Simon Goubert & Ablaye Cissoko

The most comprehensive Simon & Garfunkel library anthology ever assembled, The Complete Albums Collection includes the duo's five studio masterpieces (first released between 1964 and 1970), newly remastered from first generation analog sources, and first-time remasters of The Graduate (the groundbreaking motion picture soundtrack album released in 1968) and the long out-of-print The Concert in Central Park (recorded in 1981).

It's no secret that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel didn't end their partnership on the friendliest terms. Despite a brief reunion every decade or so – most notably in the fall of 1981 at The Concert in Central Park – Simon & Garfunkel were notorious for not speaking to each other, so their reunion at the 2002 Grammy Awards, opening the show with "The Sound of Silence," was a big deal. It was a good performance, too, whetting the appetites of an audience eager for a full-fledged reunion tour, which the duo delivered in 2003 and into 2004…

Okay, here's the problem: in 1975, Elektra released The Best of Carly Simon, which compiled her hits from 1971-1975. Simon then scored a couple more big hits for Elektra ("Nobody Does It Better," "You Belong to Me") before leaving the label in 1979, but not enough to justify another compilation. She had another hit on Warners ("Jesse"), where she spent the early '80s, crapped out on Epic, for whom she made one album in 1985, and revived her career on Arista starting with the Top 40 hit "Coming Around Again" in 1986.

Simon & Garfunkel's first masterpiece, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme was also the first album on which the duo, in tandem with engineer Roy Halee, exerted total control from beginning to end, right down to the mixing, and it is an achievement akin to the Beatles' Revolver or the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, and just as personal and pointed as either of those records at their respective bests. After the frantic rush to put together an LP in just three weeks that characterized the Sounds of Silence album early in 1966, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme came together over a longer gestation period of about three months, an uncommonly extended period of recording in those days, but it gave the duo a chance to develop and shape the songs the way they wanted them.