New Carly Simon compilation “These Are the Good Old Days” tells a wistful music industry story

The feel-good compilation of 2023 has just dropped, and its name is “These Are the Good Old Days: The Carly Simon & Jac Holzman Story.” The collection features highlights from Simon’s first trio of albums — “Carly Simon” (1971),
“Anticipation” (1971) and “No Secrets” (1972) — records that launched her as one of the bright lights of the singer-songwriter movement.

Carly Simon has enjoyed a long career as a hitmaker, with a dozen Top 40 singles to her name. Much of her success can be traced to Holzman’s careful nurturing of her career. Holzman famously founded Elektra Records in his college dorm room in 1950 with $600 to his name. After managing the company through lean years and mounting debts, he hit paydirt in the 1960s with acts like the Doors, while discovering timeless voices such as Judy Collins.

Holzman’s association with Simon came into being after hearing her sing with her sister in a Greenwich Village club. A lunch meeting led to a demo tape, on the strength of which he signed her to an Elektra contract in 1970. One of the tape’s cuts, “Alone,” is featured on “These Are the Good Old Days” and affords listeners with Holtzman’s early glimpse into the singer’s hitmaking potential.

And what he heard on her demo was the makings of a new talent who would go toe-to-toe with the finest singer-songwriters of the day, from Carole King and James Taylor to Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell. While much has been written about Simon’s racy spate of album covers, her songs themselves proved to be the making of her career, with wide-ranging themes about the nature of post-1960s womanhood during an era marked by women’s lib and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Simon’s songs didn’t merely embrace the change; they championed it with raw energy and power.

“These Are the Good Old Days” is exceedingly well-curated, including such standout selections from Simon’s first three LPs as her breakthrough hit “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” the future Heinz ketchup anthem “Anticipation” and the global mega-smash “You’re So Vain.” But the real story behind the compilation involves Holzman’s shrewd development of Simon’s career. His impact upon her life and work is no mystery to Simon, who recently remarked that “there was never more care given to me. Never more respect, and I can surely say that I would never have become a performer had it not been for that first call from Jac after listening to my first little demo cassette.”

As for Holzman, the label head looks back wistfully at their collaboration, saying, “Carly and I created a lifelong friendship born from our ’70s music collaboration. I think the good and positive effect we had on each other resulted in records that were gifts for Carly fans and music lovers the world over.”

But no matter how you couch it, Holzman’s careful attention to shaping Simon’s career seems like a relic from a different age, when labels astutely invested in their artists over a period of years and several albums. With Simon, the big payoff arrived with “No Secrets.” Those early days with Holzman and Elektra is a story that contemporary popular music would do well to reflect on — and even emulate.