Simon and Garfunkel

Paul Frederic Simon was born on October 13, 1941 in Newark, New Jersey, moving to Queens in New York City, where while attending elementary school he met New Yorker Arthur Garfunkel who was also born in 1941 on November 5.

Naming themselves Tom and Jerry, in 1957 they first tasted success as recording artists when their song “Hey Schoolgirl” was a minor hit. After graduating from high school, Simon attended Queens College, while Garfunkel chose Columbia University in Manhattan.

Signed by Columbia Records in 1964, Simon and Garfunkel's first album, “Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.” initially received little attention until radio stations began airing “Sound of Silence,” that would eventually climb to the top of the national Hit Parade, giving Simon and Garfunkel their first million selling single in 1966. In that same year it was followed by four more big hits, a second gold record for “Homeward Bound,” “I Am A Rock,” “The Dangling conversation” and “A Hazy Shade of Winter.” In 1967, “At The Zoo” hit the charts with “Scarborough Fair” and another chart topper from the motion picture The Graduate, “Mrs. Robinson.” Radio saturated the airwaves with “The Boxer” in 1969, giving the duo another top ten hit but it was in the next year, 1970, that Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” leaped to the top of the Hit Parade “Cecilia” and “El Condor Pasa” following. “My Little Town” earned more gold in 1975.

Their Greatest Hits album has sold in excess of 15 million copies in the United States alone.

In 1971, their “Bridge Over Troubled Water” album gave them Grammys for Album and Single of the Year as well as Song of the Year.

In 1990 Simon and Garfunkel was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.