Chip Taylor Interview · 167 days ago

We are born and we die a million times. Our lives take turns that we could never have predicted. For some this is an unsettling fact but in this uncertainty Chip Taylor finds the magic. From musician to professional gambler to musician Chip has followed his heart even if that calling has caused huge changes and great struggle.
I met Chip through a friend who works for the record company that distributes Chip’s music. We ran into Chip one night at his favorite hangout, Schiller’s, and my friend was telling me about meeting Chip at the record convention in New Orleans and he sounded like a cool guy. Chip had an immensely successful song writing career, cranking out hits like “Wild Thing,” and “Angel of the Morning,” but he also had a successful career playing blackjack and betting on horse races. And he continues, about to set out on a year long world tour with his duet partner, Carrie Rodriguez.
After Chip’s mother grew ill and he played guitar and sang to her at her bedside, Chip felt called to return to playing music for people. He told his gambling partner Ernie Dahlman, who the New York Times called, the Wizard of Odds, that he was bowing out of the game.
After hanging out with Chip a couple times and talking over a glass of Laphroig I can tell that Chip has much to share with the world. I was moved by the passion with which Chip greets each of his unpredictable days, not getting bogged down by the uncertainty but rejoicing in it. Chip told me, “It’s a sweet feeling when you can show your insecurities, what you don’t like about yourself.” Chip lets us in on some of his insecurities as well as his tremendous ability to unrelentlessly search for the magic.

Young Philosopher: When did you discover that music was your calling?

Chip Taylor: When I was just a little kid, I loved music. I was eight years old and my parents had an extra ticket for a Broadway show and they didn’t have a babysitter. My brothers were with our grandparents and so they forced me to go. I was really upset.
the show was a musical called “My Wild Irish Rose.” They had good seats, in the fourth or fifth row. I was pouting and then all of a sudden the music started and everything changed for me. I was on fire from then until the end. And I remember at the end of the musical going back home, sitting in the back seat and I didn’t want to talk to my parents. I didn’t want anybody to say anything. I just wanted to keep feeling that buzz. It was a real chill. I remember thinking that this is going to be my life, something in music.
My folks let me listen to late night radio and when I heard “Wheeling West Virginia” I got the same chill I felt when I listened to “My Wild Irish Rose.” I said, “That’s the music I want to do.” I want to hear that stuff. I don’t want to hear what I have been hearing on the radio; I want to hear that.
I eventually became the lead singer of the only country band in Yonkers and we got our first contract with King records when I was 16 years old.

YP: When did you first get notoriety for the songs you wrote?

CT: When I left King and went to Warner Bros. I had my first hit. It wasn’t a huge hit but it was number one or two in several markets and in the top 80 in the nation.

YP: What song was that?

CT: One called, “Here I am.”
The interesting thing about that one is that I am just a simple writer. I’m not sophisticated; I can’t read a note of music but when I wrote that song I had met Burt Bacharach and Burt is a really sophisticated guy, and I used to go and see him at a place called Chuck’s Composite. It was a little cocktail lounge in New York and every time I would walk in there he would play my song. It meant a lot to me.
Then I got lucky, I was selling songs for a while, but I wasn’t doing well enough as an artist. I wasn’t making any money as an artist but when some people started cutting my songs I decided to go all out to try and sell my songs.

YP: Was anyone instrumental in your music career at this time or did you feel like you were going at it alone?

CT: The guy who took me off the street of selling songs was a very nice guy named Jerry Teifer. He worked for a little publishing company and then was hired by CBS to run their company. As soon as he became the head of CBS, the first thing he did was call me in and tell me, “from now on don’t sell your songs around town. We own all your songs and I’ll give you a salary. You can stop running around; I’ll give you a good enough salary so you can support yourself, give you a little office where you can write your songs.”
I thought, “Oh, wow this is great!” He was a good guy.
I’m going through something now where I need to go back to 1964 to1966 to find out about the contractual relationship I had. Jerry is the only guy who can help me and I just found out from his son that he passed away two weeks ago.
On one side of it Jerry can’t help me with my dilemma, on the other side it got me to remember the beautiful and wonderful things this guy whom I haven’t seen in years, did for me. It got me thinking what a good friend he was. I did good for him, he did good for me but if it wasn’t for this guy I wouldn’t have been able to get married because I got a steady job from him. I wouldn’t have been able to have all my songs protected by the best company in the world. So it was great to be able to talk to his son. I didn’t just get off the phone when he told me Jerry was gone. I told him what I felt about his father. It was a wonderful thing for me.

YP: When have you doubted your musical talents and needed the support of others to feel confident to continue in your field?

CT: There was one point when people from England were telling me that people in the Rolling Stones’ camp were interested in me coming over there and working with them because they liked my songs. They had just cut “Angel of the Morning” with one of the artists on their label. I don’ t know how accurate that was or who was the one inquiring but I remember when the inquiry came I was saying, “No. I’m not going over there. I’m not going to sit in front of anybody and show them how limited I am.”

YP: Songs don’t have to be complicated or sophisticated to be great songs. If you can communicate the passion you have to another person through music you’re doing something special.

CT: Passions are everything. I’m a worker. I don’t like to vacation; my fun is working. Right now it is creating things, making music. For years I gave up music for gambling and I did that full-time. I did that with a passion. From the early 1980’s to 1996 I basically gave up music for gambling. I was a professional gambler.

YP: What was your game?

CT: I was a card counter at black jack. I was banned from all the casinos in Atlantic City, when they thought they could ban you, and from several in Vegas where they could ban you if they wanted to. So, I was a card counter and then I was a horse player. I got into that just when I got into the music business. I was doing a little horse race betting everyday, and I was really good at it. I made profits every year. It was like doing a big crossword puzzle every morning and working hard at it. I saved all the data I needed to save to put me one step ahead of everybody else. I’d make one or two bets a day.

YP: What kinds of things did you study when you were in crossword puzzle mode?

CT: You study everything about the past performances. Past performances would be how many days the horse was away from a race, what kind of races he was in, what distance it was, and every fractional interval in that race. I also looked at what part of the track he ran on, what was the better part of the track that day, what jockey he had, was he a good sale or a bad sale. I also studied what kinds of shoes horses wore. Nobody even thinks about it. No one thinks it means anything, but its huge, monster edges. Horses use shoes that have cleats, mud caulks. Mud caulks are important on dry tracks as well as wet tracks because it’s like the difference between someone wearing cleats and somebody wearing sneakers, and no one thinks it means anything.
Being able to have accurate information about a horses’ shoes, which the tracks don’t give you, you need somebody there watching the horses as they walk out. I used to hire somebody myself. Ernie hired somebody. We both had people on the payroll to give us information about shoes.

YP: Was gambling a social event for you?

CT: No, horse racing was solitary. The kind of stuff I did wasn’t worth talking to anyone about because I knew what I knew and no one could help me and most times people gambling on horse racing don’t know what they’re talking about. It wasn’t a social thing there but then I got to be friends with the biggest money maker of all time in the sport and we became partners, sharing information. That was fun. There was a camaraderie between this guy Ernie Dahlman, who the New York Times called “the Wizard of Odds” and me from 1983 to 1996. We still talk every day. It was fun. That became the first time it wasn’t a solitary thing. Every day was exciting; it’s like I feel today about music.

YP: How did you make the transition back to music? You were making money and it sounds like you had lots of fun with your partner Ernie.

CT: At one point my mom got ill and I started playing music for her. I hadn’t picked up a guitar in a while. That was 1995 and I felt that the day I spent with mom and the guitar and singing for her was more important than anything I had been doing for a while and that led to a couple weeks of doing that and at the end of the two week period I told Ernie, “You’re not going to believe this but I’m going to quit gambling. I want to play for people. That’s my calling now.” I knew that I had to fully stop gambling, 100%, in order to do this.
For that period, when I was shifting jobs, I had to totally stop because —- I had been doing it since I was 18 years old and I knew that if I really wanted to play for people, if I kept gambling, I wasn’t going to do the job correctly. My whole drive became to play for people. That was in 1996. I was going against all odds, the guy coming back after all those years.

YP: Career changes are difficult for anyone, at any age. What keeps you excited about going out and experiencing life, ready to shift directions when moved to do so?

CT: The great thing for me everyday is the unknown. I’m involved in the creative process so every day I have a guitar sitting there and at some point in the day I am going to pick it up and start fooling with maybe something I started yesterday. I am not a writer who thinks about what I am going to write about. I just let things come out and let them form until there is some part that touches me, like when I got the chill when I saw my first Broadway play or the feeling I got when I first heard country music. I do nonsense stuff until I go, “Ohh, what is that.” I get so excited because something is going to come and I don’t know what it is.
You don’t ever look at it like an ego thing, like look what I just created. You look at it like, whoa, look what just flowed through my veins. Everyday, I know that that’s a possibility, a good possibility, that I am going to find something that I never found before. I’m looking forward to the unknown everyday and that’s a wonderful thing-to not be looking forward to the known.

YP: Or dreading the known.

CT: I know that if I’m doing stuff I’m not worrying about…life can get to you, you know. Sometimes I start worrying if I am all right, if I’m healthy and stuff like that. If I am active I get that off my mind. But, work is just for the joy of working. Also, as you get older you ask, “what am I really about?” As much as you defend the position of your personality, often times I look at myself and I ask, “what the fuck am I about?” when I’m doing things that aren’t so comfortable for other people or comfortable for myself. Songs can be a therapy for that. Songs for me are a real therapy. Huge. If I’m feeling affection for some woman I wake up in the morning and write about it. If I’m hurt that will come out. I don’t think about it but that will come out. Some of the best songs I’ve written recently were written because of some really terrible thing I have been going through. That’s what comes out, it’s therapy.
It’s a sweet feeling when you can show your insecurities, what you don’t like about yourself. I like when songs can do that, when you can be honest and show what you don’t like about yourself.

YP: Where does your motivation come from?

CT: People do it for me and I’m good at responding to them but I am also good at lighting that fire myself. I just think about the chill I get when something comes up.

YP: Well, thanks man for doing this interview with me because this is where I get my chill.

CT: You gotta go out there and look for the magic, everyday just look for the magic.

— Albin