A lot of songs fit the bill for this week at Word & Song. It seems that singing and songwriting and friendship are often found in each other’s company. So what better song for today than one which was inspired in part by a particular friendship and was first performed by a couple of performers who had been friends from childhood. I’ve written about these two friends before, and their song, “Bridge over Troubled Water,” another song about friendship.
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel met when they were twelve-year-old schoolboys, and as many teen-agers did back in those early days of rock ‘n roll and at the peak of a great folk music revival, they discovered music together and eventually formed a singing duo. By the mid-1950’s, they were performing locally around NYC as “Tom and Jerry.” In 1956, when they were 15 years old, the two composed a song called “Hey, Schoolgirl,” which they paid to record at a studio in Manhattan. Fortunately for them, while they were recording their song, the boys were overheard by a rising music producer, Sid Prosen. Sid promoted “Schoolgirl” for “Tom and Jerry,” and by somewhat less than legal means made sure that the single got play time on local AM radio — in New York City. Almost unbelievably, the song made the Billboard Charts and the boys landed a spot on American Bandstand. But it took them a few more years to hit it big.
The two young men went their separate ways for college, Paul to Queens College (CUNY) and Artie to Columbia, and Tom and Jerry were no more. After graduating from college, Paul and Art got together to sing at Gerde’s Folk City, a music club in Greenwich Village. At the time they were still using aliases, and appeared as Kane and Garr. At Gerde’s they were discovered by Tom Wilson, a producer for Columbia Records who was managing Bob Dylan’s crossover from folk to rock music and would go on to manage a number of very successful rock bands. Wilson signed Paul and Artie up to record three new songs Paul had written, one of which launched them to international fame, “The Sound of Silence.” I’ve included below their first recording of the song to let you hear it as the pure folk song it was. Before the release and without telling the boys about it, Columbia Records added drum and other enhancements to the original simple guitar and vocals arrangement. It was THAT version, the first ever release under their own names, that took Simon and Garfunkel to the top. Between late 1965 and January 1966 “The Sound of Silence” sold over a million copies and hit the top of the Billboard charts.
In a rather bittersweet way, the pair’s meteoric rise in 1966 brought them together to record for a relatively short time as a duo before they again went their separate ways. I’d say of their friendship — and of their joint career — that life intervened, as it often does. And certainly Paul Simon came to realize that he was contributing much more to the partnership than Art Garfunkel was, although at that time Art was the better singer and carried the lead vocals admirably, while Paul sang harmony.
In the case of “The Sound of Silence,” Art Garfunkel did indirectly contribute the inspiration for the song and little more. His college roommate, Sanford (Sandy) Greenburg, entirely lost his vision to glaucoma, which was not widely treatable until the late 1970’s, and he needed someone to read his school books to him and otherwise help him adjust to darkness. Art began to refer to himself as “Darkness,” the friend who helped Sandy overcome his blindness. Using the idea of personifying darkness, Paul Simon, over three months, wrote a song about a different kind of blindness and deafness common to mankind. But of the two, Paul was the musician and poet, and it was inevitable that he would want to have full control of his own music. He and Art had worked independently of each other all along, and Artie went the route of a folk singer and even had a brief career in acting. He and Paul Simon did reunite a couple of times, amicably, for very popular tours, performing the old songs which their shared fans loved to hear them sing together. These were the songs which earned Simon and Garfunkel nine Grammy Awards and five Platinum Albums on original releases alone, as well as a place in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame.
And so let’s revisit a great folk song, a song for its own time and for all time.
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and access to our full archive and to comments and discussions. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!
Music from that hurricane that raged continuously from November 1963 until April 1975.
Debra, or anyone, please, to what do you attribute the widespread appeal of Simon and Garfunkel and their songs like this one.
I recently had a leap year birthday at which time I turned 18. Now, I “really “ turned 18 in 1970, so, for my party’s trivia game, the big question was , what was the number one best selling song of 1970?
I was very surprised to learn——-Bridge Over Troubled Water!!!