Paul Simon wrote “Leaves That Are Green” and was singing it before he recorded it: he performed it in 1964 at a concert at Queens College, his alma mater. He first recorded it alone with his guitar in London in 1965 for The Paul Simon Songbook, which CBS released in Britain that August, and it was the B side of the album’s single, “I Am a Rock.” Simon and Art Garfunkel re-recorded it for Sounds of Silence, released by Columbia on 17 January 1966, adding electric harpsichord, rhythm guitar and bass, and it backed their hit “Homeward Bound.” Dorris Henderson had already released it as a single in 1965.
The opening lines date the song by its writer’s age: he was twenty-one when he wrote it, he is twenty-two now, and he won’t be for long. Every verse ends on the same line, the leaves that are green turning to brown. In between come a pebble thrown into a brook whose ripples run away without a sound, and a girl he held close who faded in the night “like a poem I meant to write.” In February 1966 Cash Box called it a ballad about the ever-constant aging process. Billy Bragg borrowed its first two lines to open his own “A New England” in 1983.
J. D. Crowe and the New South released it in 1972 on the Lemco label, as the B side of “Come On Down to My World,” and another Crowe recording, with Larry Rice singing lead, Tony Rice tenor and Crowe baritone, appears on Bluegrass Evolution. The Country Gentlemen recorded it in 1972 for The Country Gentlemen, issued by Vanguard in April 1973, with Charlie Waller singing lead over Bill Emerson’s tenor and Doyle Lawson’s baritone, Ricky Skaggs on fiddle and Mike Auldridge on Dobro. Adam Steffey sang lead on it on his 2001 Mountain Home album Grateful, with John Bowman and Tim Surrett on harmony.
