My Little Duo

A while back I wrote about a situation where there were back-to-back Paul McCartney songs in the Top Forty. I heard a similar setup today, from November of 1975, when Art Garfunkel's "I Only Have Eyes for You" was at Number Twenty-Five, while Simon and Garfunkel's "My Little Town" sat at Number Twenty-Four. ("Born to Run" was at Number Twenty-Three.)

The McCartney situation was from the summer of 1976, and Casey claimed that it was the first time a singer had back-to-back songs in the countdown with two different groups, but he should have at least footnoted Artie's accomplishment from the year before. Both songs can be found on Garfunkel's finest solo album, the brilliant Breakaway, but you can't have my copy. (In case I forget to mention it, Artie's birthday is on Wednesday.)

"My Little Town" represented the first of several Simon and Garfunkel reunions after they broke up in 1970 (not counting an appearance at a 1972 benefit concert for George McGovern). In addition to the single, the song also appeared on an EP backed with Simon's "You're Kind" and Garfunkel's great "Rag Doll." The pair also appeared on the second episode of NBC's Saturday Night, as it was called at the time, hosted by Simon, on which they sang "My Little Town."

They also teamed up on the single "Wonderful World," along with James Taylor, in 1977, and then there was the famed 1981 concert in Central Park, which spawned a hit single in "Wake Up Little Susie," followed by a massive tour. The two then attempted a studio reunion on an album tentatively called Think Too Much. They fought, naturally, and eventually Simon wiped all of Garfunkel's vocals off the tracks and released it as a Simon solo album called Hearts and Bones. It flopped, which seems fitting somehow, and that was it for S&G for a long, long time.