art garfunkel

art garfunkel

Exploring the Musical Legacy of Art Garfunkel

1. Introduction to Art Garfunkel’s Career and Influence

Simon & Garfunkel were among the most popular groups of the 1960s. In 1969, they sold 14 million records in America alone! No other act sold more that year. The breakout group recorded five studio albums. The final album, Bridge Over Troubled Water, was their best-selling album. It won six Grammys, including Album of the Year and Record of the Year, and is now ranked number 51 on the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine. Apart from his output with Simon, Garfunkel has enjoyed a moderately successful international solo career. Paul Simon has received the lion’s share of the duo. He was the duo’s primary songwriter. His understated guitar playing and singing provided contrast with Garfunkel’s operatic vocal style, creating memorable and magical harmonies.

This essay explores the musical legacy of Art Garfunkel. Raised in Queens, New York, Garfunkel attended Columbia University. There, he met fellow native New Yorker Paul Simon. He went on to become half of the iconic duo Simon & Garfunkel. The pair became famous for some of the most beloved songs of the 1960s. For example, “The Sound of Silence,” “Mrs. Robinson,” “The Boxer,” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” The group broke up in 1970. After that, Garfunkel branched out and recorded and performed on his solo works. His work is not as well-known as those of some of his peers. Garfunkel, because of his magical voice, can never be ignored.

2. Analyzing Art Garfunkel’s Vocal Style and Techniques

Could it be that he simply never felt completely comfortable hawking such prolific quantities of song materials which best matched his vocal talents? A look at the progression of his vocal style and technique from his earliest singing efforts to later albums shows a pattern of striving for vocal sophistication which he had to have been conscious of in the studio. Such inventiveness puts to shame some of today’s commercially successful stilted upstarts. The emotiveness and warmth found in Art’s singing is both calculated and painstakingly realized. Truth be told, unlike others such as Neil Young, Art, with his gentle, almost ethereally angelic voice, seems to be able to sing anything. Such is his prowess, he truly is the maestro of voice. Indeed, the greatest example of the breadth and longevity of his vocal legacy is his received recognition by no worse an authority than British TV’s Best Ever Single.

Of the two famous singers in Simon & Garfunkel, Art Garfunkel, the shyer member, is the one whose achievements as a solo performer have been less celebrated. It’s time to set the record straight and to examine some of his more memorable materials stemming from all eight of his studio albums. It is only from the first three of these albums that we find the meager amount of music he has made publicly available as a soloist. This fact alone accounts for the shortage of discussion on his solo work in comparison to the massive changes and development in his vocal style and technique. Given his highly evolved and polished vocal style, of which he has demonstrated considerable showmanship and finesse in previous releases, it has come as a surprise to many aficionados why he never attempted more solo coverage in years past, with or without any lyrics or new materials best suited for his fare.

3. Collaborations and Partnerships with Paul Simon

Following disputes regarding the direction of their musical endeavors, the duo culminated their collaboration in 1970. Although Art initially focused on his acting career, his extensive body of work as a solo artist, done parallel with his collaboration with Paul Simon, continued. During the winter of 1975, Art relocated to the UK to work on his solo album, titled “Art Garfunkel.” The recording, bolstered by the power-ballad “I Only Have Eyes for You,” made it to the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100. By 1978, Art had worked on three more solo albums, also beginning his foray into the realm of stage and film work. Commonly known as the “Cinéma of Art Garfunkel,” his collections sentence the release of his 1980 album, “Scissor Island.”

Following the break-up, Art embarked on his solo musical project, a partnership with Paul Simon, which lasted ten years, from 1963 through 1973. Though short-lived, the songwriting team of Simon & Garfunkel had an unassailable impact on the audience, producing a number of singles and multi-albums which have been championed by fans and critics to this day. After graduating from the Tom and Jerry act, the friends united, using the moniker of Simon and Garfunkel. Their debut album, released in 1964, did not gain much traction. A subsequent change in direction, from pop to folk rock, led to the creation of a slew of chart-topping records throughout the decade. Their most successful album, “Thursday School of Navy Life,” reached number one on the charts, launching a number of runaway hits like “I Am a Rock,” “Homeward Bound,” and “The Sounds of Silence.” Their track “Mrs. Robinson” was included in the score of the movie “The Graduate.”

4. Impact on Folk Rock and Popular Music

While Paul Simon had been one of the major forces in the hugely successful folk rock movement, Garfunkel was content to grow as a commendable flexible songwriter and composer, whose work still feels reminiscent of the work they had done as a team. Each time he chose his next cut, he vehemently refused to accept its safe power back, despite his eventual reluctance, and his choice proved to be brilliantly effective. By cutting down and fully offering some of his peers’ best work as his cover finishes, he packed a handful at a time in their compilation, giving them their much-needed force boosts. The same cut provided his performances with their panoramas, as they showed Art the way before his precious material could arise. Every selected song sounded like it was meant just for him. For more than 40 years, people have admired the Dutch baritone’s tone. His unrivaled pure voice has been his most obvious benefit, and few of his peers, and none since the fall of the century, have combined orchestral settings with fragile emotions. With the exception of a couple of album tracks, double B-sides, Art’s antipathy has kept his voice into doing a single leading vocalist on each song. The Selection of Paul Simon offers a meticulously compiled overview of his actual role in the creation of the songs.

In 1970, Garfunkel released his debut solo album Angel Clare, which contains the singles “All I Know” and “I Shall Sing”. The song “All I Know” has always been a favorite of fans, reaching No. 9 in the US. Charlie Allen accompanied him on piano for “Down in the Willow Garden.” Tracks on the album included the huge folk hit and Paul Williams’ composition “Traveling Boy”. It invited comparisons with his partner’s work but over the years sold over a million copies. Art drew attention to his recording of “Mary Was an Only Child” during the British Central Weekend television show in December 1978. The tune was transferred to a collection elsewhere. It must have had literature on the theme of gambling. It was a manifestation of Art’s admiration for a series of women. In the various verses where he talks about how each woman drastically changes their lives, he sings about how gambling wins on horses and betting wins on card tricks.

5. Conclusion and Reflection on Art Garfunkel’s Enduring Impact

This should be the remembered narrative. We know Art Garfunkel was quirky, a singing actor continuously practicing because that is where the money went. A fatherly one, but not yet a maestro, not resourceful, never a brilliant. A practitioner who loathed, and was never good, performing non-verbal ‘music’, handcrafting vocal notes, navigating the meanings of musical-phonic articulations, the teaching and the execution by intellectual extraction. He preferred aerial observation and conjuring of spirits employing distracted, too vainglorious genii, in thanks for alchemy in offerings of hawkeyed wisdoms in coloristic-gentle drum-beat sonatas, and double and piano. He had accomplices aplenty; suave committee men. Musicians with fine pedigrees short of a glitterati, who strategized the creation of volk musik at his conjuring. His sometimes beautiful music lacks the gravitating mass of undertoned agony; pushing Hades into the light of day through sheer force of personality. Only a listener looking under the violently spun tapestries sees the true master manipulated into existence.

In retrospection, the attack Garfunkel has suffered seems misguided. – A power vocalist that the pop charts knew, who worked well in a group. – A pop idol for some years. – A singer that embraced a strong partnership with Paul Simon to take that duo to international prominence in the newly wrought category of folk rock. – Some light time peace work with the same Simon and a respectably brief solo output of admired singles before the service. – Well-deserved retirement; it actually looked like that. Six prime voiced albums, and end of recording output.

“I’m the conductor” is his honest self-assessment, and perhaps of an age. A good conductor-curator greases the interconnected functions of his formation with no small aplomb, egos attracted and rooted into his wheelhouse studio by the mass-produced glues, counseling sessions and promotion artistry. With emboldened charm and character. Management of other people, tensions and artistry, the creation of music by securing the optimal demeanor and product from most others, by being a father figure, filial, brotherly and mentor, that is enough. It is not that Art was without the capability to don, very occasionally the uniform of the solo maestro, however cynical looking at that would be in retrospect of a carefully curated career. Rather that he found a firm intention in aligning the talents, often maestros, of others into a cohesive family suiting the pictures his lyrics painted, the impressions his and our understanding of life earned. The Art Garfunkel we explored was in broody father-start; a father unconcerned about names entering the household.

We should not expect Art Garfunkel to be a Wilhelm Furtwängler, a regional master, bristling with personalized interpretation, a master orchestrator. Art’s gift was to involve the populace in its own canon. In uniting country against country, his music was bigger than that of specialized, brilliant instrumental soloist-composers. It was everybody’s consoling comfort. To the seasoned ear, Art’s strengths were in creating a populace soundscape and smithing productions more than in handcrafting musical notes. This he felt deeply, too. In the question-and-answer period of a talk I gave in Kingston, Canada, the interviewer, a learned lady up front about music, asked an especially penetrating question. Art answered above her head but at me. “I’m the conductor,” he looked into my eyes to say, and stressed the last word. I don’t hand-write the composition. I give directions, produce and get everyone to play together.”