Song of the Day 6/1: Paul Simon, “Mother and Child Reunion”

Ever since “Graceland” Paul Simon has been scorned over his penchant for what’s now called cultural appropriation. But time was he wasn’t universally condemned for traveling abroad to tap into foreign musical traditions. Back in the day musicians celebrated the broader exposure. “Mother and Child Reunion,” for example, helped introduce reggae to a broad U.S. audience when it was released in 1972. The track showcases top Jamaican musicians* — Simon, a noted studio control freak, just let the band play and wrote lyrics and recorded vocals when he got back to New York. Their impressive chops prompted a parade of British and American musicians to the island to record.

Simon has said he was a reggae fan and particularly liked Jimmy Cliff’s “Vietnam,” so he went to Jamaica to record a backing track for a remake of “Why Don’t You Write Me?” When he got there, he hooked up with Cliff’s backing musicians, who explained to him the difference between reggae and ska. Simon ended up scrapping that idea — he said the result sounded like a parody — and just let the band play. Simon cribbed the title from a chicken-and-egg dish, and says he was inspired by the death of a pet dog, but the cryptic lyrics have prompted all sorts of interpretations. It’s worth noting the tale Cliff relates in “Vietnam” concerns a mother and her child.

The impact of “Mother and Child Reunion,” Simon’s first single from his first solo album, can be partly measured by how many artists covered it soon after its release. In Jamaica, the Pioneers, recording as the Uniques, stripped it down to basic reggae instrumentation and a proper rhythm.

There were some questionable interpretations I’ll spare you — Kenny Gamble’s overproduced clunker for The Impressions, for instance — but easily the weirdest was by Randy California’s post-Spirit band, Kapt. Kopter and the Whirlybirds.

A slicker reggae version was recorded by venerable vocal group the Wailing Souls when they moved to the U.S. in the ’90s, on 1994’s “Live On.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rEZUwz_fCg

Nowadays it gets a lot of vocal treatments, like this one by Swedish singers Rebecka Törnqvist and Sara Isaksson.

*Drummer Winston Grennan, who invented the “one-drop” reggae rhythm, was a session player who backed Jimmy Cliff, as was Neville Hinds (organ). Hux Brown (guitar) and and Jackie Jackson (bass) were Maytals.