By Phillip D. Johnson
Showcased on Monumental 15-Disc Career-Spanning Library Collection and Available as Physical and Digital Releases Tuesday, October 15
Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment, celebrates American artist Paul Simon, whose birthday is October 13, with the release of the monumental career-spanning 15-disc Paul Simon – The Complete Albums Collection (http://smarturl.it/ps_complete_amzn) available as a physical and digital release on Tuesday, October 15.
Paul Simon – The Complete Albums Collection brings together, in a deluxe library box with magnetic closure, the 12 studio albums and two full-length live concert recordings which comprise the official canon of an extraordinary writer and tunesmith whose voice and music inform six decades of popular culture. No doubt if you are fan of Paul Simon, within your vinyl collection, you’ll at least have one of his albums. Maybe not everyone of them sounds as clear as it did when you first purchased it, but that’s nothing to worry about. With the complete album collection, you can just replace it. Or another option would be to look into something like Graham Slee HiFi components to find equipment such as Phono Preamps to help restore the audio quality of some of your old Paul Simon vinyls.
Included on Paul Simon – The Complete Albums Collection are the artist’s seminal and groundbreaking solo recordings from the 1960s (The Paul Simon Songbook), the 1970s (Paul Simon, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, Paul Simon in Concert: Live Rhymin’, Still Crazy After All These Years), the 1980s (One-Trick Pony, Hearts and Bones, Graceland), the 1990s (The Rhythm of the Saints, Paul Simon’s Concert In The Park – August 15, 1991, Songs from The Capeman), the 2000s (You’re The One, Surprise) and the 2010s(So Beautiful or So What).
Each of the titles in Paul Simon – The Complete Albums Collection includes the original album in entirety, plus reissue bonus material not appearing on the original 12″ vinyl releases (37 bonus tracks in all). The 15-disc collection includes a 56-page book of photos with new liner notes penned by American music historian Ashley Kahn.
The deluxe complete set includes The Paul Simon Songbook, an acoustic album–recorded in London in the summer of 1965–showcasing solo versions of many songs that would become central to the Simon & Garfunkel repertoire.
During the period covered (1965-2011) in Paul Simon – The Complete Albums Collection, Paul Simon continually expanded his musical vocabulary, each new album taking the artist beyond six-string acoustic accompaniment into whole new worlds of sound, while remaining consistent and true to the crafts of writing and recording. In the 1970s, he explored reggae, progressive jazz and Latin music. By the 1980s and 1990s, Simon was creating new music steeped in Louisiana zydeco and South African jive, Brazilian street samba and Puerto Rican salsa. On 2011’s So Beautiful or So What, he channeled Indian ragas, Delta blues, and West African kora music, even sampling Reverend J.M. Gates’ 1941 recording for “Getting Ready for Christmas Day.”
PAUL SIMON – THE COMPLETE ALBUMS COLLECTION
The Paul Simon Song Book (1965)
1. I Am A Rock
2. Leaves That Are Green
3. A Church Is Burning
4. April Come She Will
5. The Sound Of Silence
6. A Most Peculiar Man
7. He Was My Brother
8. Kathy’s Song
9. The Side Of A Hill
10. A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert McNamara’d Into Submission)
11. Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall
12. Patterns
13. I Am A Rock (alternate version) *
14. A Church Is Burning (alternate version) *
Paul Simon (1972)
1. Mother And Child Reunion
2. Duncan
3. Everything Put Together Falls Apart
4. Run That Body Down
5. Armistice Day
6. Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard
7. Peace Like A River
8. Papa Hobo
9. Hobo’s Blues
10. Paranoia Blues
11. Congratulations
12. Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard (Demo – San Francisco 2/71) *
13. Duncan (Demo – San Francisco 2/71) *
14. Paranoia Blues (Unreleased Version) *
There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973)
1. Kodachrome
2. Tenderness
3. Take Me To The Mardi Gras
4. Something So Right
5. One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor
6. American Tune
7. Was A Sunny Day
8. Learn How To Fall
9. St. Judy’s Comet
10. Loves Me Like a Rock
11. Let Me Live In Your City (Work In Progress) *
12. Take Me To The Mardi Gras (Acoustic Demo) *
13. American Tune (Unfinished Demo) *
14. Loves Me Like A Rock (Acoustic Demo) *
Paul Simon in Concert: Live Rhymin’ (1974)
1. Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard
2. Homeward Bound
3. American Tune
4. El Condor Pasa (If I Could)
5. Duncan
6. The Boxer
7. Mother And Child Reunion
8. The Sound Of Silence
9. Jesus Is The Answer
10. Bridge Over Troubled Water
11. Loves Me Like A Rock
12. America
13. Kodachrome (Alternate Version) *
14. Something So Right (Alternate Version) *
Still Crazy After All These Years (1975)
1. Still Crazy After All These Years
2. My Little Town
3. I’d Do It For Your Love
4. 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover
5. Night Game
6. Gone At Last
7. Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy
8. Have A Good Time
9. You’re Kind
10. Silent Eyes
11. Slip Slidin’ Away (Demo) *
12. Gone At Last (Original Demo w/The Jessy Dixon Singers) *
One-Trick Pony (1980)
1. Late In The Evening
2. That’s Why God Made The Movies
3. One-Trick Pony
4. How The Heart Approaches What It Yearns
5. Oh, Marion
6. Ace In The Hole
7. Nobody
8. Jonah
9. God Bless The Absentee
10. Long, Long Day
11. Soft Parachutes (Unreleased Soundtrack Recording) *
12. All Because Of You (Outtake) *
13. Spiral Highway (Unreleased Soundtrack Recording) *
14. Stranded In A Limousine *
Hearts and Bones (1983)
1. Allergies
2. Hearts And Bones
3. When Numbers Get Serious
4. Think Too Much (b)
5. Song About The Moon
6. Think Too Much (a)
7. Train In The Distance
8. Rene And George Magritte with Their Dog After The War
9. Cars Are Cars
10. The Late Great Johnny Ace
11. Shelter Of Your Arms (Unreleased Work-In-Progress) (Bonus Track) *
12. Train In The Distance (Original Acoustic Demo) (Bonus Track) *
13. Rene And George Magritte with Their Dog After The War (Original Acoustic Demo) (Bonus Track) *
14. The Late Great Johnny Ace (Original Acoustic Demo) (Bonus Track) *
Graceland (1986)
1. The Boy In The Bubble
2. Graceland
3. I Know What I Know
4. Gumboots
5. Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes
6. You Can Call Me Al
7. Under African Skies
8. Homeless
9. Crazy Love, Vol. II
10. That Was Your Mother
11. All Around The World Or The Myth Of Fingerprints
12. Homeless (Demo) (Bonus Track) *
13. Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes (Unreleased Version) (Bonus Track) *
14. All Around The World Or The Myth Of Fingerprints (Early Version) (Bonus Track) *
15. You Can Call Me Al (Demo) *
16. Crazy Love (Demo) *
17. The Story of “Graceland” (As told by Paul Simon, Recorded January 2012) *
The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)
1. The Obvious Child
2. Can’t Run But
3. The Coast
4. Proof
5. Further To Fly
6. She Moves On
7. Born At The Right Time
8. The Cool, CoolRiver
9. Spirit Voices
10. The Rhythm Of The Saints
11. Born At The Right Time (Original Acoustic Demo) (Bonus Track) *
12. Thelma (Bonus Track) *
13. The Coast (Work-In-Progress) (Bonus Track) *
14. Spirit Voices (Work-In-Progress) (Bonus Track) *
Paul Simon’s Concert in the Park (1991)
Disc 1
1. The Obvious Child
2. The Boy in the Bubble
3. She Moves On
4. Kodachrome
5. Born at the Right Time
6. Train in the Distance
7. Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard
8. I Know What I Know
9. The Cool, CoolRiver
10. Bridge Over Troubled Water
11. Proof
Disc 2
1. The Coast
2. Graceland
3. You Can Call Me Al
4. Still Crazy After All These Years
5. Loves Me Like a Rock
6. Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
7. Hearts and Bones
8. Late in the Evening
9. America
10. The Boxer
11. Cecilia
12. The Sound of Silence
Songs From the Capeman (1997)
1. Adios Hermanos
2. Born in Puerto Rico
3. Satin Summer Nights
4. Bernadette
5. The Vampires
6. Quality
7. Can I Forgive Him
8. Sunday Afternoon
9. Killer Wants to Go to College
10. Time Is an Ocean
11. Virgil
12. Killer Wants to Go to College II
13. Trailways Bus
14. Shoplifting Clothes *
15. Born in Puerto Rico (Demo with Jose Feliciano) *
16. Can I Forgive Him (Original Demo Recorded March 1993) *
You’re The One (2000)
1. That’s Where I Belong
2. Darling Lorraine
3. Old
4. You’re the One
5. The Teacher
6. Look at That
7. Senorita with a Necklace of Tears
8. Love
9. Pigs, Sheep and Wolves
10. Hurricane Eye
11. Quiet
12. That’s Where I Belong (Live) *
13. Old (Live) *
14. Hurricane Eye (Live) *
Surprise (2006)
1. How Can You Live in the Northeast?
2. Everything About It Is a Love Song
3. Outrageous
4. Sure Don’t Feel like Love
5. Wartime Prayers
6. Beautiful
7. I Don’t Believe
8. Another Galaxy
9. Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean
10. That’s Me
11. Father and Daughter
So Beautiful or So What (2011)
1. Getting Ready for Christmas Day
2. The Afterlife
3. Dazzling Blue
4. Rewrite
5. Love and Hard Times
6. Love Is Eternal Sacred Light
7. Amulet
8. Questions for the Angels
9. Love and Blessings
10. So Beautiful or So What
* Expanded CD reissues contain 37 bonus tracks (previously released)