BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER (along with TIDE) was part of A&M Records' November, 1970 release.
The last A&M album to bear the CTi imprint, GULA MATARI, was part of the August release.
...this was (apparently) recorded in '69 and not at RVG's...
@JOv2 , I don't see how this (at least all of it) could have been recorded in 1969, as "El Condor Pasa", "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright", "Cecilia" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" weren't released by Simon and Garfunkel themselves until their BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER album in the first week of February, 1970.
Given that three of those four cuts were hit singles, I'm gonna hazard a guess that the album wasn't recorded (or finished, anyway) until August, 1970, when "El Condor Pasa" was released as the third single from the Simon and Garfunkel album---which would be outside the window of Creed's involvement.
As for why A&M instead of the new CTI, it was probably contractual. Paul didn't surface on the new CTI for four more years (with SKYLARK and PURE DESMOND), so maybe his deal was with A&M or maybe he only had a two-record deal with Creed and went with A&M for the third (either of those scenarios could explain Quincy Jones, as well).
The album would also have been a bad fit with what new CTI was doing well with (Freddie Hubbard's RED CLAY), but very much in line with what we've been discussing in the separate CTI thread...that Herb & Jerry were looking for very commercial, fairly unchallenging jazz.
Something for someone who is just enough of the right kind of geek (me) to geek out over: TIDE (SP-3031) was part of the same monthly release as BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER, but features the Sam Antupit album cover design and (as JOv2 notes) the "A&M Records and Tapes" logo.
But BRIDGE (SP-3032), part of the same monthly release, not only doesn't have any of that, it's the first of the SP-3000 series to feature the really small A&M logo (which debuted on HUMBLE PIE, released in September).
So it looks like A&M sat on TIDE for a couple of months. Was it originally intended to come out with GULA MATARI in August, but held while Jerry and Creed (or more likely, Jerry's lawyers and Creed's lawyers) sorted out the last bits of the separation?
There absolutely was overlap between A&M/CTi and CTI...although Doug Payne's discography shows the first four CTI releases as 1969, the announcement of the label, and the release of CTI 1002, Hubert Laws' CRYING SONG, was in the February 28, 1970 issue of Billboard.
And apart from Antonio Carlos Jobim, new CTI stayed away from A&M/CTi artists for a long time---it wasn't until May of 1971 that George Benson's BEYOND THE BLUE HORIZON was released. Was that part of the legal wrangling that tied up I GOT A WOMAN AND SOME BLUES for 15 years? I'm sure Benson and his management didn't want to go two years between albums.