The Paul Simon Songbook

Twelve songs alone with an acoustic guitar, made in London for British listeners before Simon & Garfunkel took off.
Paul Simon, 1965

Released
August 1965
Recorded
June 1965
Studio
Levy's Recording Studio, New Bond Street, London
Label
CBS
Producer
Reginald Warburton and Stanley West

Play on hypersongs

Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. had not been released in Britain, so Simon, then playing the folk clubs, made this record to meet demand there, under a Columbia deal that let him record for CBS. Two songs were remade from that album, and nine were later recorded again by Simon & Garfunkel, among them I Am a Rock, The Sound of Silence and Kathy's Song. In his liner notes he wrote that there were some he would not write today, but that they had mattered in the transition. The cover shows him with Kathy Chitty on a cobbled London street. It came back on LP in a 1981 Columbia box and on CD in 2004.

Track listing

  1. I Am a Rock2:52
  2. Leaves That Are Green2:41
  3. A Church Is Burning3:38
  4. April Come She Will1:55
  5. The Sound of Silence3:19
  6. A Most Peculiar Man2:26
  7. He Was My Brother2:58
  8. Kathy's Song3:42
  9. The Side of a Hill2:28
  10. A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara'd Into Submission)2:25
  11. Flowers Never Bend with the Rainfall2:27
  12. Patterns3:13

Personnel

More from Paul Simon

Graceland (1986)

Sources

  1. The Paul Simon Songbook, Wikipedia
  2. The Paul Simon Song Book, Discogs
  3. The Paul Simon Songbook, MusicBrainz