Simon and Garfunkel

Simon and Garfunkel were an American folk rock duo formed in New York City, comprising Paul Simon (born October 13, 1941, in Newark, New Jersey) and Art Garfunkel (born November 5, 1941, in Forest Hills, Queens). They are one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with a catalog built on close two-part harmonies, literate lyrics, and Simon's melodically refined songwriting.^[1]

Simon and Garfunkel met as children in Queens and began performing together in their early teens, recording together as teenagers under the name Tom and Jerry. Their 1957 single "Hey Schoolgirl" reached No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 100, a precocious start that neither could sustain at the time.^[1] They drifted apart by 1960 and pursued separate paths: Simon studied English at Queens College and briefly enrolled in Brooklyn Law School before dropping out, while Garfunkel pursued studies at Columbia University.^[2]

Reconnecting in 1963 and performing around the New York folk circuit, they were signed to Columbia Records by producer Tom Wilson in September of that year. Their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (1964), was a commercial failure, arriving just as the British Invasion reshaped American popular tastes. The duo separated again, with Simon relocating to London and developing his craft on the British folk circuit.^[1]

Their breakthrough came through an act of creative intervention they had no part in. In 1965, Tom Wilson secretly overdubbed the acoustic album track "The Sound of Silence" with electric guitar, bass, and drums, using session musicians from Bob Dylan's recording sessions. The electrified single reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1966, and Simon learned of its success while abroad in Denmark.^[3] The duo reunited and recorded a series of landmark albums including Sounds of Silence (1966), Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme (1966), Bookends (1968), and Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970).^[1]

The duo's fourth album, Bookends (1968), was a folk rock concept album that reached number one on the Billboard 200. Its recording stretched over about a year, with producer John Simon assisting before leaving Columbia, after which the duo and engineer Roy Halee completed the record.^[9] Its centerpiece, "America," a hushed road-trip song, is often tied to a 1964 journey Paul Simon took with his then-girlfriend Kathy Chitty, though the origin is disputed.^[10]

Director Mike Nichols became fixated on the duo's music while preparing his film The Graduate in 1967, and asked Simon for original songs to fit the story of a disaffected young college graduate. Simon offered an unfinished, rhythmic composition built around a placeholder title, "Mrs. Roosevelt," which Nichols renamed "Mrs. Robinson" to match his film's title character.^[7] Finished and released the following year, the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and became the first rock and roll recording to win the Grammy for Record of the Year.^[8] The collaboration planted a relationship between Nichols and the duo that resurfaced a few years later, when Nichols cast Garfunkel in a major role in his film adaptation of Catch-22.^[8]

Simon had grown up in a Hungarian-Jewish household in Queens -- both his father, a professor and dance bandleader, and his mother, an elementary school teacher, shaped a home where language and performance were taken seriously.^[4] He and Garfunkel had deliberately chosen anglicized stage names as teenagers (performing as "Tom and Jerry") to avoid sounding too Jewish in a mainstream pop market, a compromise Simon later reflected on with ambivalence. That tension between assimilation and authentic identity runs through much of his songwriting.^[5]

Simon's songwriting drew deeply on Black American musical traditions, particularly gospel. He had been moved since adolescence by vocal groups including the Swan Silvertones, whose lead singer Claude Jeter would directly inspire the central metaphor of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Simon later sought out Jeter in person to acknowledge the debt.^[6]

The final album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, was recorded under extreme personal strain. Garfunkel had accepted a major acting role in Mike Nichols' Catch-22, and his prolonged absence from sessions left Simon largely alone to develop material. By the end of recording, the partnership had become untenable, and the duo disbanded in 1970.^[1]

Bridge Over Troubled Water became one of the best-selling albums of all time, winning six Grammy Awards including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year. The duo disbanded in 1970 amid personal tensions, though they reunited for the celebrated Concert in Central Park in 1981, which drew an estimated 500,000 people, and again for various tours in later decades.^[1]

Simon went on to a celebrated solo career, most notably with Graceland (1986), while Garfunkel pursued acting and solo recording. Despite intermittent reunions, the pair's creative partnership remained permanently marked by the tensions that ended it -- and by the extraordinary music those tensions helped produce.^[2]