Drafts + Cuts: Uncovering the Forgotten Soul Jazz Cover of Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain'
Singer Stephanie Spruill, who cut the track with David Axelrod and Cannonball Adderley, discusses her spin on the 1972 feminist anthem.
To celebrate Black History Month, I’m sharing some of my unpublished work on groundbreaking Black artists. Here’s the first entry in the series.
About halfway through writing Chapter 4 of my forthcoming music history book on Saratoga Springs, New York, Spa Rock City, I realized I had to pull an audible. The chapter is all about when, where, why, and how Carly Simon wrote her only #1 single, “You’re So Vain,” which mentions both Saratoga and its famous racetrack in the final verse (what I’ve dubbed “the Saratoga section”).
After years of trying to set up an interview with the reclusive Simon, I made the executive decision to stop pretending: I knew she lived in a gated, high-walled mansion on Martha’s Vineyard and hardly ever left it. I also knew that there was no way, short of taking the ferry to the Vineyard, scaling her house’s wall, ninja-style, then somehow recording our conversation on her stoop, while either her security guards jumped me or she dialed the island police to arrest me, that I’d ever get the chance to talk to her. Even though I’d published quite a few popular pieces of music journalism throughout the years, I understood that I was a “nobody” to her; I wasn’t a journalist like Sheila Weller or Cameron Crowe, who probably has her on speed-dial.
So, instead, I decided to track down Simon’s friends, former bandmates, ex-lovers, and anyone else who would be willing to talk to me and shed some light on her, the song, and its Saratoga-ness. And that’s when I discovered several cover versions and interpolations of “You’re So Vain” by other artists, and thought it would be interesting to interview them. Had they understood the references to Saratoga and its racetrack in the third verse?
At the time, I really wasn’t sure what I could glean from these interviews. But, in the end, it turned out to be a goldmine of interesting factoids and nuggets, some of which I included in the chapter. In fact, one of the interviews I did brought to light information that fans of Simon and her song will learn for the first time.
That said, some of the interviews I did never found a home in my narrative. One such interview was with Stephanie Spruill, the soul/jazz/disco belter, songwriter, producer, and percussionist, who put her own spin on “You’re So Vain” on music-exec-turned-arranger David Axelrod’s 1974 album Heavy Axe, which features a menagerie of jazz greats, including Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Bill Green, and Roy McCurdy.
“David Axelrod was an all-around cat,” Spruill told me in the 2023 interview I did with her. “See, back in the day, [many of] the people who were [record execs] were musicians themselves, so they appreciated music, they appreciated artists, they appreciated your freedom to just speak your truth.”
Hence Axelrod choosing Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” which had shot up to the top of the charts in 1972, to be creatively reinterpreted.
Spruill, who is best known for singing backing vocals for a who’s-who of music legends such as Julio Iglesias, Nancy Sinatra, Glen Campbell, and Helen Reddy, breathes new soul-jazz fire into the cover, with only the accompaniment of a simple drumbeat, chunky bass, and two bluesy guitars. Spruill doesn’t do a straight cover of the song either; she gives it a minor flavor, removes lyrics at will, adds some sensual scat-singing, and completely reimagines “the Saratoga section.”
Since I technically never removed this from the Spa Rock City manuscript, we can file this under “drafts,” not “cuts.” Here’s my conversation with Spruill, which took place over the phone in October 2023.
Do you remember hearing Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” when it first hit the radio? What did you think of it?
Well, I thought it was amazing. But I really didn’t understand everything [about it], because I had never been on a private jet—I didn’t get on a G4 until I was singing with Julio Iglesias, you know? I had never seen a [total] eclipse of [the sun] and I had never been on a yacht, until I was hanging out with people like Julio and singing with him and traveling the world with him. So I couldn’t understand that. I could sing it, but after Cannonball told me about the intent of the song and what all of this meant and I went in, he just said, “Let it rip. It doesn’t matter.” I think I did that in one take.
I think that the ’70s were a groundbreaking decade for women—and “You’re So Vain” was seen as this call-to-arms for the feminist movement. Do you feel that revolution extended to African-American women, too? Did you feel empowered?
No, not really. You know, Carly Simon is [the daughter of the co-founder of] Simon & Schuster…it’s all about the elite, the things she was talking about. And whoever it was she was talking about, she was calling out a man who was elite. So, it wasn’t like Gloria Steinem. However, she was speaking her truth, now that I reflect on it. It was good for her, because that’s where she was. She wasn’t where African Americans were at that time. The ’70s, ’60s, we were just still fighting for our rights, and many of our leaders were assassinated. So, that song didn’t affect me as far as for my liberation as an African American; it may have been for Caucasian women. But for me, personally, no.
I really dig that yours is not a straightforward cover. You took some liberties with the phrasing and some of the lyrics. What was your goal with your reading of the song? What did you want to bring forward?
Well, I was bringing forward my struggle—more gospel, you know. That’s why I [gave] the minor vibe to it. And I was singing at the top of my range. It was like I felt liberated. After Cannonball told me about the total eclipse of the sun, being in Saratoga Springs, and then all these wonderful things that I had no idea existed, I took it…[trails off]. Carly’s intent did touch me; [it forced] me to bring forth my truth, and my truth was to sing it more gospel, to just let it rip, and they loved it. After I [recorded] it, they said, “This is great, we feel you, we’re not going to touch it. I said, “Shouldn’t I redo this?” because, I thought I oversung it. And they said, “No, we’re feeling where you’re coming from.” And that was a moment in time when women were becoming more overt with what they wanted to say. And then fast forward, and they’re taking away our rights [again], so it’s crazy.
The third verse (a.k.a. “the Saratoga Section”) really stands out, because you take it completely off the map. It’s almost a full-on rewrite of the melody. Being a native of Los Angeles, had you been to Saratoga at the time you recorded the song?
No!
Have you been since?
Oh yeah! I did some concerts there. I’ve been all over upstate New York.
In recent years, Simon has revealed that the first verse is about her former boyfriend, Nick Delbanco, and verse two is about Warren Beatty. But she’s never revealed who the third verse is about. What’s your best guess for the man or men who went to Saratoga, Nova Scotia, and slept with a wife of her close friend?
Oh god, that was during free love…who knows? Warren Beatty, he is arrogant, and he was elegant and good-looking, and she said “gavotte.” You could just see him doing a “gavotte.” At that time, he wasn’t even married. He was just doing his thing. It could’ve been anybody!