Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and actor. Simon's musical career has spanned seven decades with his fame and commercial success beginning as half of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, formed in 1956 with Art Garfunkel. Simon was responsible for writing nearly all of the pair's songs including three that reached number one on the U. S. singles charts: "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", "Bridge over Troubled Water"; the duo split up in 1970 at the height of their popularity, Simon began a successful solo career, recording three acclaimed albums over the next five years. In 1986, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music, which sold 14 million copies worldwide on its release and remains his most popular solo work. Simon wrote and starred in the film One-Trick Pony and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman with the poet Derek Walcott. On June 3, 2016, Simon released his 13th solo album, Stranger to Stranger, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Album Chart and the UK charts.
Simon has earned sixteen Grammys for his solo and collaborative work, including three for Album of the Year, a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2006 was selected as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World" by Time. In 2011, Rolling Stone named Simon one of the 100 greatest guitarists. In 2015, he was named one of the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time by Rolling Stone. Among many other honors, Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congress's Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007. In 1986, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music, where he serves on the Board of Trustees. Simon was born on October 1941, in Newark, New Jersey, to Hungarian Jewish parents, his father, was a college professor, double-bass player, dance bandleader who performed under the name "Lee Sims". His mother, was an elementary school teacher. In 1945, his family moved to the Kew Gardens Hills section of Queens, in New York City.
The musician Donald Fagen has described Simon's childhood as that of "a certain kind of New York Jew a stereotype to whom music and baseball are important. I think; the parents are either immigrants or first-generation Americans who felt like outsiders, assimilation was the key thought—they gravitated to black music and baseball looking for an alternative culture." Simon, upon hearing Fagen's description, said it "isn't far from the truth." Simon says about his childhood, "I was a ballplayer. I'd go on my bike, I'd hustle kids in stickball." He adds that his father was a New York Yankees fan: I used to listen to games with my father. He was a nice guy. Fun. Funny. Smart, he didn't play with me as much. He was at work until late at night.... Sometimes two in the morning. Simon's musical career began after meeting Art Garfunkel when they were both 11, they performed in a production of Alice in Wonderland for their sixth-grade graduation, began singing together when they were 13 performing at school dances.
Their idols were the Everly Brothers. Simon developed an interest in jazz and blues in the music of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly. Simon's first song written for himself and Garfunkel, when Simon was 12 or 13, was called "The Girl for Me," and according to Simon became the "neighborhood hit." His father wrote the chords on paper for the boys to use. That paper became the first copyrighted Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel song, is now in the Library of Congress. In 1957, in their mid-teens, they recorded the song "Hey, Schoolgirl" under the name "Tom & Jerry", a name, given to them by their label Big Records; the single reached No. 49 on the pop charts. After graduating from Forest Hills High School, Simon majored in English at Queens College and graduated in 1963, while Garfunkel studied mathematics at Columbia University in Manhattan. Simon was a brother in the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, earned a degree in English literature, attended Brooklyn Law School for one semester after graduation in 1963, but his real passion was rock and roll.
Between 1957 and 1964, Simon wrote and released more than 30 songs reuniting with Garfunkel as Tom & Jerry for some singles, including "Our Song" and "That's My Story". Most of the songs Simon recorded during that time were performed alone or with musicians other than Garfunkel, they were released on several minor record labels, such as Amy, Hunt, King and Madison. He used several pseudonyms for these recordings, most "Jerry Landis", but "Paul Kane" and "True Taylor". By 1962, working as Jerry Landis, he was a frequent writer/producer for several Amy Records artists, overseeing material released by Dotty Daniels, The Vels and Ritchie Cordell. Simon enjoyed some moderate success in recording a few singles as part of a group called Tico and the Triumphs, including a song called "Motorcycle" that reached No. 97 on the Billboard charts in 1962. Tico and the Triumphs released four 45s. Marty Cooper, known as Tico, sang lead on several of these releases, but not on "Motorcycle", which featured Simon's vocal.
That same year, Simon reached No. 99 on the pop charts as Jerry Landis with the novelty song "The Lone Teen Ranger." Both chart singles were released on Amy Records. In early 1964, Simon and Garfunkel got an audition with Columbia Records, whose executive Clive Davis was impressed enough to sign the du
Simon & Garfunkel
Simon & Garfunkel were an American folk rock duo consisting of singer-songwriter Paul Simon and singer Art Garfunkel. They were one of the bestselling music groups of the 1960s and became counterculture icons of the decade's social revolution, alongside artists such as the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, their biggest hits—including "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", "The Boxer", "Bridge over Troubled Water" —reached number one on singles charts worldwide; the duo met in elementary school in Queens, New York, in 1953, where they learned to harmonize together and began writing original material. By 1957, under the name Tom & Jerry, the teenagers had their first minor success with "Hey Schoolgirl", a song imitating their idols The Everly Brothers. In 1963, aware of a growing public interest in folk music, they regrouped and were signed to Columbia Records as Simon & Garfunkel, their debut, Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M. sold poorly, they once again disbanded. In June 1965, a new version of "The Sound of Silence", overdubbed with electric guitar and drums, became a major U.
S. AM radio hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100, they reunited to release a second studio album, Sounds of Silence, tour colleges nationwide. On their third release, Sage and Thyme, the duo assumed more creative control, their music was featured in the 1967 film The Graduate, giving them further exposure. Bookends, their next album, topped the Billboard 200 chart and included the number-one single "Mrs. Robinson" from the film, their rocky relationship led to artistic disagreements, which resulted in their breakup in 1970. Their final studio record, Bridge over Troubled Water, released that year, was their most successful, becoming one of the world's best-selling albums. After their breakup, Simon released a number of acclaimed albums, including 1986's Graceland. Garfunkel released some solo hits such as "All I Know", pursued an acting career, with leading roles in two Mike Nichols films, Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge, in Nicolas Roeg's 1980 Bad Timing; the duo have reunited several times, most famously in 1981 for "The Concert in Central Park", which attracted more than 500,000 people, one of the largest concert attendances in history.
Simon & Garfunkel won 10 Grammy Awards and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990. Bridge over Troubled Water is ranked at number 51 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Richie Unterberger described them as "the most successful folk-rock duo of the 1960s" and one of the most popular artists from the decade, they are among the best-selling music artists. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel grew up in the 1940s and 1950s in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Forest Hills in Queens, New York, three blocks away from one another, they attended the same schools: Public School 164 in Flushing, Parsons Junior High School, Forest Hills High School. They were both fascinated with music. Simon first noticed Garfunkel when Garfunkel was singing in a fourth grade talent show, which Simon thought was a good way to attract girls, they formed a streetcorner doo-wop group, the Peptones, with three friends, learned to harmonize. They began performing as a duo at school dances. Simon and Garfunkel moved to Forest Hills High School in 1955, where, in 1956, they wrote their first song, "The Girl for Me".
While trying to remember the lyrics to the Everly's song "Hey Doll Baby", they created their own song, "Hey Schoolgirl", which they recorded themselves for $25 at Sanders Recording Studio in Manhattan. While recording they were overheard by a promoter, Sid Prosen, who – after speaking to their parents – signed them to his independent label Big Records, they were 15. Under Big Records and Garfunkel assumed the name Tom & Jerry, their first single, "Hey Schoolgirl", was released with the B-side "Dancin' Wild" in 1957. Prosen, using the payola system, bribed DJ Alan Freed $200 to play the single on his radio show, where it became a nightly staple. "Hey Schoolgirl" attracted regular rotation on nationwide AM pop stations, leading it to sell over 100,000 copies and to land on Billboard's charts at number 49. Prosen promoted the group getting them a headlining spot on Dick Clark's American Bandstand alongside Jerry Lee Lewis. Simon and Gafunkel shared $4,000 from the song – earning two percent each from royalties, the rest staying with Prosen.
They released three more singles on Big Records: "Our Song", "That's My Story", "Don't Say Goodbye", none of them successful. After graduating from Forest Hills High School in 1958, the pair continued their education should a music career not unfold. Simon studied English at Queens College, City University of New York, Garfunkel studied architecture before switching to art history at Columbia College, Columbia University. While still with Big Records as a duo, Simon released a solo single, "True or False", under the name "True Taylor"; this upset Garfunkel. Their last recording with Big Records was a cover of a Jan and Dean single, "Baby Talk", but the company went bankrupt soon after release.
Old Friends: Live on Stage
Simon & Garfunkel's Old Friends: Live On Stage is the third live album and documentary from their successful "Old Friends" reunion concert tour of 2003, with The Everly Brothers as special guests. Both the CD and DVD were released in December 2004; the CD and DVD were taken from a series of shows at New York's Madison Square Garden in early December 2003. Both the DVD and the double CD set include a new studio song, "Citizen of the Planet", written by Paul Simon in the 1980s and completed with Art Garfunkel; the DVD contains two Simon & Garfunkel songs that were omitted from the double CD set: "Keep the Customer Satisfied" and "The 59th Street Bridge Song". There are two additional songs performed by The Everly Brothers, which are not included on the CD; the DVD includes a series of clips from Simon & Garfunkel's seen 1969 television special Songs of America as part of its extra features. Both the CD and DVD are available together as a package. "America" – 2:53 "Old Friends/Bookends" – 3:33 "A Hazy Shade of Winter" – 3:33 "I Am a Rock" – 4:23 "America" – 4:53 "At the Zoo" – 1:33 "Baby Driver" – 2:58 "Kathy's Song" – 3:58 "Tom and Jerry Story" – 2:14 "Hey, Schoolgirl" – 0:45 "The Everly Brothers Intro" – 1:42 "Bye Bye Love" – 3:00 "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" – 3:50 "Homeward Bound" – 5:41 "The Sound of Silence" – 5:04 "Mrs. Robinson" – 4:32 "Slip Slidin' Away" – 4:59 "El Condor Pasa" – 3:34 "The Only Living Boy in New York" – 4:03 "American Tune" – 4:40 "My Little Town" – 4:35 "Bridge over Troubled Water" – 6:11 "Cecilia" – 4:25 "The Boxer" – 5:07 "Leaves That Are Green" – 3:22 "Citizen of the Planet" – 3:14 Act 1"Opening Montage" "Old Friends/Bookends" "A Hazy Shade of Winter" "I Am a Rock" "America" "At the Zoo" "Baby Driver" "Kathy's Song" "Tom and Jerry Story" "Hey, Schoolgirl" "The Everly Brothers Intro" "Wake Up Little Susie" "All I Have to Do Is Dream" "Bye Bye Love" "Scarborough Fair" "Homeward Bound" "The Sound of Silence"Act 2"Opening Montage" "Mrs. Robinson" "Slip Slidin' Away" "El Condor Pasa" "Keep the Customer Satisfied" "The Only Living Boy in New York" "American Tune" "My Little Town" "Bridge over Troubled Water" "Cecilia" "The Boxer" "Leaves That Are Green" "The 59th Street Bridge Song" Paul Simon: Guitar, vocals.
The Sound of Silence
"The Sound of Silence" "The Sounds of Silence", is a song by the American music duo Simon & Garfunkel. The song was written by Paul Simon over a period of several months in 1963 and 1964. A studio audition led to the duo signing a record deal with Columbia Records, the song was recorded in March 1964 at Columbia Studios in New York City for inclusion on their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M.. Released in October 1964, the album was a commercial failure and led to the duo breaking apart, with Paul Simon returning to England and Art Garfunkel to his studies at Columbia University. In the spring of 1965, the song began to attract airplay at radio stations in Boston and throughout Florida; the growing airplay led Tom Wilson, the song's producer, to remix the track, overdubbing electric instruments and drums. Simon & Garfunkel were not informed of the song's remix until after its release; the single was released in September 1965. The song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending January 1, 1966, leading the duo to reunite and hastily record their second album, which Columbia titled Sounds of Silence in an attempt to capitalize on the song's success.
The song was a top-ten hit in multiple countries worldwide, among them Australia, West Germany and the Netherlands. Considered a classic folk rock song, the song was added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress for being "culturally or aesthetically important" in 2012 along with the rest of the Sounds of Silence album. Titled "The Sounds of Silence" on the album Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M. the song was shortened for compilations beginning with Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits. Simon and Garfunkel had become interested in folk music and the growing counterculture movement separately in the early 1960s. Having performed together under the name Tom and Jerry in the late 1950s, their partnership had since dissolved when they began attending college. In 1963, they began performing Simon's original compositions locally in Queens, they billed themselves "Kane & Garr", after old recording pseudonyms, signed up for Gerde's Folk City, a Greenwich Village club that hosted Monday night performances.
In September 1963, the duo performed three new songs, among them "The Sound of Silence", getting the attention of Columbia Records producer Tom Wilson, who worked with Bob Dylan. Simon convinced Wilson to let him and his partner have a studio audition, where a performance of "The Sound of Silence" got the duo signed to Columbia; the song's origin and basis remain unclear, with multiple answers coming forward over the years. Many believe that the song commented on the John F. Kennedy assassination, as the song was released three months after the assassination. Simon stated unambiguously in interviews, however, "I wrote The Sound of Silence when I was 21 years old", which places the timeframe prior to the JFK tragedy, with Simon explaining that the song was written in his bathroom, where he turned off the lights to better concentrate. "The main thing about playing the guitar, was that I was able to sit by myself and play and dream. And I was always happy doing that. I used to go off in the bathroom, because the bathroom had tiles, so it was a slight echo chamber.
I'd turn on the faucet so that water would run and I'd play. In the dark.'Hello darkness, my old friend / I've come to talk with you again'." In a more recent interview, Simon was directly asked, "How is a 21-year-old person thinkin' about the words in that song?" His reply was, "I have no idea." According to Garfunkel, the song was first developed in November, but Simon took three months to perfect the lyrics, which he claims were written on February 19, 1964. Garfunkel once summed up the song's meaning as "the inability of people to communicate with each other, not internationally but emotionally, so what you see around you are people unable to love each other."To promote the release of their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M. the duo performed again at Folk City, as well as two shows at the Gaslight Café, which went over poorly. Dave Van Ronk, a folk singer, was at the performances, noted that several in the audience regarded their music as a joke. "'Sounds of Silence' became a running joke: for a while there, it was only necessary to start singing'Hello darkness, my old friend...' and everybody would crack up."
Wednesday Morning, 3 AM sold only 3,000 copies upon its October release, its dismal sales led Simon to move to London, England. While there, he recorded a solo album, The Paul Simon Songbook, which features a rendition of the song, titled "The Sounds of Silence"; the original recording of the song is in D♯ minor, using the chords D♯m, C♯, B and F♯. Simon plays a guitar with a capo on the sixth fret, using the shapes for Am, G, F and C chords; the vocal span goes from C♯3 to F♯4 in the song. Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M. had been a commercial failure before producer Tom Wilson was alerted that radio stations had begun to play "The Sound of Silence" in spring 1965. A late-night disc jockey at WBZ in Boston began to spin "The Sound of Silence" overnight, where it found a college demographic. Students at Harvard and Tufts University responded well, the song made its way down the East Coast pretty much "overnight", "all the way to Cocoa Beach, where it caught the students coming down for spring break."
A promotional executive for Columbia went to give away free albums of new artists, beach-goers only were interested in the artists behind "The Sound of Silence". He phoned the home office in New York. An alternate version of the story states that Wilson attended Columb
Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits
Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits is the first compilation album from Simon & Garfunkel, released on June 14, 1972, two years after the duo had split. The album is available on CD under Legacy's Playlist banner; the album was a mix of original studio recordings and four unreleased live recordings. The album's minimalist packaging does not date the latter; the liner notes to Live 1969 state that these two songs were both recorded at a November 1969 concert in St. Louis, Missouri. According to the liner notes from Collected Works, the version of "Kathy's Song" was taken from a 1968 concert in Vermont. In a 1975 BBC Radio 1 interview, Roy Halee identified this version of "The 59th Street Bridge Song" as being from Simon & Garfunkel's 1970 performance at Carnegie Hall, "the last concert they did together". A live version of "Homeward Bound" was included on the album; the remaining ten studio songs comprise nine singles released between 1965 and 1972, "America" being issued as a single several years after its appearance as a track on the Bookends album, one album track, "Bookends".
All the singles included, except "America," "El Condor Pasa," and "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" made the Top Ten, with the last peaking at #11, "Mrs. Robinson" topped the chart aided by its appearance in Mike Nichols' hit movie The Graduate. "The Sound of Silence" and "Bridge over Troubled Water" both peaked at #1 as singles in their studio versions, "The Boxer" peaked as a single at #7. Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits peaked on the U. S. albums chart at #5. On the UK Album Chart, it was a #2 hit; the album has proven a long and durable seller being certified for 14 million units sold in the U. S. alone. It is their best-selling album in the U. S. and holds the record in the U. S. for the best-selling album by a duo. In 2003, the album was ranked number 293 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. All songs composed by Paul Simon. "Mrs. Robinson" – 3:51 or 4:02 "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" – 2:25 "The Boxer" – 5:10 "The 59th Street Bridge Song" – 1:50 "The Sound of Silence" – 3:05 "I Am a Rock" – 2:52 "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" – 3:09 "Homeward Bound" – 2:42 "Bridge over Troubled Water" – 4:52 "America" – 3:33 "Kathy's Song" – 3:23 "El Condor Pasa" – 3:07 "Bookends" – 1:20 "Cecilia" – 2:53 List of best-selling albums in the United States List of diamond albums in France
Single (music)
In the music industry, a single is a type of release a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record or an album. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, a single is a song, released separately from an album, although it also appears on an album; these are the songs from albums that are released separately for promotional uses such as digital download or commercial radio airplay and are expected to be the most popular. In other cases a recording released. Despite being referred to as a single, singles can include up to as many as three tracks; the biggest digital music distributor, iTunes Store, accepts as many as three tracks less than ten minutes each as a single, as does popular music player Spotify. Any more than three tracks on a musical release or thirty minutes in total running time is either an extended play or, if over six tracks long, an album; when mainstream music was purchased via vinyl records, singles would be released double-sided.
That is to say, they were released with an A-side and B-side, on which two singles would be released, one on each side. Moreover, only the most popular songs from a released album would be released as a single. In more contemporary forms of music consumption, artists release most, if not all, of the tracks on an album as singles; the basic specifications of the music single were set in the late 19th century, when the gramophone record began to supersede phonograph cylinders in commercially produced musical recordings. Gramophone discs were manufactured in several sizes. By about 1910, the 10-inch, 78 rpm shellac disc had become the most used format; the inherent technical limitations of the gramophone disc defined the standard format for commercial recordings in the early 20th century. The crude disc-cutting techniques of the time and the thickness of the needles used on record players limited the number of grooves per inch that could be inscribed on the disc surface, a high rotation speed was necessary to achieve acceptable recording and playback fidelity.
78 rpm was chosen as the standard because of the introduction of the electrically powered, synchronous turntable motor in 1925, which ran at 3600 rpm with a 46:1 gear ratio, resulting in a rotation speed of 78.26 rpm. With these factors applied to the 10-inch format and performers tailored their output to fit the new medium; the 3-minute single remained the standard into the 1960s, when the availability of microgroove recording and improved mastering techniques enabled recording artists to increase the duration of their recorded songs. The breakthrough came with Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone". Although CBS tried to make the record more "radio friendly" by cutting the performance into halves, separating them between the two sides of the vinyl disc, both Dylan and his fans demanded that the full six-minute take be placed on one side, that radio stations play the song in its entirety; as digital downloading and audio streaming have become more prevalent, it has become possible for every track on an album to be available separately.
The concept of a single for an album has been retained as an identification of a more promoted or more popular song within an album collection. The demand for music downloads skyrocketed after the launch of Apple's iTunes Store in January 2001 and the creation of portable music and digital audio players such as the iPod. In September 1997, with the release of Duran Duran's "Electric Barbarella" for paid downloads, Capitol Records became the first major label to sell a digital single from a well-known artist. Geffen Records released Aerosmith's "Head First" digitally for free. In 2004, Recording Industry Association of America introduced digital single certification due to significant sales of digital formats, with Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" becoming RIAA's first platinum digital single. In 2013, RIAA incorporated on-demand streams into the digital single certification. Single sales in the United Kingdom reached an all-time low in January 2005, as the popularity of the compact disc was overtaken by the then-unofficial medium of the music download.
Recognizing this, On 17 April 2005, Official UK Singles Chart added the download format to the existing format of physical CD singles. Gnarls Barkley was the first act to reach No.1 on this chart through downloads alone in April 2006, for their debut single "Crazy", released physically the following week. On 1 January 2007 digital downloads became eligible from the point of release, without the need for an accompanying physical. Sales improved in the following years, reaching a record high in 2008 that still proceeded to be overtaken in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Singles have been issued in various formats, including 7-inch, 10-inch, 12-inch vinyl discs. Other, less common, formats include singles on Digital Compact Cassette, DVD, LD, as well as many non-standard sizes of vinyl disc; the most common form of the vinyl single is the 45 or 7-inch. The names are derived from its play speed, 45 rpm, the standard diameter, 7 inches; the 7-inch 45 rpm record was released 31 March 1949 by RCA Victor as a smaller, more durable and higher-fidelity replacement for the 78 rpm shellac discs.
The first 45
Live from New York City, 1967
Live from New York City, 1967 is the second live album by Simon & Garfunkel, recorded at Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City, on 22 January 1967. The album was released on the Columbia Legacy CK 61513 label on 16 July 2002; the performance was the first official live release by Garfunkel recorded in the 1960s. Recorded in 1967 prior to the duo's work on the soundtrack to The Graduate, it features many of the duo's early hits and album tracks, such as "Leaves That Are Green", "He Was My Brother", "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her". Four of the tracks from the album were released on 1997's Old Friends box-set which contained five songs from the Lincoln Center concert, though "Red Rubber Ball" was not included on this release. In contrast to the duo's other official live releases, this recording features Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel performing alone; this album does not capture the same show as the bootleg Live from New York City, 1966, despite similar material and packaging. All songs by Paul Simon, except where noted.
"He Was My Brother" – 3:21 "Leaves That Are Green" – 2:57 "Sparrow" – 3:06 "Homeward Bound" – 2:39 "You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies" – 2:06 "A Most Peculiar Man" – 2:59 "The 59th Street Bridge Song" – 1:49 "The Dangling Conversation" – 3:01 "Richard Cory" – 3:23 "A Hazy Shade of Winter" – 2:37 "Benedictus" – 2:45 "Blessed" – 3:45 "A Poem on the Underground Wall" – 4:45 "Anji" – 2:28 "I Am a Rock" – 2:57 "The Sound of Silence" – 3:25 "For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" – 2:40 "A Church Is Burning" – 3:43 "Wednesday Morning, 3 A. M." – 3:35 Paul Simon: Acoustic guitar, vocals Art Garfunkel: Vocals
