Simon & Garfunkel - Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.
US Columbia Mono LP, CL 2249
First released October 1964
01 - You Can Tell The World
02 - Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
03 - Bleecker Street
04 - Sparrow
05 - Benedictus
06 - The Sound Of Silence
07 - He Was My Brother
08 - Peggy-O
09 - Go Tell It On The Mountain
10 - The Sun Is Burning
11 - The Times They Are A-Changin'
12 - Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.
==About the album==
Album Review by Bruce Eder
Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. doesn't resemble any other Simon & Garfunkel album, because the Simon & Garfunkel sound here was different from that of the chart-topping duo that emerged a year later. Their first record together since their days as the teen duo of Tom & Jerry, the album was cut in March 1964 and, in keeping with their own sincere interests at the time, it was a folk-revival album. Paul Simon was just spreading his wings as a serious songwriter and shares space with other composers as well as a pair of traditional songs, including a beautifully harmonized rendition of "Peggy-O." The album opens with a spirited (if somewhat arch) rendition of Gibson and Camp's gospel/folk piece "You Can Tell the World." Also present is Ian Campbell's "The Sun Is Burning," which Simon heard on his first visit to England as an itinerant folksinger, which would later yield such works as "Anji" and "Scarborough Fair." But the dominant outside personality on the album is that of Bob Dylan -- his "Times They Are A-Changing" is covered, but his influence is manifest on the oldest of the Simon originals here, "He Was My Brother." Simon's first serious, topical song, it was what first interested Columbia Records producer Tom Wilson in Simon & Garfunkel. He'd written it before the event, but Simon later identified the song closely with the fate of his Queens College classmate Andrew Goodman, one of three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964. By the time the album was recorded, however, Simon had evolved beyond Dylan as an inspiration and developed a unique songwriting voice of his own in the title track, a beautifully sung, half-lovely song (that also shows his limitations, employing the phrase "hard liquor store" because he needed the extra syllable); "Sparrow" and "Bleecker Street," spritely, mystical, and mysterious, and innocently poignant observations on life; and "The Sounds of Silence" in its original all-acoustic version, a heartfelt and defiant statement about the human condition and the shape of the world. Art Garfunkel makes his own contribution on the creative side with a beautiful arrangement of "Benedictus." It's surprisingly ambitious but also somewhat disjointed, mostly because the non-original material, apart from "Peggy-O" and "The Sun Is Burning," comes off so arch. The seeds of their future success were here, however, and took root when the version of "The Sounds of Silence" on this album started getting played on the radio, in Boston and Florida, respectively...
==About this transfer==
Firstly, if you have my 2008 transfer of this album, scrap it! Immediately! This is a completely new transfer made not by me, but by Prof. Stoned. So you know it's good!
As some may remember, I transferred the first three mono Simon & Garfunkel albums back in 2008. But I never got around to upgrading them after I improved my system and processes over the subsequent years. Last year, Prof. Stoned released his (definitive) transfers of the last three mono albums, but stated he wasn't going to tackle the first as it's not one he overly enjoys.
I, on the other hand, love it! It's perhaps my second fave Simon & Garfunkel album. Especially the better-balanced and "drier" mono version.
I own an NM copy of "Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.", however, side 2 is pressed ever-so-slightly off centre. I can't hear it, but it has always bugged me knowing it. I was reluctant to retransfer it for this reason.
Fortunately, Prof. Stoned was kind enough to transfer his copy for me, and after numerous hours of manual clean up and restoration, I now present it to you.
You might occasionally hear what sounds like vinyl clicks or noise on some of the tracks. Such noise is not from the vinyl. As many listeners will know, raw acoustic recordings can sound quite "dirty", with clicks and other noises captured on the master tape from guitar fretboards, breath intakes and just general background noise from recording limitations of the time. For removing clicks and the like I used my original mono transfer and an original stereo CD as references. If the noise existed on the reference copies, it stayed on my transfer as a faithful reproduction of the original master tape and of the exact sound that you heard all those years ago.
==Vinyl transfer by Prof. Stoned. 24bit restoration and mastering by Q==
Source Matrices
01-06: XLP 77920-1C
07-12: XLP 77921-1F
Hardware:
- Technics 1210mk2
- Jelco SA-750D Tonearm (w/ JAC 501 cable)
- Audio Technica AT-33PTG
- Pro-Ject Tube Box SE-2
- Yamaha CA-1010
- RME ADI-2 A/D Interface
Software
- Audition 3.0.1 (audio capture and editing)
- ClickRepair (audio editing)
- iZotope RX 2 Advanced (resampling and dithering to Red Book audio specifications)
Artwork included