James Taylor explain’s in his DVD One Man Band, When James Taylor’s brother, Alex told him that he decided to name his new born baby boy after him, Lil’ Baby James, he was so thrilled that he decided to drive down the coast to visit them in North Carolina and meet his new nephew. As he was driving down the coast, the asked himself what would be a good song to sing to a lil varmint like lil’ James. He thought it would have to be a cowboy lullaby, you know like “Go to sleep you lil buckaroo” “Lights out in the bunkhouse”. Something like that. As he was driving he was inspired to write the song “Sweet Baby James” As a content designer I had to ask myself, how should we visualize that song. I decided that we would create a children’s pop-up book with the lyrics of the songs as the words in the book.
As the song progressed from verse to chorus to verse, we would flip the pages revealing something new and special for each section which illustrated the lyrics of each section of the song. When the book was finally produced, we videotaped it, using slow turns, pans and tilts to explore the pop-ups from every angle.