Jim Croce, different from the rest for his urban Philadelphia machismo; David Gates of Bread, whose high, beseeching quiver made James Taylor sound like Ozzy; Carole King and Joni Mitchell, though less so because they're women; and Crosby, Stills, and Nash, in their ceaseless incarnations. But NOT Paul Simon. Seven years older than Browne and Taylor, eight years senior to Joel, Simon was far too beholden to baby-boomer culture to matter to adolescents of my era.