Updated March 24, 2026, 7:43 p.m. ET
Chip Taylor, the “Angel of the Morning” and “Wild Thing” songwriter whose family members include brother Jon Voight and niece Angelina Jolie, has died. He was 86.
The singer – born James Wesley Voight – died Monday, March 23, according to his label, Train Wreck Records. “RIP: Chip Taylor, my friend and songwriting mentor, last night in hospice,” Vera wrote in a March 24 social media post.
USA TODAY has reached out to Jon Voight and Jolie for comment.
Taylor, the youngest of three sons, was born to pro golfer Elmer and Barbara Voight in Yonkers, New York, in 1940. His older brothers are volcanologist Barry Voight and Oscar-winning “Coming Home” actor Jon Voight.
“My nickname in golfing was Chip, and so we tried that with a few last names,” he told The Journal News, part of the USA TODAY Network, at his home in 2019. “I don’t even remember why Taylor came up, but all of a sudden I was Chip Taylor.”
After British rock band The Troggs recorded his track “Wild Thing,” it shot up the Billboard charts, topping the Hot 100 in 1966. In 2019, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for its “lasting qualitative or historical significance.”
It also played a part in an iconic moment in music history when a kneeling Jimi Hendrix doused his guitar with lighter fluid, set it on fire, and finished it off with a few smashes to close out the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s set at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.
Merrilee Rush popularized Taylor’s song “Angel In The Morning” with her 1968 recording, but it was Juice Newton’s version in 1981 that entered the Billboard Hot 100. He also cowrote Janis Joplin’s 1969 song “Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)” off her first album post-Big Brother and the Holding Company.
Taylor spent more than a decade as a professional gambler, returning to his musical roots as his mother battled cancer in the ’90s. His songs have made it on the soundtracks of 200 films and TV shows, according to IMDB, including “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Jerry Maguire” (“Angel of the Morning”), the 2019 animated “Addams Family” movie (“Wild Thing”) and the Netflix series “Sex Education.”
He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2016, and his brothers accompanied Voight to the ceremony.
Chip Taylor wrote songs about ‘soulmate’ Joan, cancer treatment
Taylor’s most recent project was an album titled “Words From Holy Gardens,” released in February and inspired by his late wife.
He was 13 when he first met Joan Voight (née Frey) at the Leewood Golf Club pool in Eastchester, New York, according to her obituary. Soon after, a 16-year-old Taylor (who goes by Wes Voight) created his first record, “Little Joan.” They married in 1964, had two children, Kristian and Kelly and divorced in the early 1990s. Though they “spent several decades apart,” the two were “always connected.” Realizing they were “soulmates,” the two decided to remarry following Joan’s health scare in 2008.
Joan died in June 2025.
A month and a half later, Taylor released one of the many songs he’d written for her over the years.
“At Joan’s funeral, our whole family sang a song that I wrote for her 30 years ago – Only One Joan. Since it has never been available on Spotify and the other streaming services, it seemed like a good time to put it out,” he wrote on social media on Aug. 1.
A prolific writer into his final years, Taylor’s projects largely drew from his personal life; he released the 10-track “Son of a Golf Pro” in 2025, which he said was recorded “several years ago” but “got lost in the shuffle,” and “Behind The Sky” the prior year – “an album largely based on the radiation [and] chemo treatment I’ve been going through recently,” he shared in April 2024.
In December 2022, Taylor announced the cancellation of a tour in Europe due to a diagnosis of “treatable” throat cancer.
“During those 2 months [of treatment] I wrote a bunch of songs hoping that I would be able to sing them if the treatment was successful,” Taylor wrote in March 2024. “With the help of my family and wonderful doctors and nurses, I regained enough of my voice to return to the studio with a full band – John Platania, Goran Grini, Tony Mercadante and Tony Leone – and recorded the whole album in a matter of days.”
“Now it’s not a day of waking up and trying to write a hit song for somebody. It’s waking up and trying to find out what is gonna happen today that’s gonna be the spirit of a song that wasn’t there the day before,” he told The Journal News.
“I can’t wait for the next day to come to find out what’s gonna happen… So that’s what guides me,” he added.
Taylor’s family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Metropolitan Golf Association Caddie Scholarship Fund.
