A Chip Off the Old Block

Chip Taylor has, at 85, released an intriguing concept album

There is a concept album about a married couple drinking themselves to death. And there is a concept album about the cowboy who kills his wife and her lover. And just to bring tears to your eyes, there is a concept album about how a father deals with the grief of a dead teenage son.

But a concept album about golf? Yes, there sure is! And by someone who calls himself Chip (Geddit?) Son of a Golf Pro is the latest album from veteran singer-songwriter

Chip Taylor, who, at the age of 85, feels it time to share his upbringing – son of golf professional – in song.

In fact, Taylor has a lineage and backstory as intriguing as anyone in music. He was born James Wesley Voight, the son of New York golf professional Elmer Voight. He has two brothers - renown geologist Barry Voight and Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight. To add to the family status, Jon’s daughter - and Chip’s niece – is actress Angelina Jolie, herself an Academy Award recipient.

After a year at college, Taylor decided he wanted to emulate his father as a golf professional. But, as they say, he failed to make the cut! (He would later become a successful professional gambler – but that’s another chapter.) So, he decided to go into the music business and, while in his late teens, would start writing songs – then still known as Wes Voight!

And he soon found fame, writing two of the great pop songs of the Swinging Sixties.

“Wild Thing” was a big hit in 1966 for the English band The Troggs, and a year later Jimi Hendrix would famously record a live version. The song is ranked 257 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and it would be regarded as contributing to the creation of punk rock. Also in the mid-60’s, Taylor penned another classic “Angel of the Morning.” It would become a hit, first by Evie Sands (1967) and later by Juice Newton (1981). And a trawl through his catalogue will produce songs by such luminaries as Janis Joplin, The Hollies,  Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra and Waylon Jennings.

His impressive output would be suitably recognised in 2016 when he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

But he has been just as prolific as a recording artist, with more than 30 studio albums. He was still Wes Voight when he made his recording debut for King Records in the late 1950’s. But he had adopted the pseudonym Chip Taylor by the mid-70’s when he was releasing albums for the likes of Warner Bros., Columbia and Capitol. In 2007 he launched his independent label Train Wreck Records and since then has accumulated 15 albums on the label.

He has performed with a number of artists over the years, but his most successful stint was with singer-violinist Carrie Rodriguez. The pair toured together and collaborated on four studio albums during the first decade of the 21st century, the most impressive being Red Dog Tracks, regarded as one of the finest duet albums in Americana Music.

Song of a Golf Pro is not Taylor’s first collection of songs inspired by his 80-odd years of living. What is regarded as his 2009 autobiographical album Yonkers, NY is named after his birthplace and was nominated for a Grammy Award. But perhaps the most heart-warming recollection of his life came with his 2023 release Behind The Sky which features songs he wrote while undergoing radiation and chemotherapy for throat cancer. And in February, towards the end of his period of remission, Taylor delivered yet another album – a much-admired three-disc set The Truth And Other Things. All proof that his affable voice was still in fine form.

As it turns out, the 10 songs on Son Of A Golf Pro were recorded some time before he fell ill. And the release, on June 12, coincided with news that Taylor’s wife Joan has herself developed serious health issues.

He posted on Facebook: “For Father’s Day, we had planned on releasing an album that I recorded several years ago. It had been scheduled for release long ago, but due to other commitments somehow got lost in the shuffle.  It’s an album that is very close to Joan’s heart and close to the heart of every Voight family member.”

“So, despite Joan’s health issues, we are releasing Son Of A Golf Pro for the first time. Over the years, these songs have slipped into the hands of several musicians and fans who had gotten wind of it and it became sort of an underground road hit.”

Taylor added: “A little background – My father was a teaching golf pro for all his life until he passed away in a car accident many years ago. My brothers and I have revered the game since we were little kids and now so do our families who surround us.”

You may not need to be a golfer to appreciate Of A Golf Pro. But it sure helps when the songs have tracks with such inventive and hilarious titles as “Double Bogey Time Again,” “The Final Round,” “Hello Ball,” “The Yips,” “Shank City,” “In the Rough Again,” “Cry Baby” and “Your Own Golf Song.”

Some have familiar melodies as the titles may suggest. “Double Bogey Time Again” has, of course, shades of “It’s Crying Time Again” while the Willie Nelson standard “Hello Walls” gets the Taylor treatment as “Hello Ball.” And “Cry Baby” obviously derives - in both name and tune - from one of Janis Joplin’s signature songs. But Joplin never sang lines like this:

Now we don’t want your kind around here

No, Cause nobody, nobody likes cry babies

Well that is except if you’re Mr John Daly

Cause John’s got colour and character

And he is, he is the hero of the working man

And there is no better reflection on golf’s infusion into the Voight family than on the downright clever talkin’-bluesy “Your Own Golf Song.” In an eight-minute ramble, Taylor relates how brothers Jon and Barry watched him play the perfect shot at the Westchester amateur championship

 I hit that iron

To the left of the pin

It spun to the right

Oh the damn thing went in

Hole in one I’m the family star

Way more important like I told you Tony

I was even par

It is all a long way from “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning,” but no one deserves such a musical indulgence than Chip Taylor, known to many in the industry as “a national treasure.”

And now we all also know where the Chip came from!

Paul Cutler

Editor Crossroads – Americana Musical Appreciation