THE RECORDED “CALL ME AL” BASS BREAK IS ONE BAR SPLICED TO ITS OWN REVERSE

Paul Simon’s Graceland contains a bass break that nobody performed from start to finish. 🎸

During the session for “You Can Call Me Al,” South African bassist Bakithi Kumalo was playing the fretless Washburn he described as the cheapest bass in the store—the instrument he could afford.

The song had a gap. Kumalo later recalled that it was his birthday, and before lunch he asked Simon if he could add something there. Simon told him to try it; if it worked, they would keep it. 🎂

Kumalo slapped out a rapid one-bar fill. He remembered playing it in a single take.

Then engineer Roy Halee heard another possibility. ✂️

Halee flipped the tape and spliced the backward playback of Kumalo’s bar onto the original. The two-bar break on the finished record became a musical palindrome: one measure running forward, followed by the same performance in reverse. 🔄

That studio edit helps explain why generations of bassists have puzzled over the passage. Simon later described copying the recorded lick exactly as “physically impossible.”

On tour, the trick became a test. At the first gig, in Germany, Kumalo said he was terrified. As the break approached, he could see people watching to find out whether he really was the bassist from the record. 🌍

He delivered his live version—and later recalled that the shows after that felt much easier. 😅

The studio original still holds its tiny secret: a brilliant South African bass phrase, completed not by another performance, but by a reel of tape turned over. 🎛️

Sometimes the shortest road to an unforgettable solo runs backward.

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