An Impressive Transition from Tom and Jerry to Simon and Garfunkel

In 1965, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel released the first of a line of albums which would contain some of the greatest music ever produced in the sixties. Having had modest success with Hey, Schoolgirl, a teeny bopper tune which sold 150,000 copies when the two were fifteen, they dropped their teenage moniker of Tom and Jerry and opted to release their new album under their own ethnic names. Simon, as is apparent in the album’s liner notes, had been spending a good deal of time in England, where he was swept up in the folk scene. He wrote most of his early gems there, and he also discovered some folk tunes which were perfectly suited to the delicate harmonies he had worked out with his childhood friend, Art Garfunkel.

Although Wednesday Morning, 3 AM did not initially receive the attention it deserved, it can be viewed in retrospect as the impressive debut album of a duo whose songs would have a place on the soundtrack of millions of lives. This album features five songs by Simon, making up less than half the album but serving as the backbone of this record billed as “exciting new sounds in the folk tradition”.

Of the remaining seven, four seem to belong on this album. The other three, which are, oddly enough, the bounciest of the twelve songs, seem out of place on the album, and it may well be that these songs were only included for their popular appeal at the request of producer Tom Wilson. In an interview recorded for one of the interactive kiosks at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland, Art Garfunkel recalled he and Paul protesting about having to sing “this cheesy stuff”. I’m not sure which songs these were, but if I had to take a guess, I would venture to say that it was not the duo’s decision to include You Can Tell the World, Go Tell it on the Mountain, and The Times They Are A-Changin’ on their album. Incidentally, these three, along with Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream, were not included in the Old Friends boxed set.

Speaking of that compilation, should you ever get your hands on it, be sure to listen to Poem on an Underground Railroad; as an introduction to the song, Art Garfunkel humorously recounts the circumstances surrounding the selection of the cover photo for Wednesday Morning, 3 AM.

On to the songs. I must confess I find it a bit baffling that the album begins not with a Simon song, nor even with one of the folk songs which he discovered and he and Garfunkel meticulously arranged. No, the album begins with You Can Tell the World, an upbeat Gospel-style song which I myself first encountered in a church puppet program. It’s not that it’s a bad song; none of my picks for the “weakest links” on this album are. It just seems ill-suited to Simon and Garfunkel’s style, and as they sing the song, their energy sounds less like enthusiasm than “let’s hurry up and get this over with”.

I am much more satisfied with the idealistic Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream and wish it had not been omitted from the aforementioned boxed set. The tune is pleasing, the words are simple, and the sentiment is refreshing. In a decade torn apart by the Vietnam War, this song must have been especially effective; it is the most optimistic of several protest songs on this album.

Bleecker Street is something of an enigma, a work of poetic intensity which highlights Paul’s song-writing talents perhaps more effectively than any of the other songs included here. Its rival would be The Sounds of Silence (which dropped the “s” somewhere along the line), but a poetry class could easily spend a class period picking apart Bleecker Street for its meaning and poetic devices. Garfunkel admits in the liner notes that even he found it a bit baffling initially.

Sparrow is a simplistic song about how the “little guy” is always trampled upon by the harsher forces of the world. Set up with the same structure as the child’s tale The Little Red Hen, Sparrow fails to end happily for the protagonist who, unable to enlist the aid of others, cannot survive the cruelties of life alone. After a lifetime of “not I”s, her only comfort is that the Earth lies ready to receive her as a final resting place.

Benedictus is certainly not what I would call a mainstream song; it’s an ancient Latin chant. Deeply religious, this blessing sung by monks centuries ago was a discovery of Garfunkel’s. In all its rich fullness, it serves as a calming wave to carry the listeners over from the despair of Sparrow to the alienation of The Sounds of Silence.

And what more is there to say about The Sounds of Silence? Described by Garfunkel as “a major work”, it is the prophetic outcry of one who has seen that the world’s inhabitants are losing their ability to communicate with one another. This failure to communicate would be an ongoing theme in Simon’s music, but rarely has he been able to express that concern so effectively as he did in this, one of his earliest songs. Though nearly forty years have passed since it was first penned, the its words ring as true today as they ever did, and we are compelled to look beyond the neon lights into the innermost reaches of one another’s souls.

Side II commences with He Was My Brother, the tragic but ultimately jubilant song of a young civil rights activist who dies while pursuing the cause of freedom for all of his “brothers”. The tune of He Was My Brother strikes me as similar to that of Sparrow; I believe it was my younger brother who actually first pointed out the similarity, and I had to concur with his analysis. But the tone, while initially depressing, grows triumphant as this victim of the world’s cruelty transcends his death by allowing others to live in freedom.

Peggy-O is an old English folk song, and though I much prefer Scarborough Fair, the tune is quite lovely. The lyrics are a bit odd, but my mom assesses that this is an anti-war song, showing that war is so horrid it will allow a man who has found his true love to turn around and destroy her city. Not nice stuff.

Go Tell it on the Mountian is in the same “peppy gospel song” category of out-of-place songs into which You Can Tell the World fits. Oddly enough, though Go Tell it On the Mountain has at least one other set of lyrics which were commonly used in the civil rights movement, the Christmas lyrics are used here. Once again, Simon and Garfunkel sing it with almost frantic energy, seeming to me like they’re rushing through it and just not treating the song with the care given to most of the selections on the album.

The Sun is Burning is my favorite of the anti-war songs; in fact, it may rank second for me on this album, despite the fact that it was not written by Paul Simon. It certainly gives him the opportunity to shine as a guitarist; the intricate finger-picking on this deceptively delicate song may even outshine the guitar work on The Sounds of Silence. Written by Ian Campbell, it chronicles the progress of the sun on a typical day, until we realize that this is no typical day and an atomic bomb is about to wreak havoc upon the face of the Earth. Growing darker and more gruesome with each verse, it provides a chilling vision of what the world might be like following that deadly detonation.

I honestly don’t know what is going on with this next selection. Simon and Garfunkel were deeply influenced by Dylan; when Garfunkel first saw these new songs of Simon’s, he described them as “Dylan-esque”. So why do they sound, in this great Dylan anthem, like they are mocking Dylan in all his nasal glory? They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but imitation was anything but in this case. Is that nails-on-a-chalkboard twang really necessary? Both in their careers as a duo and as soloists, Simon and Garfunkel have had a gift for remaking old songs in such a way that they nearly re-invented them, and usually for the better. That is not the case with The Times they Are A-Changin’. They sound like they are trying to become Dylan for the song, but the song would have turned out much better if they had sung it as Simon and Garfunkel. As it is, it’s easily my pick for the gaggiest track, blowing the gospel tunes out of the water.

The album ends with the title cut, a soft and lovely lamentation by a wanted criminal in the arms of his lover for the last time. An altered version of this song was included on a later album under the name Somewhere They Can’t Find Me, but I prefer the quietude and harmony of Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, which is wistful while the other is urgent. This gentle exit is a most pleasant way to end the album, leaving a thirst for more albums to come.

Although this album is crowded with a few songs that seem to have been placed there merely to go with the current trends and fill up space, most of the selections are an excellent example of the tight style which Simon and Garfunkel had already perfected. An extra bonus is the liner notes written by Art Garfunkel in the form of a letter to Paul Simon. Not only does he comment on each of Simon’s songs, we get a glimpse of Paul and Artie as just a couple of typical college-aged buddies. “You know it kills me that you’re in London now, goofing, while I’m here with three term papers ahead of me,” Garfunkel writes towards the beginning. The entire tone is fresh and just beyond the edges of innocent, as the two young men embark on a musical journey to delve more deeply into the most pressing issues of the times, bringing a generation of fans along for the ride.