Sometimes a writer just tells a story the right way, and there’s really no point in trying to tell it differently. Such is the case today with my colleague, columnist Phil Reisman.

In his latest column for The Journal News, Phil talks about singer/songwriter Chip Taylor, a Yonkers native and brother to actor Jon Voight. The news here is Taylor’s latest release, which pays homage to his hometown – the city of hills.

Anyway, here’s Phil’s column about Yonkers boy Chip Taylor:

The story of Yonkers is worthy of a song

To be dismissive about the so-called “city of hills” is to forget that the hills come with deep valleys of disappointment. And that the story of Yonkers is the story of working people who are forever struggling up those steep slopes.

Somebody should write a song about this mythic place.

Actually a well-known somebody by the name of Chip Taylor wrote 11 songs about it and packaged them in a new two-CD record album aptly titled, “Yonkers NY.” (trainwreckrecords.com)

With dark humor, the singer-songwriter perfectly captured the gritty essence of Yonkers in the very first verse of the title track.

Born and raised in Yonkers, New York

It doesn’t matter if you’re tall or you’re short

Sooner or later you’ll be down on your luck

You’ll take a chance just to make a buck

Taylor grew up in the Yonkers of the 1950s when the factories still hummed on Nepperhan Avenue and Getty Square had a movie theater. He was the youngest of three boys. The oldest, Barry, became a geologist. The next in line, Jon, became Jon Voight, the famous movie actor. Yeah, that’s right — Taylor, whose real name is James Wesley Voight, is the uncle of Angelina Jolie.

Taylor achieved early success as a country songwriter for big-time artists. Fooling around one day at a music publishing company in New York, he wrote and recorded “Wild Thing.” When he got home to Yonkers that night, he picked up a guitar and sang it to his brother, Jon, who enthusiastically fell to the living-room floor and declared it was the best song he had ever heard.

In 1966, the primitive, punk-sounding rock tune was a huge hit for The Troggs, a British band, and has since been covered by Jimi Hendrix and many others.

From “Wild Thing,” Taylor went on to the next thing and next thing after that. His biography is extensive. So with “Yonkers NY,” it appears as if he has come full circle with a collection of autobiographical songs. It was a spontaneous creation, he told me.

“The reason is hard to explain because I’m a stream-of-consciousness writer, and I don’t really think that much about what I’m doing until the stuff starts to come out,” he said. “So I didn’t predetermine that I wanted to talk about Yonkers.”

The first to come out was “Charcoal Sky,” which is a beautiful little song about visiting the Nepperhan train station with his father and brothers.

Without that steam boys — there’d be no American dream.

“All of sudden,” Taylor continued, “I was back there and within a week I had written all these songs about my upbringing. So it’s something that I look back on and say, ‘Well I’m proud to talk about it and sing about it.’ “

Years ago, Loudon Wainwright III wrote “Westchester County,” a tongue-in-cheek tribute to country clubs and country day schools. Taylor’s world is one of pawn shops and gin rummy. Indeed, some of Taylor’s songs reflect Yonkers’ darker underside — the lure of street rackets.

“Yonkers people were mostly poor folks in those days,” he said. “If you get a way to get out, it’s very understandable. Not good, not right. But there would be temptations floating around Yonkers, you know, more than there would be in Scarsdale.”

He laughed and then added, “Those guys might get more involved in the corporate kind of stuff.”

Reach Phil Reisman at preisman@lohud.com.

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