Born in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, Talley is an artist whose vision of the American experience, as author David McGee has said, is "startlingly original." As a youth, Talley's family moved from their home in
Mehan, Oklahoma, near Stillwater, to
Washington state, where his father worked as a chemical operator in the
Hanford plutonium factory. After five years in
Richland, Washington, and realizing the hazards his father's employment presented, the family relocated to
Albuquerque, New Mexico. Talley graduated from the
University of New Mexico with a degree in fine arts. Joining country music and the blues,
B. B. King, played his first Nashville session with Talley in 1976, as his lead guitar player. Talley's recording career now spans over thirty years. John Hammond, Sr. at
Columbia Records in New York was his first mentor, and championed his writing in the early 1970s. When Hammond could not get Talley signed to Columbia, he sent him to
Jerry Wexler, who was starting a new Nashville operation with his
Atlantic label at the time. Wexler signed Talley to his first recording contract at Atlantic Records. Atlantic's Nashville operation, however, did not do well at the time and Atlantic closed its Nashville office.
Rolling Stone, and other music publications, have declared these albums American classics for their time. The 1976 song "Are They Gonna Make Us Outlaws Again?" was ranked number 60 in the book Heartaches by the Number - Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles. During the 1980s and 1990s, Talley recorded four albums, which were released in Europe by the German Bear Family Records,
American Originals (1985); and
Love Songs and The Blues (1989);
The Road To Torreón (1992) and
James Talley: Live (1994). In 1999, Talley started his own artist's label, Cimarron Records, and released
Woody Guthrie and Songs of My Oklahoma Home (2000), his only album that covered someone else's songs;
Nashville City Blues, (2000), and was named Amazon.com's Folk Artist of the Year 2000. In 2002,
Touchstones was released – a fresh retrospective of the songs from his early career. It was recorded in Texas with the help of Talley's old friends,
Joe Ely and Ponty Bone. In 2004
Journey was released, a live recording made on his tour of Italy. It displayed some of his classics as well as five new compositions. In February 2006, Talley's debut album,
Got No Bread, No Milk, No Money, But We Sure Got a Lot of Love was reissued in a special 30th anniversary edition. In July 2008, Talley simultaneously issued two CDs in digital download,
Journey: The Second Voyage, the remaining songs for the original live Journey recordings, supplemented with five new songs, and
Heartsong, an album of fifteen new songs and a re-recording of his song "She's The One," which was covered as "Evening Rain" by Moby. ==Discography(selective)==