Legacy Recordings is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water with the debut release of Live At Carnegie Hall 1969, a four-song EP available for streaming only.
Listen to all four tracks below.
Recorded in November 1969 during a sold-out two-night run at New York’s Carnegie Hall, the EP includes previously unreleased early live versions of “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright,” “The Boxer” and “Song For the Asking.” The recordings from Carnegie Hall capture early performances of songs that Simon and Garfunkel were introducing in concert to their fans, two months before the release of their fifth and final studio album, Bridge Over Troubled Water (originally released January 26, 1970).
Related: The #1 albums of 1970
Says a press release: “Drawing from a wide range of musical influences from roots rock and gospel to soul, jazz and world music, Bridge Over Troubled Water signaled new creative directions and future solo careers for Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.” The album hit #1 on the charts of 10 countries and was 1970’s best-selling album. Bridge Over Troubled Water took home six GrammyAwards including Album of the Year and Best Engineered Recording, while the title track won the Grammy for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Contemporary Song of the Year and the Instrumental Arrangement of the Year in 1971. The album has been certified 8x Platinum by the RIAA and has sold an estimated 25 million copies worldwide.
The album’s title track became Simon and Garfunkel’s top-selling single and signature song, covered by dozens of artists, including Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash with Fiona Apple, and John Legend.
“This is also another new song,” says Garfunkel, introducing the masterpiece.
The stories behind the album and its individual songs are captured in The Harmony Game: The Making of Bridge Over Troubled Water, a documentary film directed by Jennifer Lebeau, featuring interviews with Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel and Roy Halee (who co-produced the album with Simon and Garfunkel), as well as pianist Larry Knechtel, drummer Hal Blaine and other musicians and key contributors to the album. The Harmony Game was originally released on DVD in 2011 as part of Columbia Records’ 40th anniversary edition of Bridge Over Troubled Water. A clip from the documentary of Simon, Garfunkel and Halee recounting the making of Bridge Over Troubled Water may be viewed on YouTube. More clips from the documentary will become available on YouTube in 2020.
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