Chip Taylor died on Monday, March 23, in hospice care. He was 86. The news was reported by his friend, the singer Billy Vera, and confirmed by his family through a social media post. Deadline, Rolling Stone, Variety, Entertainment Weekly, and the New York Times all published obituaries within 48 hours. Most led with the same construction: the songwriter behind "Wild Thing." Some added "and 'Angel of the Morning.'" Nearly all mentioned, usually in the second paragraph, that he was Angelina Jolie's uncle. [1] [2] [3]

His real name was James Wesley Voight. He was the younger brother of the actor Jon Voight and the uncle of Jolie, born Angelina Jolie Voight. He took the stage name Chip Taylor in the early 1960s because there were already too many Voights in entertainment and because, he once told an interviewer, "I didn't want anyone hiring me because they knew my brother." The irony is complete: he made himself anonymous on purpose, and the anonymity stuck so thoroughly that even the obituaries define him by his famous relatives rather than by the songs everyone knows.

"Wild Thing" was written in 1965 and recorded by the Troggs in 1966. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. It has been covered, sampled, quoted, and parodied thousands of times. It was Jimi Hendrix's encore at Monterey Pop in 1967, where he played it while setting his guitar on fire. It appeared in "Major League," in "Shrek," in a Mitsubishi commercial. The riff is four chords. The lyric is 38 words. It is one of the most commercially successful compositions in the history of popular music. [1]

"Angel of the Morning," written a year later, is the opposite song. Where "Wild Thing" is primal and loud, "Angel of the Morning" is tender and complicated -- a woman telling a man that she will not regret the night they shared, asking only that he touch her cheek before he leaves. Evie Sands recorded the original in 1967; Merrilee Rush's 1968 version was the first to chart. Juice Newton's 1981 version went to number four. The Pretenders covered it. So did Chrissie Hynde, Olivia Newton-John, and Shaggy. It has been synced in television and film more than 200 times. [1] [3]

Two songs. Both ubiquitous. Both written by the same man. And that man could walk into any bar in America where either song was playing on the jukebox and not be recognized.

The music industry calls this the songwriter's paradox. The performer owns the fame. The songwriter owns the publishing. Taylor's ASCAP royalties from "Wild Thing" alone would have funded a comfortable retirement. He did not retire. He released more than 30 solo albums, collaborated with the fiddler Carrie Rodriguez on a series of critically acclaimed Americana records, and toured continuously into his eighties. The Songwriters Hall of Fame inducted him in 2016. The public did not notice.

On X, the obituary threads followed a pattern: shock that the man behind the songs was not famous, then the Voight connection, then a kind of melancholy recognition that songwriting is the most valuable invisible profession in popular culture. The performers who recorded "Wild Thing" and "Angel of the Morning" are remembered. The man who sat in a room and wrote them is not -- until the obituary explains who he was.

Chip Taylor was born James Wesley Voight in Yonkers, New York. He was a songwriter, a gambler (he left music for professional blackjack in the 1970s and 1980s), a singer, and a record label owner. He was Angelina Jolie's uncle. He wrote "Wild Thing." He wrote "Angel of the Morning." You have heard both songs. You did not know his name.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles