Art Podell

Four years prior to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel signing with Columbia Records—when the pair would likely have gone simply by “Paul and Artie”—the same label already hosted a contrasting act billed as Art & Paul. Art Podell and Paul Potash, both active in New York’s folk circles from the mid- to late 1950s, began performing together in Greenwich Village. Skilled guitarists and songwriters, with Podell excelling especially as an arranger, the pair stood out among the city’s folk acts and landed a Columbia contract in 1960, an era when labels hunted for successors to the Kingston Trio; the company hoped to replicate the success Terry Gilkyson and the Easy Riders had enjoyed with “Marianne.”

The duo recorded two albums for the label, the first of which, Songs of Earth and Sky, later gained recognition as a “lost” classic of the late-’50s/early-’60s folk surge. Its standout track—an adaptation drawn from John Lomax and Alan Lomax’s arrangement of “All the Pretty Horses”—helped the LP attract a modest East Coast cult following and generate sufficient sales to warrant a follow-up, Hangin’, Drinkin’ and Stuff, issued in 1961. That same year the musicians relocated from New York to California in search of opportunities on the West Coast folk circuit, yet dissolved the partnership before year’s end.

In early 1962 Art Podell entered the initial, studio-only lineup of the New Christy Minstrels; their debut album, the sole release by that configuration, generated enough interest to support a second record and the formation of a touring ensemble. Podell remained with the performing version of the group and was viewed by some observers as its leading creative force alongside founder Randy Sparks. Meanwhile Paul Potash signed on with Sparks’ developmental unit, the Back Porch Majority, then advanced to the Christies themselves in 1964, reuniting onstage with his former partner for roughly twelve months.

Podell subsequently collaborated with Jim Helms on the album Jim & Art Sing and Play a Folk Song, which included the traditional piece “Careless Love,” and contributed, alongside Jim Rosmini and others, to Mason Williams’ The Banjo Story. He later moved into production and, working with Nick Woods, oversaw Biff Rose’s The Thorn in Mrs. Rose’s Side for Tetragrammaton; the record introduced “Fill Your Heart,” the song David Bowie would later cover on Hunky Dory. Potash kept performing, once sharing a bill with Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band in California in 1967, and is also reported to have pursued some acting work.