“Pitch-perfect”: the singer who far eclipsed Frank Sinatra in Art Garfunkel’s eyes
While his songwriting ability may not have been enough to propel him towards fame and fortune on its own, it’s something of a blessing that Art Garfunkel had a voice to die for.
When paired up with the songwriting talents of Paul Simon, the duo were able to craft some of the finest pop and folk rock songs of the era, releasing five outstanding albums together and managing to top the Billboard charts on three occasions during their short time together.
What made most of the biggest hits memorable were the ways that Garfunkel could work his way up from a soft whisper to a soaring siren. ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ needs no introduction and stands out as the most enduring and impressive example of what he was capable of delivering through his voice, but there are so many examples of where Garfunkel managed to bring Simon’s compositions to life in a way that his comrade’s voice wouldn’t have been able to deliver in the same way.
You can be a formidable voice and not have the songwriting chops to back it up, and during the era that Garfunkel was growing up, he would have been looking towards many people whose voices did all the talking, relying on someone else’s songwriting abilities to allow them to flourish.
For example, Frank Sinatra is said to have one of the greatest voices of all time and is used to this day as the definition of a true crooner. However, similarly to Garfunkel, he didn’t write much of his own material and was reliant on standards and songs that had been written for him.
Sinatra would have been a great point of reference for Garfunkel in his adolescence while he was discovering his own vocal abilities, but he isn’t the main source of inspiration that the vocalist always looked towards as the prime example of how to make their voice stand out.
Garfunkel’s personal favourite, peculiarly, is someone who was equally adept at singing, performing and composing, and while there may have been plenty to admire in his idol aside from his voice, the element of jazz icon Chet Baker’s craft that stood out to him the most was what he was able to do behind the microphone.
Speaking to MassLive in 2018, he reflected on some of his main vocal inspirations and named a number of people who trumped Sinatra, with Baker in particular standing out from the rest of the field. “He’s known as a great trumpeter, but as a singer, he’s really got it,” he said. “He might be my favourite.”
Garfunkel then doffed his cap to the likes of Kenny Rankin and James Taylor as other high watermarks, but stated that there were very few who were able to excel beyond what they were capable of producing, adding, “These are guys that are pitch-perfect.”
There aren’t many others from this era who had a fraction of the talent that this formidable trio had, but while Rankin, Taylor and Sinatra come close to offering what Baker could do with his honeyed tones, Baker was frankly in a league of his own in whatever he attempted to do.
