By Ken Paulson –

Our friend Chip Taylor passed away a couple of weeks ago. The man who wrote “Wild Thing,” “Angel of the Morning” and many more substantive songs was one of a kind.

When I met him in 1993, he had all but disappeared into a career as a professional gambler. I was sitting at my desk at the newspaper where I was editor in Westchester County, NY, when I saw that someone named “Chip Taylor” was playing in a small folk club across the river.

It couldn’t be the songwriter. We hadn’t heard from him in years. Finding him in a club in 1993 would have been like Amelia Earhart showing up at the airport.

But what if it was him? I couldn’t risk missing him all these years later. I called my wife and said I would be late for dinner.

I arrived to an empty club about 30 minutes before the show. I decided to stick it out. A few minutes later, four people came in and sat at a table. I sat and read the paper.

Then a shadow loomed over my table. I looked up, seeing an affable-looking man with gray hair.

“Hi, I’m Chip,” he said, extending his hand.

It turned out that the folks at the other table were Chip’s immediate family. I was the fan – and pretty shortly a friend.

Chip volunteered for our first Freedom Sings show at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville to raise awareness of censorship. He recorded a song on the first Freedom Sings album. He appeared on my PBS “Speaking Freely” show in 2000.

Chip was an accomplished, yet very kind man, who befriended everyone. We weren’t close friends, but he never failed to ask about my children by name, a knack that I had to believe stemmed from his card-playing years. He remembered things.

And I will remember Chip. From those ’60s anthems to his hard-hitting socially-conscious releases in this century, Chip never failed to make music that moved us. It was a joy to know him.