A song that they sing of their home in the sky

Maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep

But singing works just fine for me.

Saturday night, it worked for everyone at Sanders-especially during the second of the two shows. The audience for the early show seemed restrained, perhaps because Taylor was following a strict schedule so that the second show could begin on time. But the timing for Taylor's second set was just right. He immediately brought the audience to life, and its response was genuine and outgoing.

It is difficult to describe the poetry that is James Taylor's. It is something that must be heard, and felt. It transmits a feeling of melancholy, followed by happiness. Your mind drifts with the words to far-away people and places. The feeling makes you glad, and that, I suppose, accounts for the response Taylor received. The applause after "Fire and Rain" -a song about Susan and sweet dreams and flying machines-was so sustained that Taylor seemed embarrassed. He drank some water, stared down at his guitar, and waited. Then he shook his head and played "Carolina In My Mind."

IT WAS this indefinable bond between performer and audience that brought Taylor back for three encores, ending with "Diamonds in the Rough." This last song seemed to describe James Taylor: a diamond in the rough, unspoiled by hard-found success, wanting only to write and play his music because "singing works just fine for me." He was tired-he had to go home to bed, he said-else it might have gone on for hours more. Home to bed, as in the lullaby for his nephew, "Sweet Baby James":

Goodnight you moonlight ladies

Rockabye Sweet Baby James

Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose

Won't you let me go down in my dreams

And Rockabye Sweet Baby James.