Simon & Garfunkel – The dou from Quees during the 60’s
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Paul Simon and Arth Garfunkel, two American-Jewish kis from Queens, began their journy toghether there when they met at “Forest hills” school. They started playing music in 1956 under the nicknames of “Tom Graf (Arth) & Jerry Lendis (Paul)”.
Simon wrote the lyrics and compositions for most of their songs, and Garfunkel was the lead singer in their performance. In 1957, Garfunkle convinced a music producer to record one of their first songs, “Schoolgirl”, on a floppy (single) on the other side of which the song “Dancin’ Wild” was recorded. The floppy disk sold 100,000 copies and entered 49th place on the billboard of the popular Billboard pop newspaper. They even performed the song live on the American Bandstand television show, in which they appeared immediately after Jerry Lee Lewis performed his well-known and successful song at the time, Great Balls of Fire.
However, in 1958, the pair broke up after failing to recapture the success of their first record and each turned to university.
During 1963 with the development of the folk rock style that became dominant in the early 1960s and the success of artists who started out during this period as Bob Dylan, the duo Simon and Garfunkel returned. They combined a style similar to that of the Eberly brothers, along with vocal harmony achieved with the two voices combined with Simon’s acoustic guitar. The two even recorded a number of songs originally written by the Eberly brothers, the best known being “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie”.
After college, Simon showed Garfunkel a number of songs he wrote: “Sparrow” , “Bleecker Street” and “He Was My Brother”, which was later dedicated to Andrew Goodman. A friend of the duo and a classmate of Simon at Queens College. Goodman, was one of three human rights activists murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan in the Nishuba County, Mississippi, on June 21, 1964.
Their first album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., included these three songs, which were among the five original Simon songs that were included in the album. However, and unlike the successful floppy disk, the album released by Columbia Records on October 19, 1964, failed.
In the following years until 2004 the pair broke up and returned several times. They collaborated and appeared together, along with the writing of other new, highly popular works of protest.
One of my favorites:
Published: May 24, 2020
Latest Revision: May 24, 2020
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