Yesterday’s classic song of the day was Simon & Garfunkel’s first big hit, “The Sound of Silence.” Today’s classic song of the day is one of Paul Simon’s biggest solo hits, but before we get to that we need a bit of a technology history lesson for the youngsters out there.
Back before we had cameras in our phones, back before the advent of handheld digital cameras, we used film cameras to take our photos. There were several different manufacturers of photographic film, including Agfa, Fuji, and Kodak. The first color film stock was developed by Kodak way back in 1935, for slides and transparencies (not for prints) and it was called Kodachrome.
“Kodachrome” is also the title of today’s classic song of the day. Paul Simon wrote “Kodachrome” as a song about looking back on what some might call the good old days of youth. He originally titled the tune “Going Home,” but thought that title was too trite and over-used; he came up with “Kodachrome” as a replacement as it had the same feel and number of syllables. It also fit the theme of the song and the whole There Goes Rhymin’ Simon album, his third solo LP.
Paul Simon recorded “Kodachrome” at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama with the group of studio musicians known as the Muscle Shoals boys—guitarists Pete Carr and Jimmy Johnson, keyboardist Barry Beckett, bassist David Hood, and drummer Roger Hawkins. After recording “Take Me to the Mardi Gras” they had some leftover studio time, and Simon played a few other tunes for the boys and asked them which they’d like to record. “Kodachrome” was the one they chose.
Here’s how drummer Roger Hawkins remembers coming up with that distinctive loping rhythm part that sits on top of the drum track:
“I got an old two-inch tape box, like the big reels used to come in. I put some newspaper in the box and played the pattern on it with hard vibes mallets. I listened back to it, though, and it wasn’t quite cutting through. So I kept changing the packing in the box until it came through well. That’s where the loping feel comes from. I don’t know if that drum part would have sounded that good without it.”
Columbia Records released “Kodachrome” as a single in May of 1973. It went all the way to #2 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100 and became one of Mr. Simon’s signature tunes—even if few people today know what Kodachrome was or how film cameras worked.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Simon’s lyrics specifically call out the attributes of Kodachrome color film:
Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
Give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away
Unfortunately, Kodak ultimately did take Kodachrome away. With the advent of digital photography around the turn of the century, film photography rapidly became a thing of the past. Kodak discontinued the manufacture of Kodachrome film in 2009 and stopped processing the film in 2010. If you happen to find an old roll of Kodachrome film sitting in a drawer somewhere, you’ll have to find somebody with their own darkroom to develop it for you.
Me, I had a Pentax ME Super camera, not a Nikon, and tended to use Fuji Fujicolor film, not Kodachrome (or Kodacolor, Kodak’s film for photo prints). Although I did use Kodak Tri-X film when shooting black and white, for whatever reasons. That camera, unfortunately, is long gone… although, to my eyes, everything looks better in black and white.
