This single was released just before The Paul Simon Song Book, and apparently only in the UK. As noted on the label, production and direction was done by Reginald Warburton, one of the producers of The Paul Simon Song Book. The recording of "I Am A Rock" is not the same recording as the kickoff track to the Song Book (take 4, recorded 17 June 1965), which can be detected from the clear tapping of Simon's feet as percussion during the recording on this release. in fact, this release is probably take 6, recorded on 23 June and included as the "alternate take" on the 2004 reissue of The Paul Simon Song Book, which does include Simon tapping his feet to accentuate the choruses. This recording of "Leaves That Are Green," however, is the standard release from the Song Book. The sleeve appears to be the original one released with the record.

The first release of Simon & Garfunkel's first #1 single, on red vinyl. The A-side, seen at left, is the acoustic version from mono copies of Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., while the B-side, at right, is an electric version found on mono copies of Sounds Of Silence. Strangely, however, both sides claim that it's from the 1964 mono LP. Goldmine magazine's record guide suggests that the red-vinyl copies may have been pressed in error--perhaps it was supposed to be both sides all electric or all acoustic as a mono/stereo release--the latter especially since both sides claim the Wednesday Morning origin. On the other hand, it's possible that this was a trial release, to gauge whether listeners preferred the original acoustic sound or the overdubbed electric version. This might explain why the acoustic/electric pressing was only released as a radio station copy.

In any case, according to Paul Urbahns and Mike Marvin, both deejays with substantial recording industry expertise, all the US Simon & Garfunkel singles cuts seen on this page are mono mixes. For many of them, this produces a markedly different sound than the versions released on stereo albums. This single is one good example of the difference. On the electric version from this single of "The Sounds of Silence," you can tell that the vocals have greater reverberation and the bass has more definition than they do on the stereo version of the same track.

The standard issue of the #1 hit. Apparently, my copy once belonged to a guy named Jim Long. Tom Wilson, the producer of the duo first album, supervised the overdubbing of the original track from Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M. with electric guitars and drums in a famous recording session. This was conducted on 15 June 1965, without Simon or Garfunkel's knowledge, immediately after the recording session for Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone. Thus, while the label on the A-side was partially true in that the vocals and Simon's guitar (which are difficult to hear above the entire extra backing set) were from their first album, the rest of it was not.

According to David Simon's Studio Stories, pp. 94-7, the overdub session musicians included Al Gorgoni and Vincent "Vinnie" Bell on electric guitar, Joe Mack on electric bass, and Buddy Salzman on drums. There was some difficulty in overdubbing, because of the tempo changes on the original 1964 track; it is possible to hear in some places where the ovedub session musicians have to slow down in order to let Simon & Garfunkel's vocals catch up. Gorgoni and Bell played together in order to achieve a 12-string electric guitar sound, as heard on recordings by The Byrds, and Bell added a few blues-like riffs that can easily be heard on either of the two mixes.

Although I have heard that initially neither Simon nor Garfunkel were pleased with the overdubbing being done without their knowledge, in a radio interview from 1966, Paul Simon did give his approval to Wilson's work with it. Admittedly, it would be difficult for either Simon to argue that they weren't pleased with the result, since the overdubbed #1 single is generally regarded as being responsible for their subsequent success.

As for the B-side, the kick drum is a bit louder on the mono mix than on a stereo version. It also uses a good bit of compression, which was a technique employed often by producers to make the recordings sound better on the radio. Even today, many radio stations include a volume-control system between the audio chain to the transmitter just for this purpose.

1. Bleecker Street
2. Sparrow
3. Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.
4. The Sounds Of Silence

The first two songs are on side A; the last two on side B. There is one bootlegged recording of "Sparrow" by Simon & Garfunkel wherein Garfunkel actually refers to this EP, which had just been released in Britain at that time. The first three songs were only available in Britain on this EP until 1968, when the full album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. was finally released there. Note strangely that not only is "Bleecker Street" misspelled, but the writing credits for it have been given to Paul Kane. This is not the case on other recordings of "Bleecker Street" that I have seen.

Reached US #5 and UK #20 in the spring of 1966. "Homeward Bound" was written by Paul about his itinerant life in England during 1965, while "Leaves That Are Green" is an overdubbed, sped-up version of the same song that appeared much more poetically on The Paul Simon Song Book. The A-side is a compressed cut, though it is likely the same take as the stereo album mix.

This is the red-vinyl promotional copy for the following record. It used the same orange Columbia label seen with the "El Condor Pasa" promotional copy seen below. I believe that both sides are the same mono copies; however, this was not the version found on the stereo copies of Sounds of Silence (that version was recorded on 14 December 1965), so I am unsure of the recording date.

This single, which reached #3 on the Billboard charts in the summer of 1966, was Simon & Garfunkel's third top-5 hit in a six-month span. At the time, Simon & Garfunkel were in the midst of recording for Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, on which "Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall" would soon be included. The A-side may have already appeared as the final track on mono copies of Sounds of Silence, but this distinction is dubious, because all mono copies of that LP consist of "folded-down" stereo mixes of the tracks, not the recordings' true mono mixes as supposedly seen on the singles (this was at least the case with the single "The Sounds Of Silence," above). This recording of "I Am A Rock" could, however, be the "folded-down-stereo" version into a mono cut.

This was perhaps the first single Simon & Garfunkel released in the USA with a picture sleeve (I am not sure about this; anyone know?). It was a modest hit, reaching #25 on the pop charts, and up to that time, the A-side was the song that took the long for Paul to write and for the duo to record. It was on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, the album that featured both of these songs, that the duo began to experiment extensively with multi-track recording. This single was one of many in the mid-1960s to also be released on colored red vinyl as a promotional item (all of the previous singles with Columbia had been released as such, with double A-sides). These are fairly rare today, and are worth substantially more to collectors than the ordinary single. The last three images show the German picture sleeve and pressing.

"A Hazy Shade of Winter" was released on single about a year and a half before it was part of Bookends in April 1968. This single reached #13 on Billboard.

This single was released by ABC-Paramount, undoubtedly to capitalize on Simon & Garfunkel's newfound success, much like Pickwick and Sears released the LP The Hit Sounds Of Simon & Garfunkel. I don't know if it was withdrawn like the LPs were due to the lawsuit filed by Simon & Garfunkel, but clearly the rights to the recordings that Simon & Garfunkel had made before they became famous were not clearly established (a situation that has not even been resolved today). This is the only instance that I know of that "Tia-juana Blues" is given its additional parenthetical title or that the song credits Paul and Lou Simon and the Ace Trumpets instead of Tom & Jerry or Simon & Garfunkel.

One of the more unusual Simon & Garfunkel picture sleeves, this design, featured on both sides of the sleeve, depicts the duo as animals from a zoo; Simon looks like he's got the body of a panda bear and Garfunkel the mane and front feet of a lion. It also omits the title of the single as such, grammatically surmising that Simon and Garfunkel are at the zoo, not that the single is called "At The Zoo." The single reached #16 on the pop charts in 1967, and today the quirky picture sleeve is now one of the most desirable for collectors.

As for the recording, here on the mono mix of "At The Zoo," the scraper is not phased and the kick drum has noticeably more reverberation than on the stereo album version of Bookends.

This 45 is a white-label radio station copy. Eventually it reached #23 on the pop charts, and apparently, all copies of this single known to exist list the time for the A-side as 2:74 instead of 3:14, so that it would get more airplay as a "shorter" track. The B-side is famous for being the only Simon & Garfunkel song recorded only on a single and not on an album. For years, until Columbia released the box set Old Friends in 1997, this was the only way to obtain the studio recording of this song (concert recordings, however, have been widely bootlegged). The box set recording of the B-side is also the first stereo mix, which supports the fact that that all of the Simon & Garfunkel singles are mono mixes.

Another white-label radio station copy, which eventually reached US #11. As the label indicates, this single was undoubtedly released to capitalize on the success of Mike Nichols' film The Graduate, in which both of these songs were featured.

1. A Hazy Shade Of Winter
2. Mrs. Robinson
3. Bookends Theme
4. At The Zoo
5. Old Friends
6. Fakin' It

Tracks 1-3 are on Side 1; 4-6 on Side 2. This is a seven-inch EP played at 33 1/3 rpm, released for jukeboxes. Since they were played so often in jukeboxes, these are pretty tough to find in decent shape, or at all. Mine's in decent enough condition, considering it's been through the jukebox wringer at some point. Playable, but with a substantial amount of surface noise.

Simon & Garfunkel's second #1 hit also has an interesting history. The first release of the single (at top), advertises that the cuts are "From the Motion Picture 'The Graduate,'" despite the fact that the B-side never appeared in the film or on its soundtrack album, and the version of "Mrs. Robinson" on the A-side was not finished for the film, either. The second release (at bottom), noting the cuts' provenance from Bookends, gets it right.

1. Mrs. Robinson
2. April Come She Will
3. Scarborough Fair/Canticle
4. The Sounds Of Silence

Again, tracks 1 and 2 are on side A and 3 and 4 on side B. This is undoubtedly a promotional item attempting to cash in on the success of The Graduate, but it was clearly released in 1968 since it contains the Bookends cut of "Mrs. Robinson." "The Sounds Of Silence" is the electric version from the single and its eponymous album, and "Scarborough Fair" is the version from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

This picture sleeve featured the same images of the duo in both the USA and France, although the French pressing has a more substantial cardboard sleeve instead of the flimsy paper marketed to American fans. In the USA, this eventually reached #7 on the charts, and in the UK, it reached #6. Note the slightly different fonts used on the label here than on previous Simon & Garfunkel singles.

So, apparently, Columbia decided to release BOTH "Baby Driver" and "The Boxer" as singles in 1969, using the same catalog number, and issued at least these promotional, radio station copies. The same color scheme for this record was used for "El Condor Pasa" on promotional copies the following year, though that track was actually the A-side of its own single. Strangely, I haven't located a mono/stereo copy of "The Boxer" like I have for this record. Ultimately, this copy went to #101 on the US charts.

The motorcycle on both mono and stereo mixes is the same pitch, but in the mono mix, the music itself does not change key going into the fadeout.

Promotional copy of Simon & Garfunkel's biggest hit. Not surprisingly, the mono version sounds slightly different than the stereo version, so this is a worthwhile record to find. It's sometimes difficult to track down, which may in part due to the fact that many people probably are unaware of the existence of a promotional pressing for the single. To date I have not seen it listed in most record catalogs/price guides.

This is the regular issue of Simon &Garfunkel's biggest hit, which stayed at #1 in the US for six weeks in early 1970. I am not sure if this is a first pressing or not; I tend to think that it's a bit later than the original since the lettering here for the song titles and group name is slightly different (slimmer) than that seen on most of the other Simon & Garfunkel 45s in my collection. It is somewhat difficult to see the images on the sleeve particularly well from any scans; to really get a good view you really need to see a copy in person, but I think these are the best images of the sleeve that I've come across.

Interesting picture sleeve...check out Simon's vest.

The promotional copy issued to radio stations is at the top. It's the only American promo copy of a Simon & Garfunkel record I've seen with the blue "A" on it. This single reached #4 in the US.

This promotional edition was issued to radio stations with these white and blue labels, much like "Baby Driver" the previous year. The only difference was that this release was actually supposed to be the A-side to the single 4-45237, whereas "Baby Driver" was actually the B-side to "The Boxer." Incidentally, this is the only promotional copy of this record that I've ever seen. It was issued with the standard orange Columbia sleeve seen below.

I also own two pressings of this 45. The top three photos are French copies of the single and picture sleeve that I acquired in Saint-Ouen, just north of Paris, in France, in the summer of 2004. Vince Tasciotti reports that the American copy used a generic brown Columbis sleeve. This 45 climbed to #18 on the US pop charts in late 1970. "El Condor Pasa" showcases Paul Simon's first recorded experimentation with South American music, and the recording contains the authentic Peruvian band Urubamba, whom Simon had met in Paris in 1965. You can also see that by this time, Columbia had begun pressing Simon & Garfunkel singles in stereo instead of the mono-only releases.

Side One
1. Song For The Asking
2. So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright
3. El Condor Pasa

Side Two
1. Keep The Customer Satisfied
2. Why Don't You Write Me
3. Bye Bye Love

Another jukebox release, like the one for Bookends. "Bye Bye Love" has been shortened to avoid capturing the fade into "Song For The Asking" like on the album. However, the kickoff track contains the mixed-in concert applause from "Bye Bye Love."

I have no information about this record, other than what is located on the label. It used the same orange sleeve as the promotional copy of "El Condor Pasa" from 1970 and the red-vinyl copy of "I Am A Rock" from 1966. Any further information on this record would be welcome.