Bridge Over Troubled Water: Interpretations of a Classic

It's easy to see why people keep going back to the music of the Sixties. "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is another of the classics from that time, by Simon & Garfunkel. According to Wikipedia the song features lead vocals by Art Garfunkel and a piano accompaniment influenced by gospel music with a "Wall of Sound"-style production. 

The song received five Grammy Awards (I didn't know one song could win that many, but one of them was for being part of the Grammy-winning album of the year by the same name.)

The instrumentation was produced by L.A.'s famous session musicians known as the Wrecking Crew.  The vocals were recorded in New York.

Inspirations for the song came from some interesting places. The concept of the bridge over deep waters was taken from Claude Jeter's 1959 song "Mary Don't You Weep." Another portion of the melody was drawn from the classic hymn "O Sacred Head Now Wounded." It's no wonder that the song can find a home in both secular settings and religious ones.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Paul Simon compared the instrumentation here with the Beatles' "Let It Be." I find it interesting that both albums took their name from these two songs, and also that for each group it was their last studio album before their breakups.

While listening to some Roy Orbison songs on YouTube last night I was quite moved by the song's power in this great vocalist's hands. Which led  me to check out some other artist's renditions. Wow! What a great song. Roy, Elvis and Whitney each knock it out of the park. (Forgive me the cliche metaphor, but Paul Simon likes to wear a baseball cap, so please excuse me.) Make time to enjoy these if you can.

Roy Orbison

Elvis gives it his all.

     

Whitney Houston and CeCe Winans... feel the power.

        

And Art, at the Concert in Central Park

For a big finish, here's one more.
Art and Paul at Madison Square Garden.

Loretta Lynn Left A Legacy

R.I.P. Loretta Lynn

April 14, 1932 – October 4, 2022
The First Lady of Country Music

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As of 2022, Loretta was the most awarded female country recording artist in history. She is also the only female to have won ACM Artist of the Decade honors (1970s). In addition to 24 No. 1 songs and 11 No. 1 albums to her credit, Lynn has won three Grammys, seven American Music Awards, thirteen ACM Awards, eight BMI awards, eight CMA Awards and 26 fan-voted Music City News awards. In 1988 she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Country Music Gospel Hall of Fame in 1999, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2003. In 2008 she became a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award Grammy in 2010,  a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013, and honored as Artist of a Lifetime by CMT in 2018.

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My own roots are Eastern Kentucky. Both my grandfathers did time mining coal in West Virginia. I personally think it's cool that Levon Helm of The Band played her father in the Hollywood film version of her life

Photos on this page courtesy Gary Firstenberg. One of his specialities is
documenting the musical figures who produced the soundtrack of our lives.

EdNote: The first photo at the top of the page is a photo of a photo

that was hanging in one of her barns. Gary did not take the original.