How sweet it is, indeed, for Taylor

The people finally got their “Fire and Rain,” at least the ones who hadn’t already thronged out of the vast banquet room Monday at the Los Angeles Convention Center, where James Taylor was honored as person of the year by MusiCares, the Recording Academy’s philanthropic foundation.

The annual fundraising gala is one of the big engines of Grammy week, but after some five hours of cocktail party, silent auction, dinner, speeches, more auctioning and performances by Sting, Paul Simon, Alison Krauss, Bruce Springsteen, India.Arie, Keith Urban and others, many in the audience of 2,200 were ready to hit the road as the show closed nicely with Taylor and his band playing “How Sweet It Is.”

But five minutes after leaving the stage, Taylor was back with the profoundly melancholy “Fire and Rain,” a more fitting finale than a hit Motown remake. Perhaps his most influential song, it defined a new breed called singer-songwriter and helped Taylor shift the direction of popular music toward a softer, introspective tone at the dawn of the 1970s.

For Taylor, 57, Monday’s musical lineup -- unusually illustrious even by MusiCares gala standards -- formed a web of musical, personal and emotional connections, with old chums such as Carole King, avowed friends Simon, Sting and Bonnie Raitt, and younger artists who have been influenced and inspired by him, all singing songs written or recorded by him. Sheryl Crow said that the first concert she ever saw was one by Taylor, and the experience -- hearing 16,000 people sing together, and smelling marijuana for the first time there -- made her want to be a musician.

The Dixie Chicks, who toured with Taylor in support of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, sang “Shower the People,” and Krauss, his duet partner on his last Grammy-winning record, “How’s the World Treating You” from 2003, teamed with her Dobro player Jerry Douglas for “Carolina in My Mind.”

Crow and Jackson Browne were joined on “Mexico” by David Crosby, who sang backup on Taylor’s 1975 recording of the song. Even the downtown L.A. location brought things close to home. Despite his New England and North Carolina roots, most of Taylor’s early music was recorded in nearby Hollywood.

As often happens at pop’s special events, Springsteen was the one who rocked the boat a bit. Armed with 12-string guitar, harmonica and a voice like a blast furnace, he first praised Taylor as “an authentic Southern voice,” then unearthed a lesser-known Taylor song, “Millworker,” written for a failed 1978 Broadway musical based on Studs Terkel’s book “Working.”

Springsteen drove the song home with a startling vehemence, and its portrait of an embittered widow stuck in a dead-end life resonated with the kind of social and personal insights that mark Springsteen’s own blue-collar vignettes.

Taylor, who had been shown periodically on the video screens sitting at his table and reacting to the performances, finally joined the action toward the end, striding onto the stage to help King finish her standard “You’ve Got a Friend,” which he recorded on his third album.

He then accepted the person-of-the-year award from academy President Neil Portnow, reprising a line that he’d spoken earlier during a video biography when he was part of the late-’70s No Nukes campaign.

Looking at the trophy, he quipped, “My only hope is that one of these things never falls into the hands of someone desperate enough to use it.” All that was missing was a rim shot from Steve Gadd.

Taylor reverted to more serious form, singing “Copperline” with backing from Douglas’ Dobro, then turning to his Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. birthday hymn “Shed a Little Light,” its tone of churchy Americana and his somewhat stiff stance and lanky frame suggesting a Lincolnesque quality.

In addition to a musical legacy, the person-of-the-year designation honors the recipient’s philanthropic activity, and the evening benefited MusiCares’ financial assistance program for people in the music field.

“Musicians tend to be sort of alienated and not-too-well connected in the world, and many of us get into trouble,” he said Sunday in an interview after a long day of rehearsal. Taylor can speak from the experience of his own youthful struggles with addiction and depression.

“It’s wonderful to have an organization that’s of musicians and that is non-bureaucratic and can respond quickly and can take a real advocacy position and help people out of trouble,” he said. “I’m pretty fired up about MusiCares.” Those who attended apparently were too: The evening grossed more than $3 million, a foundation spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Taylor, a board member of the Natural Resources Defense Council environmental group, said that he also understands the public’s wariness of celebrity activism. “I’m under no illusions that I’m an expert in anything other than making music,” he said. “And I think there is a kind of a gray area when you take the energy that you’ve generated because of your music and try to basically channel that into another direction.

“It’s always something you have to think long and hard about,” he said. “But occasionally I just feel so strongly about things that I can’t avoid getting involved in them.”