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Credit: Columbia Records<\/p>\n
The entire arc of Simon and Garfunkel<\/a> tends to be a little too biased when it comes to their solo careers. <\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that Paul Simon wanted to move in a different direction once Bridge Over Troubled Water, and even if Art Garfunkel was content to keep making the catchiest tunes that he could, he was more than happy to come together with his old singing partner if it was for the right reasons. And when looking at both of their record collections, it was clear that they would go back to the smoothest voices that they\u2019d heard as kids to get back on the same page with each other.<\/p>\n Because, regardless of how far Simon strayed from his folk roots, there\u2019s no way of replacing the chemistry he had with his friend. Garfunkel took a lot of their greatest songs to new heights whenever he started singing, and even though there were many times where he could put his nose into places where it didn\u2019t belong, it\u2019s easy to forgive him since he was the same guy who laid down the vocals on \u2018Bridge Over Troubled Water\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n But neither of the duo grew up listening exclusively to the Everly Brothers<\/a> throughout their career. They were interested to see where they could take their voices every single time they made a record, and that meant taking cues from every singer they could. Simon looked outside the conventional pop structure, but Garfunkel knew that the best singers usually came from the world of soul music.<\/p>\n This is the same genre that gifted the world people like Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles, after all, and even later into the 1970s, the fact that Marvin Gaye was still notching up some of the greatest tunes that anyone had ever heard was unheard of in pop music at the time. Every other artist had their own sonic trip to go on, but if you were looking to get anywhere close to good soul music, you were better off taking a few pages from what Sam Cooke was doing in the pre-rock and roll days.<\/p>\n Cooke was the epitome of musical class whenever he made a record, and even when he made a few tunes that were too risque for the time, he was still well ahead of the curve. Without \u2018A Change is Gonna Come\u2019, we were never going to get a song like \u2018What\u2019s Going On\u2019 or \u2018Fight the Power\u2019, and a lot of his fearlessness is the reason why so many people see him as the blueprint for what good soul music was supposed to sound like.<\/p>\n But beyond being a great figure in the genre, Garfunkel felt that the most important gift he had was the timbre of his voice, saying<\/a>, \u201cHe was such a rising star, a fabulous singer with intelligence. And that brilliant smile. I used to think he was just a great singer. Now I think he\u2019s better than that. Almost nobody since then can touch him.\u201d That\u2019s not the kind of voice that normally comes to mind when looking at the same person who sang \u2018Bright Eyes\u2019, but if you look at the way that Garfunkel constructed his songs, he was looking to make songs that soul musicians could do justice to as well.<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n The biggest names in the genre might not have seen him as the first choice when listening to him, but a song like \u2018All I Know\u2019 has all the makings of a great soul song whenever Garfunkel sings it. He puts as much gravitas into the song as he can, but if you imagine someone like Stevie Wonder singing the tune, the Cooke influence begins to make a lot more sense in the context of his career. <\/p>\n Garfunkel wasn\u2019t looking to make anything too flashy when he first went solo, but as long as he kept making songs in the same vein as Cooke, it wasn\u2019t like the quality was ever going to suffer. He was out there to make songs that people could sing along to, and while Simon had much grander plans for himself, both of them could at least agree that someone like Cooke was an absolute God of singing<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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