"Sweet Baby James" is a song written and recorded by James Taylor that serves as the opening and title track from his 1970 breakthrough album Sweet Baby James. It was released as the first single from the album but did not chart. Nonetheless, it is one of his best-known and most popular tunes, considered a classic. Taylor considers it his best song.

The song was written by Taylor for the son of his older brother Alex, who was also named James (and indeed was named after him). Deliberately a cross between a cowboy song and a lullaby, it was first thought up by Taylor as he was driving through Carolina to meet his infant nephew for the first time.

Taylor spent considerable effort on the lyrics, whose verses he later said used the most intricate rhyming pattern of his career. One of the most famous parts of the lyric is:

The song is composed as a waltz, in 3/4 time. The chorus echoes the lullaby sentiment, with a reference to "Rock-a-bye Baby".

According to Allmusic critic Bill Janovitz, the two verses contrast the new baby James, as a lonely cowboy, in the first verse with the lonely grown-up James singing in the second verse. On the other hand, author James Perrone suggests that the young cowboy James in the first verse as well as the James traveling the Massachusetts Turnpike in the second verse are both the adult James who is singing the song. Perrone notes that the two are linked near the end of the song when Taylor sings that the nighttime dreams of the first stanza cowboy and the dreams of the second stanza traveller "still inspire all who 'take to the highway.'"

"Sweet Baby James" was included on Taylor's diamond-selling Greatest Hits 1976 compilation.

"Sweet Baby James" has been played at virtually every Taylor concert since its release. It is often saved for near or at the end of shows, where it serves as the emotional climax with Taylor performing it as the last encore coming back on stage without his band, or perhaps with just a keyboard player accompanying his guitar.

Invariably, the second verse mentions of the Massachusetts Turnpike, , The Berkshires, and Boston bring cheers from people in the audience who lived in Massachusetts, once lived there, once went to college there, etc. And if the concert is in Tanglewood or Great Woods, the commotion is enough to pause the song. Taylor was born in Boston, and although he moved to North Carolina when very young, spent summers in Massachusetts and went to boarding school there. This association has made Taylor a regional favorite in New England, including sell-outs at Tanglewood and a record-setting concert stand at Great Woods. Taylor, who underwent treatment at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge in his younger years and later became a resident of the Berkshires, has spoken of the song's geographical reference points: "I really did drive the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston. I have a real connection to this place."

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Wikipedia