Singer and actor, born in Forest Hills, New York, USA. He teamed up with Paul Simon as a teenager, forming a duo called Tom and Jerry, and (as Simon and Garfunkel) issuing their first album, Wednesday Morning 3 am in 1964. The Sound of Silence (1965) brought them their first major success as a duo, followed in 1968 by the soundtrack for the film The Graduate and the album Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970), which won a record six Grammys and topped both the UK and US charts. The duo split up following Garfunkel's decision to go into acting. He made his debut in Catch 22 (1970), and later films included Carnal Knowledge (1971), Bad Timing (1979), Good to Go (1986), and Boxing Helena (1993). He continued to record as a soloist, beginning with the album, Angel Clare (1973), and achieved a UK number 1 with Bright Eyes (1979), the theme song from the film Watership Down. There have been occasional reunion concerts with Simon, and in 2004 they began their successful Old Friends tour, performing across America and Europe. He released his 12th solo album, Some Enchanted Evening, in 2007.
Arthur Ira Garfunkel (born November 5, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter and actor, best known as half of the folk duo Simon and Garfunkel.
Life and work
Early life
Garfunkel was born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, in New York City.
In 1963 he and Simon reformed the duo under their own names as Simon and Garfunkel and released their first album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. on Columbia Records in October 1964.
Solo career
In the 1970s, Garfunkel released a few solo albums, and although he did not reach the heights that Simon and Garfunkel had reached, he still scored hits with "I Only Have Eyes For You" (a 1934 song originally written by Harry Warren ) and "Bright Eyes" (both British #1 hit singles), and "All I Know" (#9 in the United States).
Following disappointing sales of his 1981 album Scissors Cut, Garfunkel reunited with Paul Simon for the famous concert in Central Park. The following worldtour went musically well but they had disagreements during the tour, with the disappointment for Art Garfunkel that Paul Simon skipped Art's voice of the new album that was announced as a S&G album and came out as a new Paul Simon solo album Hearts and Bones.
Recent events
In 2003, Garfunkel made his debut as a songwriter on his well-received Everything Waits to Be Noticed album. Teaming up with singer-songwriters Maia Sharp and Buddy Mondlock, the album represented some of Garfunkel's strongest solo performances to date, and contained several songs whose origins were poems penned by Garfunkel. Although his name had appeared in songwriting credits for all of Simon and Garfunkel's material, Everything Waits to Be Noticed is recognized as his first true effort at songwriting, save his teenage years with Paul Simon in Tom and Jerry.
In 2003, Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon reunited one more time and buried their disagreements once and for all. Art Garfunkel is currently working on a new solo album.
Garfunkel made news in early 2004 when he was arrested for possession of cannabis.
The only new recording on the collection The Art Garfunkel Album (1984), the song "Sometimes When I'm Dreaming" (written by Mike Batt), was re-recorded in 2005 by ex ABBA singer Agnetha Fältskog on her comeback album My Colouring Book.
In August 2005, Garfunkel received his second cannabis possession charge after a state police trooper found a joint in the ashtray of his car while in New York State. Appeared in an episode of the PBS television show Arthur as a moose playing "The Ballad of Buster Baxter," in a parody of Jonathan Richman's role in There's Something About Mary.
Discography
(see Simon and Garfunkel for joint works with Paul Simon)
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