A member of ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) since he was a teenager, he enlisted in the US Navy the day after the Attack on Pearl Harbor.
While in uniform, he and Vic Mizzy wrote entertainments for personnel stationed at the Staten Island Navy Yard, and he later served as a quartermaster on an LST involved in African and European invasions during World War II.
In the late 1950s, Taylor wrote words and music for a series of novelty albums which were released on the Warner Bros. label.
The first was Terribly Sophisticated Songs, which parodied various genres of the popular music of the time, and featured "Pachalafaka," which was covered by Soupy Sales and broke into the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 in 1958.
In 1959, Warner Bros. released The Whimsical World of Irving Taylor, a compilation of the most popular of the numbers from the preceding albums.