
Art Garfunkel
Voice of generations
Arthur Ira (Art) Garfunkel was born on November 5, 1941, in Forest Hills, New York, to Rose and Jack Garfunkel. He has two brothers: the older Jules and the younger Jerôme. His ancestors are Moldovan Jews. Jack, a traveling salesman, sensed his son's passion for music and bought Garfunkel a tape recorder. At just four years old, Garfunkel would sit for hours at a tape recorder, singing, listening, and tuning his voice, and then recording it again. "It made me even more interested in music. Being able to sing, and especially record, is simply wonderful," he recalls. At Forest Hills Elementary School, the young Art Garfunkel was known for singing songs in empty hallways and acting in plays. In 6th grade he took part in the school play "Alice in Wonderland" together with classmate Paul Simon.
Tom and Jerry Arthur Ira Garfunkel and Paul Frederic Simon were school friends and initially performed as a duo under the pseudonym Tom & Jerry. They released their first single, "Hey, Schoolgirl," in 1957 under the name Tom & Jerry. The record sold over 150,000 copies, nearly reaching the Top 50. The following year, an album named after the duo was released, which was reissued in 1967. These early works were more closely aligned with rock 'n' roll in the style of the Everly Brothers, while the duo only began to focus on folk rock in the 1960s. After a few television appearances and less successful recordings, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel initially separated in 1959.
Garfunkel & Garfunkel In November 2024, Art Garfunkel and Art Garfunkel Jr. released the very first true father-son album. It is titled Father and Son. The album not only guides the listener through various eras of music history through the selection of tracks, but also carries the common thread: Father and Son, from beginning to end.