John's Simon's Album - John Simon (1970)

John Simon's Album - John Simon

John Simon is a producer who produced Janis Joplin, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Simon & Garfunkel.  He has been familiar with music and a music lover since he was a child, and he produced The Cyrkle's Red Rubber Ball after he graduated from university.

Red Rubber Ball - The Cyrkle

I personally like this Cyrkle's Red Rubber Ball and want to cover the title song someday.  I think I should pick it up to write about here in the near future, for I have this album as well, and I think it's worth listening.
Anyway, before I can write about that here, here's The Cyrkle's "Red Rubber Ball."

This song became the first hit to John Simon as well as The Cyrkle, and his turning point was when he met Bob Dylan and The Band in Woodstock in 1970.
That was a year after the famous Woodstock festival, and Bod Dylan inspired him to write his own songs and record them. 
It is little known that he recorded several songs with The Band's members like Robbie Robertson, who played the guitar in "Tannenbaum."

If you have listened to The Band before or a fan of them, you can see this song is very similar to The Band's music. I love this song but I love "Rain Song" and in fact tried to cover this song by piano.

This album was released from Warner Bros. Records, Eugene Gregan drew this album cover, and a lot of musicians such as Leon Russell, Bobby Keys, Rita Coolidge, Eddie Hinton, Delaney Bramlett from Delaney & Bonnie joined the recordings.
You can see the list of the musicians is basically occupied by swamp rock / southern rock musicians even though this album was recorded in Woodstock near NY, so no wonder the entire album is kinda down home.

"Fool Dressed In Velvet" is also my favorite song in this album, and I don't know why but I can't help thinking that John Simon's singing voice resembles Paul McCartney's in some songs like this. This album was of course produced by himself, but this is a weirdly fascinating album with a touch of ragtime and swamp rock. 
John Simon seems to be popular here in Japan, and I heard he produced an album of Japanese musician called Yamashita Tatsuro. I haven't listened to it yet, so I'll give it a listen later!