Art Garfunkel rediscovers classics
January 3, 2008
My Desert.com
Art Garfunkel, the tall, frizzy-haired half of the '60s singing duo, Simon and Garfunkel, proudly announced last year he loved the Great American Songbook.
He recorded a CD of standards titled "Some Enchanted Evening" and proclaimed, "Before I chased the Beatles with our Simon and Garfunkel albums, before Buddy Holly, doo-wop and the Everly Brothers, there was, for me as a kid, Joe Stafford, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday and these beautiful songs."
When it was announced he would perform Saturday at the McCallum Theatre with the Indian Wells Desert Symphony, it was assumed he would do some of those beautiful songs from the Great American Songbook.
Instead, a Garfunkel spokesman said he only plans to sing one song from "Some Enchanted Evening" - a samba by Antonio Carlos Jobim titled "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars."
The program choice makes one wonder how serious Garfunkel is about his love of standards.
He discussed that subject in a recent telephone interview:
: It was a surprise, right under my nose, that my earliest memories from my parents and from the radio in the house is '40s stuff. It's what you call the Sinatra era, but I never cottoned to Sinatra that much. To my ear, the very early Sinatra that was full of hope and blue skies and a tenor voice was a beautiful singer, but, by the '50s, when he was more stylized with "The Tender Trap" and all, I didn't think he had the great chops.
: Yeah. When he was swinging, I was into doo-wop and rhythm blues and rock 'n' roll - for good reasons, in my opinion. It was more fertile ground. Its rhythm was hipper. Sinatra was landing on the downbeat a lot. To me, it's a little elephant-footed in its style. There were groovier things afoot. (Sings "Johnny B. Goode") That's a different rhythm - very even eighth notes.
: Yes, because it was anathema to appreciate swing. To talk about Nat King Cole was a very square thing to do in the '60s, the '70s, the '80s. So, someone like me, who's caught in that hip trap as a '60s guy, has to take years to relax and look under my nose and go, "I've been doing crooner stuff ever so naturally all my life."
: I guess the fact that all these songs are kicking around in my head. All through life experiences, I've gotten to know them all. Alec Wilder wrote a really good book, "The American Popular Song." He analyzes why we love these songs and their construction. And you just know these. They're in your head. And, with an adult discerning mind, you start appreciating understatement and the depth of love's truths as your heart has been broken. When you get up in years, you connect with these deeper lyrics.
: Yeah, I think melodically Richard Rodgers and Jerome Kern is as good as it gets. Hoagy Carmichael is my kind of writer. I think Harold Arlen is so lyrical of heart. His melodies really come from a very singing heart.
: I guess. Cole Porter - super clever (lyricist) - leaves me cold. I don't get the melodic wind in my sails from him. I look for melody time and again. That's why I'm a Bach nut. Bach's constructions are fabulous melodic riffs gone wild with imitation.
: Yes and no. It made me think, maybe they're receptive to my old idea (to perform an album of standards) now that Rod has proved how viable it is. But that's a terrible way to think. I don't know what it was that made me call Richard Perry and say, "Let's do our album that we've been wanting to do for many years."
: I know. I'm a natch. (Laughs).
: No. It's a historian's question to take it seriously to know the habits of various writers today and to compare them. I'm not scholarly in that way.