James Taylor was on some kind of ride in those early days.

In just five years he went from spending time in a mental hospital, to leaving college and getting hooked on heroin, to getting signed to the Beatles’ Apple Records, to giving George Harrison permission to borrow the first line of his song “Something In The Way She Moves” to craft a #1 hit for the biggest band on the planet, to seeing his Apple debut fail to chart, to signing with Warner and releasing 1970’s Sweet Baby James, which spun off three notable singles, including the now-immortal #3 hit “Fire And Rain.”

Then, a month before this follow-up to Sweet Baby James appeared, Taylor appeared on the cover of the March 1, 1971 issue of TIME magazine, billed as the face of “New Rock.”

So… no pressure, right?

Mud Slide Slim—another of the nicknames JT habitually recycled into album titles—features one of a number of lineups over Taylor’s career that could credibly be termed an all-star band: Danny Kortchmar (guitar, vocals), Leland Sklar (bass), Russ Kunkel (drums), and sitting in on piano, a gifted songwriter in the process of getting her own performing career on track: Ms. Carole King. As if that wasn’t enough, Joni Mitchell and the Memphis Horns each guest on a track or two.

The vibe—and this album is all about vibe—is a heady blend of gentle, earnest singer-songwriter folk spiced with playful r&b. Thematically, it’s classic Taylor, mixing road songs and nostalgia with love songs of a particular sort, more focused on the presence of real emotional connection than seduction. It’s also an album that flows easily from moment to moment without making big ripples or bold statements—with the exception of two songs so genuinely exceptional they have come to feel like American standards.

The album opens with the strongest of its second-tier songs; “Love Has Brought Me Around” feels like a reaction to the melancholy introspection that dominated Sweet Baby James as JT enters declaring:

“Don’t come to me with your sorrows anymore
I don’t need to know how bad you're feeling today
I declare I’ve had my share and I’ve heard it all before
It’s time for me to be stealing away”

(Which in fact neatly encapsulates a theme of dozens of JT songs: one of his cures for feeling down is to hit the road.) When the horns come in on the chorus, the song—which shifts gears smoothly between folkie verses and r&b choruses—is officially a celebration.

Next comes the first of the aforementioned American standards. Carole King was still navigating the transition from songwriter to solo performer when her friend James invited her to sit in for Sweet Baby James. Around the same time, she played a new song for him, which he asked and received her permission to record before she had even had the chance herself. “You’ve Got A Friend” was to become an iconic song in both of their catalogs, appearing soon afterward on King’s immortal Tapestry album. It’s the kind of secular hymn to human connection that Taylor instinctively knows how to inhabit, and he absolutely nails it.

From there much of the rest of the album consists of JT being JT: spinning stories (“Hey Mister, That’s Me Up On The Jukebox,” Kortchmar’s “Machine Gun Kelly”), contemplating the nature of love (“Long Ago And Far Away,” featuring Mitchell on harmony vocals), offering topical commentary (“Soldiers”), mythologizing his own past (“Places in My Past,” “Mud Slide Slim”), and celebrating life on the road (“Riding On A Railroad,” the grooving, horn-heavy “Let Me Ride,” and “Highway Song”). The latter trio naturally leads to counterpointing closer “Isn’t It Nice To Be Home Again,” a 55-second snippet of a song that nonetheless provides a fitting bookend.

In the midst of it all, Taylor slips in that other American standard, the 2:29 just-James-and-his-guitar masterpiece “You Can Close Your Eyes.” It’s among the loveliest love songs in the history of such, an immersive, calming lullaby for a troubled partner that’s tinged with both melancholy and purest affection. Meanwhile Taylor’s acoustic guitar work is downright exquisite: complex, precise, fluid and seemingly effortless. Covers of the song by notable performers have run into the double digits, including Linda Ronstadt on Heart Like A Wheel and James’ ex Carly Simon on Into White.

Without its twin peaks, this album would be strictly middle-of-the-pack in Taylor’s catalog. With them, it’s one of his more important releases. Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon consolidated the gains in public attention and artistry achieved with Sweet Baby James and set JT on a course he’s still on today.

Rating: B+

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