James Taylor honored by hometown college

CHAPEL HILL—James Taylor, who penned "Carolina in My Mind" while homesick for North Carolina, has been honored by his hometown university.
Taylor, 58, performed the song with the North Carolina Symphony on Sunday when both were given 2006 Carolina Performing Arts Lifetime Achievement Awards by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"I've sung it many times," the five-time Grammy winner said of the song he wrote in 1967. "It's strange but somehow compelling to come home and sing it."
The singer-songwriter was born in Boston but raised in North Carolina after moving to Chapel Hill with his family at age 3. His father, Dr. Isaac Taylor, began working for the university's medical school in 1952.
The song was included on Taylor's first album, released in 1969, and has become an unofficial anthem for the university and state.
"It draws a line through my own personal history and connects me again to a place that I go to in my dreams," Taylor said. "A landscape that will forever be a part of me."
Taylor has sold about 40 million albums worldwide, and was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 2000.
He now lives in western Massachusetts.—Agencies