Carly Collection Nobody Does It Better Than Carly Simon, Whose Three-Cd Boxed Set Retrospective Proves It

For fans seeking a retrospective of Carly Simon’s 30-year career, the anticipation is over. On Tuesday, Arista Records will release “Clouds In My Coffee 1965-1995,” a three-CD boxed set.

The set includes such Simon classics as “You’re So Vain” (which contributed the lyric that serves as the box’s title), “Anticipation,” “Nobody Does It Better,” and more recent material, such as “Let The River Run,” “Touched By The Sun” and “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of.”

The set will be priced at $49.98 for CDs and $39.98 for cassettes.

For Simon, compiling the set, which includes material recorded for Elektra, Warner Bros., Arista, United Artists, and Angel, was a labor of love. In fact, Arista did not obtain the last songs for the set until early November, forcing the album’s release to be delayed by two weeks.

“It’s so hard when you have five different record companies involved,” says Simon. “We had to do a lot of searching for tapes, and oddly enough, we couldn’t find some, so there are a couple of songs that aren’t on there that should be, like ‘Attitude Dancing.”’

Also absent is material from a 1966 session in which Simon was backed by the Band’s Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel.

Still, “Clouds In My Coffee” has a wealth of unique material, including “Play With Me,” Simon’s first demo, recorded in 1965. “It’s just me singing and playing guitar recorded on a four-track,” Simon says.

Other unreleased material includes “Angel From Montgomery” and “I’m All It Takes To Make You Happy,” recorded during the early ‘70s with producer Paul Buckmaster.

“They were going to be on the ‘No Secrets’ record,” says Simon, who is a fan of Buckmaster’s string work with Elton John. However, when Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman recommended that Simon record “No Secrets” with producer Richard Perry, the Buckmaster sessions were shelved.

Simon found working on the recently unearthed “Angel From Montgomery” exciting. “I added another harmony vocal, and my son Ben (Taylor) added a part, and we put on the string part that was intended,” she says. The song also includes, from the original sessions, Simon’s ex-husband, James Taylor, and Danny Kortchmar on guitar.

To establish the running order of the set, Simon turned to a fan on America Online, who suggested that she put all the hits on the first disc. (A Simon fan also contributed to the liner notes.)

“We tried it chronologically, but I felt that most people putting on a CD at home aren’t going to want to hear six or seven things before they get to something they know,” she says.

The boxed set’s second disc is titled “Unreleased And Miscellaneous,” and the third - which features such material as “Devoted To You” with James Taylor and “Davy” with Andreas Vollenweider - is dubbed “Cry Yourself To Sleep.”