Volume 12 , Issue 36

Remembering American Folk of The Kingston Trio

Remember the Kingston Trio? Are you of the era of this American Folk trio? My older sisters were in that age group of the late 1950s thru the early 1960s. I remember the album collections they had accumulated and played many times. Whatever happened to those records?

The Kingston Trio came on the scene before my teen years, but I still like listening to their music today. Great songs!

The Kingston Trio consisted of Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds, Dave Guard and John Stewart.

Wikipedia states, "Dave Guard (Donald David Guard, October 19, 1934 - March 22, 1991) and Bob Shane (born Robert Castle Schoen, February 1, 1934) had been friends since junior high school at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii where both had learned to play ukulele in required music classes. They had developed an interest in and admiration for native Hawaiian slack key guitarists like Gabby Pahinui. While in Punahou's secondary school, Shane taught first himself and then Guard the rudiments of the six-string guitar, and the two began performing at parties and in school shows doing an eclectic mix of Tahitian, Hawaiian, and calypso songs.

"After graduating from high school in 1952, Guard enrolled at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California while Shane matriculated at nearby Menlo College. At Menlo, Shane became friends with Nick Reynolds (Nicholas Wells Reynolds, July 27, 1933 - October 1, 2008), a native San Diegan with an extensive knowledge of folk and calypso songs, in part from his guitar-playing father, a career officer in the U.S. Navy. Reynolds was also able to create and sing tenor harmonies (a skill derived in part from family sing-a-longs,) and could play both guitar and bongo and conga drums.

"Shane and Reynolds performed at fraternity parties and luaus for a time, and eventually Shane introduced Reynolds to Guard. The three began performing at campus and neighborhood hangouts, sometimes as a trio but with an aggregation of friends that could swell their ranks to as many as six or seven, according to Reynolds. They usually billed themselves under the name of Dave Guard and the Calypsonians. None of the three at that time had any serious aspirations to enter professional show business, however, and Shane returned to Hawaii following his graduation in late 1956 to work in the family sporting goods business.

"Still in the Bay Area, Guard and Reynolds had organized themselves somewhat more formally into an entity named The Kingston Quartet with friends bassist Joe Gannon and vocalist Barbara Bogue, though as before they were often joined in their performances by other friends.

"At one engagement at Redwood City's Cracked Pot beer garden, they met a young San Francisco publicist named Frank Werber, who had heard of them from a local entertainment reporter. Werber liked the group's raw energy but did not consider them refined enough to want to represent them as an agent or manager at that point, though he left his telephone number with Guard.

"Some weeks later (and following a brief period in which Reynolds was temporarily replaced in the quartet by Don MacArthur), Guard and Reynolds invited Werber to a performance of the group at the Italian Village Restaurant in San Francisco, where Werber was so impressed by the group's progress that he agreed to manage them providing they replace Gannon, in whose professional potential Werber had no faith. Bogue left with Gannon, and Guard, Reynolds, and Werber were unanimous that they should invite Shane to rejoin the now more formally organized band. Shane, who had been performing part-time as a solo act at night in Honolulu, readily assented and returned to the mainland in late February 1957.

"The four drew up a contract as equal partners in Werber's office in San Francisco, deciding first on the name Kingston Trio because it evoked, through its association with Kingston, Jamaica, the calypso music popular at the time, and second on the uniform of three-quarter-length sleeved vertically striped shirts that the group hoped would help their target audience of college students to identify with them." -- WIkipedia - Kingston Trio

The Official Kingston Trio website says, "In 1957 The Kingston Trio emerged from San Francisco's North Beach club scene to take the country by storm, bringing the rich tradition of American folk music into the mainstream for the first time. During the late 50s & early 60s, the Trio enjoyed unprecedented record sales and worldwide fame, while influencing the musical tastes of a generation. Fifty-three years after Tom Dooley shot to the top of the charts, the Trio is still on the road thirty weeks a year, bringing back all the great memories and making new ones."

The Albums recorded from 1958 thru 1961 were:
The Kingston Trio, June 1958
... from the Hungry i, January 1959
Stereo Concert, March 1959
The Kingston Trio At Large, June 1959
Here We Go Again, October 1959
Sold Out, April 1960
String Along, July 1960
The Last Month of the Year, Ocgtober 1960
Make Way, January 1961
Goin' Places, Jun 1961

Some of their first songs were: Tom Dooley, Hard Ain't It Hard, Saro Jane, Sloop John B, Scotch and Soda, Bay of Mexico, Three Jolly Coachmen and Little Maggie.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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