned critical praise but not commercial success. It was re-recorded for Taylor's 1976 Greatest Hits album in the version that is most familiar to listeners. It has been a staple of Taylor's concert performances over the decades of his career. Carolina in My Mind is one of the most covered contemporary folk songs of all time, the most famous of which being covers by American singer-songwriter John Denver and American rock music duo the Everly Brothers.

The song was a modest hit on the country charts in 1969 for North Carolinian singer George Hamilton IV, released as the first single from his 1970 album Back Where It's At (see George Hamilton IV discography). Strongly tied to a sense of geographic place, "Carolina in My Mind" has been called an unofficial state anthem for North Carolina. It is also an unofficial song of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, being played at athletic events and pep rallies and sung by the graduating class at every university commencement. The association of the song with the state is also made in written works of both fiction and non-fiction. It has become one of Taylor's most critically praised songs and one that has great popularity and significance for his audience.

The song references Taylor's years growing up in North Carolina. Taylor wrote it while overseas recording for the Beatles' label Apple Records. He started writing the song at producer Peter Asher's London flat on Marylebone High Street, resumed work on it while on holiday on the Mediterranean island of Formentera, and then completed it while stranded on the nearby island of Ibiza with Karin, a Swedish girl he had just met. The song reflects Taylor's homesickness at the time, as he was missing his family, his dog and his state.

Dark and silent late last night,
I think I might have heard the highway calling ...
Geese in flight and dogs that bite
And signs that might be omens say I'm going, I'm going
I'm gone to Carolina in my mind.

The original recording of the song was done at London's Trident Studios during the July to October 1968 period, and was produced by Asher. The song's lyric "holy host of others standing around me" makes reference to the Beatles, who were recording The Beatles in the same studio where Taylor was recording his album. Indeed, the recording of "Carolina in My Mind" includes a credited appearance by Paul McCartney on bass guitar and an uncredited one by George Harrison on backing vocals. The other players were Freddie Redd on organ, Joel "Bishop" O'Brien on drums, and Mick Wayne providing a second guitar alongside Taylor's. Taylor and Asher also did backing vocals and Asher added a tambourine. Richard Hewson arranged and conducted a string part; an even more ambitious 30-piece orchestra part was recorded but not used. The song itself earned critical praise, with Jon Landau's April 1969 review for Rolling Stone calling it "beautiful" and one of the "two most deeply affecting cuts" on the album and praising McCartney's bass playing as "extraordinary". Taylor biographer Timothy White calls the song "the album's quiet masterpiece". In a 50-years-later retrospective of the album's release, Billboard calls the song "a mellow Taylor classic" and a "stone-classic".

The song was first released on Taylor's eponymous debut album in December 1968 (February 1969 in the United States), and was later released as a single in the UK in February 1969 and in the United States in March 1969. However, owing to the same problems which plagued the release of the album (namely, Taylor's inability to promote it due to his hospitalization for drug addiction), the single's original release reached only No. 118 on US pop charts and failed to chart in the UK. Indeed, Taylor had fallen back into addiction during the London recording sessions, and his line about being surrounded by Beatles had been immediately followed by "Still I'm on the dark side of the moon". Following the success of Taylor's second album, Sweet Baby James, and its hit single "Fire and Rain", "Carolina in My Mind" was reissued by Apple as a single in October 1970 and rose to No. 67 on the U.S. charts. (A previously unreleased acoustic demo of "Carolina in My Mind" was issued as a bonus track on the 2010 Apple Records remastering of James Taylor.) In Canada, the song peaked at No. 64 in the spring of 1969, then recharted in the fall of 1970, reaching No. 39.

Different versions of both this song and "Something in the Way She Moves" were remade by Taylor for use on his 1976 Greatest Hits album because of the difficulty of obtaining licensing rights from Apple during the 1970s and because of uncertainty about where the Apple masters were. The new recordings were done in October 1976 at The Sound Factory in Los Angeles and production was again done by Peter Asher.

This rendition of "Carolina in My Mind" had a slower tempo than the original, and accompanying Taylor on acoustic guitar were experienced LA session musicians Dan Dugmore on pedal steel guitar (highlighted in the descending note sequences at the song's conclusion), Lee Sklar on bass, Russ Kunkel on drums, Clarence McDonald on piano, Andrew Gold on harmonium, and Byron Berline on fiddle. Backing vocals were handled by Gold and Taylor. Greatest Hits became a diamond record, selling more than 11 million copies in the United States by 2001, and this is the version of "Carolina in My Mind" that became best known. The remake earned even more critical praise than the original. Bill Janovitz of Allmusic said of the 1976 recording that it "accent[ed] the languid, plaintive and wistful country melancholy of the song", while in the 1979 Rolling Stone Record Guide, critic Stephen Holden said that the "stunning" remake showed how much Taylor's singing had strengthened in the intervening years. Biographer White believed that the song benefited from the removal of the original's orchestration.

The 1976 re-recording was also included on Taylor's 2003 compilation The Best of James Taylor.