Paul Simon turns 84 tomorrow. He is one of the songwriters in the pantheon of the great American songbook. He has earned his own place in it many times over. Let’s take a sort of Reader’s Digest look back.
We first met Simon in the duo with Art Garfunkel. Simon and Garfunkel actually recorded the single “Hey, Schoolgirl” (1957) as Tom & Jerry. Simon was 16 at the time. They were students of the Everly Brothers. The song was inspired by the Everlys’ “Wake Up Little Susie.” The single got them onto Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Indeed, “Hey, Schoolgirl” made it to number 49 on the pop chart, but subsequent singles went nowhere. By the fall of 1958 Tom & Jerry went their own ways. This is where they came in.
They came in again on Wednesday Morning, 3 AM as Simon & Garfunkel in 1964. It was the duo’s first Columbia album. “Bleecker Street” was a highlight. “It’s a long road to Canaan…”
The album was a flop. However, “Sound of Silence” foretold better things to come. Silence is not exactly our problem now, if it ever was. Simon nevertheless articulated “a vision” that formed an ideal vessel for the duo’s harmony singing. It was the first song they recorded for the album. This is the original Wednesday Morning recording.
Wednesday Morning went nowhere. It was out of joint with the times. However, Columbia producer Tom Wilson had an ingenious idea. Wilson overdubbed electric instruments and drums onto the original recording and “voilà!” — a hit single that was in tune with the times (1965). The hit single sent Simon & Garfunkel back into the studio to record Sounds of Silence (released in January 1966). Simon pulled “Kathy’s Song” out of his pocket for the album. It was a love song plucked from his life. “Kathy” was Kathy Chitty, Simon’s girlfriend at the time he wrote it.
The title of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966) was drawn from “Scarborough Fair/Canticle.” Simon picked up this version of the English folk song from Martin Carthy and adapted a song he had written in 1963 for the counterpoint. If you’ve seen The Graduate you’ve heard the song, but we can’t leave this out. It is classic and it is beautiful.
Bookends (1968) displayed a few more sides of Simon’s songwriting. Several of the tracks were released to become hit singles. You had to sit down with the album to find “Overs” (and “Punky’s Dilemma” and a few others).
Simon & Garfunkel ended their original partnership in 1970 with Bridge Over Troubled Water. The title track has been played to death, but not Aretha Franklin’s five-alarm gospel/soul cover.
Simon stepped out on his own with his self-titled solo album in 1972. Let us get to know “Duncan.”
He followed up with There Goes Rymin’ Simon the next year. “Something So Right” is a composition that claims its place in the great American songbook. It is a perfect track. “They got a wall in China…”
Simon’s sense of humor shines through the gospel number “Loves Me Like a Rock,” with the Jessy Dixon Singers on the backing.
I was one of the few who found Simon’s film One-Trick Pony (1980) to be terrific. I should probably shorten that to say I was one of the few who found his film, period. I loved it, complete with the guest appearance of the Lovin’ Spoonful.
Robert Hilburn’s biography of Simon reports that Simon felt insanely guilty about the money lost by the label on the soundtrack. Hilburn writes that Simon told Warner Bros. CEO Mo Ostin that he’d pay it back one day: “No other artist had ever even brought up the subject of paying back the company. The guilt over the album’s poor sales was one in a series of issues that caused Simon to go into the deepest depression since his struggles with fame and insecurity in the early 1970s.”
He wrote the screenplay, he starred in the film, and — one-upping Woody Allen — he wrote the songs featured in the film. I love the title track (below) and several other numbers, including “Late In the Evening” and “How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns.”
Simon introduced a lot of us to world music on Graceland and took a boatload of undeserved guff in the process. He was backed by South Africa’s Ladysmith Black Mambazo on “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.”
A generation later “Father and Daughter” hit home in a big way. He wrote it for The Wild Thornberrys Movie (2002). Let’s go out with this one. Thank you, Mr. Simon, and happy birthday.
