I was born on February 3, 1934 in Boston MA. Originally I was named “James Taylor Metzger, Jr.” after my father. When I was still quite young, the “Metzger” was dropped by court order, and I became “James Taylor, Jr.” (I adopted “Harlan James” as a professional pseudonym in the late 1970s to avoid confusion with the well-known singer/songwriter James Taylor. I’ve continued to use this name professionally and socially, and I now consider it to be my “real” name.
My parents were musically literate; my mother played some piano and my father had some proficiency on the violin. I grew up hearing both popular and classical music on the radio and on the 78-rpm records they bought, and there was a small grand piano in the house. I started taking piano lessons when I was eight years old; this was a time when kids of my generation often were given lessons on piano or other instruments or voice as part of their general education without any thought of their becoming professional musicians.
On piano I was no prodigy; I found that I liked playing the piano but didn’t much care for the pieces my teachers gave me to work on; they seemed insipid and boring. I also found that I enjoyed improvising and making up stuff, but it was nothing extraordinary; Mozart I wasn’t. This state of affairs continued until I was 15, when I simultaneously discovered jazz and my piano teacher finally had me work on J.S. Bach’s Inventions. In jazz I found a way to pursue my delight in improvising in a disciplined and focused manner. When I encountered Bach’s Inventions, I realized right away that this was teacher-assigned music that was not fluff, that was serious in a way that really appealed to me. To this day, I usually include something by Bach in my practice routine. I’m not a classical performer, but Bach remains an inexhaustible source of musical enlightenment.
In 1951 I entered St. John’s College (Annapolis, MD) where I discovered a talent for small-scale composition (songs and incidental music for student plays and scores for two full-length original musical theater productions). After leaving St John’s I spent two years at the University of Connecticut as a graduate instructor in English and left with an MA degree in English. At UConn I also became for the first time a gigging musician, performing frequently at weekend fraternity parties playing (pre-rock) dance and party music. After that I lived in New York City attending New York University as a PhD candidate, but by 1959 I realized I was through with academia; I wanted to play. At the urging of a friend I moved to Chicago and soon found myself playing weekend gigs in small clubs.
In Chicago, I had two major musical breaks. I was approached by Clarence Eugene (“Gene”) Shaw, an accomplished jazz trumpet player and composer, who invited me to join the five-piece group he was assembling to record for the Argo label (a part of the Chess brothers’ musical empire). I contributed three original pieces to two recording sessions under Gene’s leadership. After the first session I was invited to work at Chess as a musical assistant in Chess’s rhythm and blues wing, rehearsing vocal groups and solo singers, occasionally writing arrangements, and sometimes playing piano or organ on recording sessions. I guess I reached some sort of peak when I could turn on the radio and hear myself playing on a jazz station and then on an r&b station. That didn’t last long.
After the breakup of my first marriage and some organizational changes at Chess, I followed another friend’s invitation to settle in Dallas, where once again I was able rather quickly to start playing gigs, first in a hotel-style trio and later in a jazz trio, often playing my own original pieces. I was also studying piano with a well-respected teacher at Southern Methodist University, learning compositions by Brahms and Debussy. These showed me how limited my scope was as a pianist, and I began to expand on it. I left Dallas in a possibly ill-advised desire to be back in New York, but once I was back I found that NYC wasn’t like Chicago or Dallas; I found no entrée into the jazz world or even the commercial gigging scene. I supported myself by working as a sales clerk in record stores (this was the era of the LP).
Ultimately by the mid-1970s I began playing in Catskills resort hotels, principally the Concord (then flourishing, now long gone), which ultimately led to my becoming musical director at Rodney Dangerfield’s nightclub back in the city. During this time I met Nancy Rich, who was to become my second wife and musical partner. Nancy was an accomplished, well-trained singer and a gifted lyricist. We wrote many songs together but never found acceptance in the songwriting market. We had gigs together and separately, and we both came to realize that even though big-time fame and fortune weren’t in our destiny, we could take satisfaction in being working professionals, principally at weddings, anniversary parties, bar and bas mitzvahs, and finally at nursing homes, where audiences were appreciative and attentive. Nancy, I should add, died in June, 2015 of an extended illness, and I really miss her.
At 83, I find myself still enjoying playing and writing, and ten-plus years of playing mostly the standard American Songbook repertory in a Brooklyn restaurant have made me a much more capable pianist and performer. My age puts me in “one never knows” territory, but I hope to keep on doing what I do (playing and composing) and getting better at it. I also intend to keep the website constantly updated, adding new items and maybe dropping some that no longer seem to make the cut. I hope you find something to enjoy here.