On this day in 1987, the Paul Simon LP “Graceland” peaked at #3 on the US Billboard 200 Album Chart (April 4) With his musical career at somewhat of a relatively low ebb through the early 80s after “Late in the Evening”, Paul Simon found inspiration after hearing a bootleg cassette of mbaqanga, a style of South African music with rural Zulu roots. And so the concept for the album “Graceland” began to take shape. He travelled to South Africa to record with local musicians. At the time, musicians in Johannesburg were typically paid $15 an hour; Simon arranged to pay them $200 an hour, around triple the rate for top players in New York City. Simon said he "wanted to be as above board as I could possibly be", as many of the musicians did not know who he was and would not be lured by the promise of royalties alone, so he also offered writer's royalties to those he felt had contributed particularly to compositions. Simon later flew several South African musicians to New York to complete the record three months after the Johannesburg sessions. The South African male vocal collective Ladysmith Black Mambazo were a group that gained an international profile after collaborating with Simon on the LP. The resulting album “Graceland” was an eclectic mixture of musical styles including pop, a cappella, zydeco, isicathamiya, rock, and mbaqanga. It was Simon's most successful studio album and his highest-charting album in over a decade; it is estimated to have sold up to 16 million copies worldwide. “Graceland” went to #1 in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and #3 on the US Billboard charts. It was ranked 46th on the 2020 list of Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, as "an album about isolation and redemption that transcended 'world music' to become the whole world's soundtrack." “Graceland” also won the 1987 Grammy for Album of the Year. In 2006, it was added to the United States' National Recording Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important". Despite copping flak from some for breaking the cultural boycott of the time on South Africa (in protest at the existing Apartheid regime), Simon had the support of countless black South African musicians as he exposed and promoted their music to the world. The song "Graceland" was voted #485 in the list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and won the 1988 Grammy Award for Record of the Year. Paul Simon’s childhood heroes the Everly Brothers also contributed backing vocals to the song. In the “Graceland Classic Albums” video, Simon states that he considers the title track the best song he has ever written… Click on the link below to hear the title track: https://youtu.be/GP6a-7MP91g Daily Rock History