LORD OF FREESTYLE: The Legend Of ‘Little’ Jack Taylor

"Bop-a-da-bop-a-da-whap-clang… it’s ZZ Top, the Texas three-man rock group, playing a quickly forgettable heavy metal classic at ear-splitting volume through the 16 speakers lining mogul course. Bud Palmer has a mike in hand and is muttering something about “This beautiful day here at Heavenly, how glad we all are to…” and Jack Taylor, a diminutive bearded chap with smoky, interiorized eyes hidden behind wraparound yellow goggles, is rocketing down Betty’s run, bouncing from the top of one mogul to another with an impossible number of turns, nobody can turn that quickly, that sharply, that easily, a leap, a giant spread-eagle leap over one, two, three moguls at once, whomp back onto the snow, a mogul crushes beneath his skis, bone-crunching landing he absorbs with his knees and his stomach, sitting back bending at the waist like an old elbow shock absorber of the kind one finds on Fords of prewar vintage, Jack Taylor is skiing down Betty’s run at speeds approaching 40 mph, he is flying from one mogul to another, four or five bumps per second, he is swatting his way through those bitter, peaky bumps like a disco dancer, leg and stomach muscles crushing and expanding, pumping, driving him seemingly in tune with the ZZ music. Somehow Jack Taylor has melded his skis and his legs and the bumps and music into a whole, a dance, an agile routine more than a mogul run, but wait, only 22 seconds have elapsed from top to bottom, that’s 38.63 vertical feet per second: Jack Taylor has been dropping three apartment buildings per second!”

- From Rolling Stone Magazine, March 11, 1976: "Hotdogging: The Insane Art Of Freestyle Skiing - The Bucks, The Bumps, and The Abominable Snow Persons", by Lucian K Truscott IV

 Jack Taylor shooting the curl of the mogul course across the pages of a Rolling Stone....  

This feature has been modified and updated from an earlier work from The Mountain Advisor:

A member of the University of New Hampshire’s raucous A-T-O fraternity of 1970, “Little” Jack Taylor graduated to an animal house of a more wintry persuasion: the white world of competitive freestyle skiing. It was not until 1974 that this legend began cleaning out the competition. From 1975–77, Taylor earned three consecutive world mogul championships. The previous four years of skiing Sugarloaf Mountain Resort in Maine, and a 1973 journey to Telluride and Steamboat Springs, Colorado, refined Taylor’s balance-honed style (greatly formed from a curious infusion of Tai-Chi and yoga practices).

Prior to Taylor’s arrival on the freestyle scene, moguls competitors could be judged on ‘recovery,’ a trademark of early ‘hotdogging’ to perform seemingly out of control, knee-busting runs. Taylor brought a sense of precision, control, and the tight, compact style reflected by today’s competitive mogul scene. He helped pioneer the compact, controlled style mogul skiing is known for today.

 “Everything we do today with movements in the bumps—everything I do—that all came from little Jack”, says Joey Cordeau, a four-time world champion moguls skier in the 1980s. “I met Taylor back when I was still in high school at Sugarloaf. We had been watching guys like Jean Claude Killy just go for it, you know? We were just trying to do something new with it. Jack was the one that taught me. The rest is history.”

“That little bastard beat all of us,” remembers 'Bad' Bob Salerno. “It wasn’t a question of if he was going to win when it came to moguls; it was a question of if he showed up.”

Jack Taylor in an original Powder Magazine interview by John Day. Image courtesy of Powder Magazine archives.
 

IN THE MARCH, 1976 ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE ARTICLE “HOTDOGGING: The Insane Art of Freestyle Skiing - THE BUCKS, THE BUMPS, AND THE ABOMINABLE SNOW PERSONS,” AUTHOR LUCIAN K TRUSCOTT IV PAINTS TAYLOR AS THE PREEMINENT FREESKIER OF HIS TIME. “THERE ARE THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN HEARD TO ARGUE THAT JACK TAYLOR IS POSSIBLY, JUST POSSIBLY, THE BEST SKIER IN THE WORLD,” TRUSCOTT WROTE. “THE ARGUMENT GOES LIKE THIS: IF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF SKI COMPETITIONS WERE STRIPPED OF THEIR TRAPPINGS—BALLET AND FLIPS FROM FREESTYLE, GATES AND ARBITRARY COURSES FROM GIANT SLALOM AND DOWNHILL RACING—AND A MAN WERE PRESENTED INSTEAD WITH THE RAW CHALLENGE OF SKIING DOWN A MOUNTAIN, FROM THE TOP TO THE BOTTOM, IN ANY MANNER HE DEEMED BEST, THEY SAY THAT JACK TAYLOR IN SUCH A PRIMITIVE COMPETITION MIGHT PREVAIL OVER ALL COMERS.”

Taylor’s media accolades during the era were other wise surprisingly sparse. He briefly appeared in the recently revived ‘Winter Equinox,’ a documentary of the 1974 freestyle world tour. Additional footage is decidedly rare. Recent research, however, has revealed footage originally documented by Hollywood ski film legend Mike Marvin, who's long forgotten ski films of the 1970's (1972's 'Earth Rider', 1974's 'Children Of The Morning', 1975's 'Wingless Angels', 1976's 'Spirit') captured his performances between 1974 - 1976.  

The trailer for Winter Equinox features a few rare seconds of Jack Taylor skiing, at the 1:24 mark.

Taylor avoided both cameras and media attention on most occasions, according to long-time friend and freestyle skiing legend Bob Burns. He never attempted to capitalize on major corporate sponsorship or personal promotion, which other freestylers of the era, such as Wayne Wong, Suzie Chaffee, John Clendenin, and John Eaves, enjoyed over long careers.

"The man on top of the mountain didn't fall there." - Vince Lombardi Jack Taylor in his pre A.T.O. days in the late 1960's. Photo courtesy of Taylor family archives. 

A.T.O. alumni and fellow freestyle competitor Larry Younger shares that in 1976, Jack Taylor was approached by Cubby Brocholli, former proprietor of the James Bond franchise, to appear in the 1977 feature The Spy Who Loved Me, the opening scene of which is famous for featuring switch skiing and ski-base jumping. Had he accepted the work, Taylor would have steeled himself in specialized fraternity of stunt men to popularize skiing as a natural accouterment of action-films in Hollywood, such as fellow freestylers Eddie Lincoln, Eaves, and Robert Young.

“Jack Taylor was one of only a handful of guys that could ski like that,” recalls Eaves, a multiple-time world and World Cup champion who did the stunts for a number of Bond films, including 1981’s For Your Eyes Only. “An absolute wizard in the bumps.”

Taylor skied large and lived by his own accord for more than 30 years after winning his last world championship. He enjoyed a life of sailing, lobstering, and intermittent bar tending up and down the Eastern seaboard. In 2008, Taylor was killed in a boating accident off Florida. Taylor was an accomplished sailor and strong swimmer. He was rowing back to his boat, the Alice, moored in Northern Florida, when he inexplicably capsized and was lost to the current. Jack Taylor is remembered as one of the greatest competitive moguls skiers of his time. His reach, however, extended beyond just competition.

Jack Taylor, in a rare photograph shot in the 1990s during his later life enjoyed traversing between Maine, the Floridian coast, and the Caribbean as a blue water sailor. Photo courtesy of Taylor family archives. 

In the 70s, Burns started THE Ski, arguably the first athlete-driven freestyle ski on the market. Taylor was one of his athletes. “It was Jack’s feedback and input that made THE Ski what it was,” remembers Burns. “I had been building a mouse trap, the perfect tool for the job. And Jack was my sharpening instrument.”

       
Bob Burns inspecting the construction of THE Ski during his salad days sponsoring the legendary 'little' Jack Taylor. Photo courtesy of Bob Burns. 

FOR MORE ON THE LEGEND OF 'LITTLE' JACK TAYLOR, CHECK OUT 'JOEY CORDEAU: SUPER HERO OF SHRED': 

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stash member Christian W Dietzel

Independent writer & producer developing unapologetically R-rated, darkly comic bio dramas. Currently chronicling the remake to HOT DOG The Movie!