A country maverick who wandered alongside the outlaw movement of the mid-1970s, James Talley has chosen to follow his own path in subsequent years, carving out a distinct niche among folk-blues singers. During his period on a major label in the mid-1970s, Talley gained acclaim for such albums as Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love and Tryin' Like the Devil, but hits eluded him. He nevertheless established a reputation as a songwriter thanks to covers of his tunes by Johnny Paycheck, Johnny Cash, and Gene Clark, and was enough of a cult sensation to earn the attention of President Jimmy Carter, who had Talley perform twice at the White House during his administration. Talley took an independent route in the mid-1980s and maintained a career as an Americana outsider over the next decades, reissuing his older work and putting out new records, such as 2024's Bandits, Ballads and Blues, on occasion.
James Talley was born in Oklahoma, but his family moved to Richland, Washington when he was young. There, his father worked as a chemical operator at the Hanford plutonium factory. Realizing the hazards his father's employment presented, the family packed up and left for Albuquerque, New Mexico. Shortly after, his father died from cancer that was no doubt acquired at the plutonium factory, which Talley later wrote a song about.
After he graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in fine arts, Talley was encouraged by Pete Seeger to write songs that drew from the rich Southwest culture in which he was raised. His early songs were released later as an album, The Road to Torreon, released in 1992 on the Bear Family Records label. Talley moved from New Mexico to Nashville in 1968 in hopes of securing a publishing deal or to record his songs himself. However, Nashville wasn't ready for this singer who played a refreshingly weird amalgamation of blues and country music.
The late John Hammond, Sr. at Columbia Records in New York championed Talley's talents as a songwriter and singer in the early 1970s. Hammond also assisted in the careers of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, and Aretha Franklin, among many others. Unable to get him a record deal at Columbia Records, he referred Talley to his friend Jerry Wexler, then at Atlantic Records. Wexler and others at Atlantic were involved in starting that label's new country division in Nashville. Along with Doug Sahm and Willie Nelson, Wexler signed Talley to Atlantic Records in 1972. Atlantic later closed its Nashville office, and Talley secured a deal with Capitol Records, where he released four albums in the mid-1970's: Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love (1975); Tryin' Like the Devil (1976); Blackjack Choir (1977); and Ain't It Somethin' (1977). In the 1970s, Talley performed at the White House for President Jimmy Carter and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. On Blackjack Choir, Talley is joined by the blues master B.B. King, and that marked the first time King had ever recorded in Nashville.
At the height of his career, he left Capitol because of bad business advice and got off the road. He earned his real estate license and made his living selling commercial real estate. Now in semi-retirement, he has returned to limited touring and performing. During the 1980s, Talley recorded two albums, which were released by the German imprint Bear Family Records: American Originals (1985) and Love Songs and The Blues (1989). In the 1990s, Bear Family released The Road to Torreòn (1992) and James Talley: Live (1994).
Talley re-entered the domestic market in the U.S. in 2000 with Nashville City Blues and Woody Guthrie and Songs of My Oklahoma Home. Talley proved to be prolific in that decade, releasing a collection of re-recordings of his '70s songs as Touchstones in 2002, then embarking on a two-part Journey in 2004; the second installment, Journey: The Second Journey, arrived in 2008, the same years as Heartsong, an album featuring a new rendition of "She's the One," a song that electronica artist Moby had recently re-recorded as "Evening Rain" for the Daredevil soundtrack.
Talley spent the 2010s quietly, but he re-emerged in 2023 with his memoir Nashville City Blues: My Journey as an American Songwriter. Shortly afterward he released Bandits, Ballads and Blues, his first album in over fifteen years. ~ Richard Skelly
