[6] Dark and silent late last night, I think I might have heard the highway calling ... Geese in flight and dogs that bite And signs that might be omens say I'm going, I'm going I'm gone to Carolina in my mind.

The original recording of the song was done at London's Trident Studios during the July to October 1968 period, and was produced by Asher.

[5] Indeed, the recording of "Carolina in My Mind" includes a credited appearance by Paul McCartney on bass guitar[9] and an uncredited one by George Harrison on backing vocals.

[5] The other players were Freddie Redd on organ, Joel "Bishop" O'Brien on drums, and Mick Wayne providing a second guitar alongside Taylor's.

[12] Indeed, Taylor had fallen back into addiction during the London recording sessions,[5][13] and his line about being surrounded by Beatles had been immediately followed by "Still I'm on the dark side of the moon".

(A previously unreleased acoustic demo of "Carolina in My Mind" was issued as a bonus track on the 2010 Apple Records remastering of James Taylor.)

[17] This rendition of "Carolina in My Mind" had a slower tempo than the original, and accompanying Taylor on acoustic guitar were experienced LA session musicians Dan Dugmore on pedal steel guitar (highlighted in the descending note sequences at the song's conclusion), Lee Sklar on bass, Russ Kunkel on drums, Clarence McDonald on piano, Andrew Gold on harmonium, and Byron Berline on fiddle.

[17] Greatest Hits became a diamond record, selling more than 11 million copies in the United States by 2001,[16][18] and this is the version of "Carolina in My Mind" that became best known.

Arnold McCuller, David Lasley, Kate Markowitz, and Valerie Carter featured strongly in the arrangement, continuing the emphasis on the song's harmonies that had begun with the 1976 remake.

[38] The Everly Brothers also released it as a single in 1969, under the variant title "Carolina on My Mind", but it failed to chart;[39] this was later collected on their 1994 box set Heartaches and Harmonies.

[40] The song was recorded by Melanie on her hit April 1970 album Candles in the Rain; the arrangement and vocal phrasing are different from Taylor's, and Allmusic writes that her version "exist[s] on an entirely separate plane from the original".

[47][48][49][11] Taylor had grown up in Carrboro, outside Chapel Hill, where his father taught at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

Thinking of the red soil, the seasons, the way things smelled down there, I feel as though my experience of coming of age there was more a matter of landscape and climate than people.

[52] Author Ken Emerson also sees a connection to that quintessential American songwriter, with the Taylor song resembling Foster's "Sitting By My Own Cabin Door" in its sense of longing for home amid personal and contextual dislocation.

[2] The song is also frequently performed by popular UNC campus a cappella groups, including the Clef Hangers.

[60] The Clef Hangers, joined by university chancellor Holden Thorp, again performed it in March 2009 at the first anniversary memorial service for murdered student president Eve Carson.

"[2] In October 2006, Taylor returned to the campus to receive the school's Carolina Performing Arts Lifetime Achievement Award.

[64] Some of the song's lyrics are used as an epigraph in the 2001 Celebrate the States series volume on North Carolina[65] and in the 1983 reference book America the Quotable.

[66] News providers have used "Carolina in My Mind" as a title for stories about the state's politics, economy, and outdoor activities.

[67] The song's geographical association also appears in fiction, including in Carly Alexander's 2004 novel The Eggnog Chronicles[68] and North Carolinian Sharyn McCrumb's 2006 novel St.

[70] It has been used as the theme for the television coverage of the annual Family Circle Cup tennis event in South Carolina.

[72] In Kathy Reichs' initial Temperance Brennan novel, Déjà Dead, the protagonist (like the author) is from North Carolina but working in Montreal as a forensic anthropologist, and alludes to the song as part of a Carolinian reverie in the midst of a horrid murder case.