Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.

Though they’d had success in 1957 as Tom & Jerry, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel re-emerged in mid-1964 applying their Everly Brothers–styled harmonies to folk music. However, by this point, the folk boom was over. Their versions of traditional tunes like “Peggy-O” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain” were beautifully crafted, but the duo’s future depended on Simon’s songwriting. “He Was My Brother” spoke to the protest movement, but poetic tunes like “Sparrow,” “Bleecker Street,” and “The Sound of Silence” (here un-dubbed) suggested where their music could go. It was producer Tom Wilson’s decision in 1965 to overdub electric instruments onto “Silence” that changed the duo's fortunes forever.