James Taylor’s Mother Dies At Martha’s Vineyard Home At 92

The mother of Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter James Taylor has died at age 92.

Gertrude Woodard Taylor died over the weekend surrounded by four generations of family at her home “overlooking her beloved Stonewall Pond” in Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard, the “Fire & Rain” singer said on his website.

She died of complications from old age, her daughter, Kate Taylor, told the Vineyard Gazette.

James Taylor said his mother “devoted her life to her marriage and her five children, four boys and a girl.” Three of her children, James Taylor, Kate Taylor and Livingston Taylor, became professional musicians.

Trudy, as she was known, also was “an accomplished painter, a weaver (spinning her own yarn), a photographer, a distinguished horticulturist and a killer cook, whose talents in the kitchen were celebrated by anyone fortunate enough to sit at her table,” James Taylor wrote.

A Massachusetts native and the daughter of a commercial fisherman, she married Isaac Taylor, dean of the University of North Carolina’s medical school. Isaac Taylor died in 1995.

She raised her family in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Martha’s Vineyard.