Along with the Kingston Trio, the Limeliters were one of the most successful folk groups of the early 1960s, a time when the folk music revival was in itself a sort of backlash against the anti-establishment rock & roll generation. The original group consisted of Glenn Yarbrough, vocal and guitar (b.1930), Lou Gottlieb, vocal and bass... [+] Read More

Along with the Kingston Trio, the Limeliters were one of the most successful folk groups of the early 1960s, a time when the folk music revival was in itself a sort of backlash against the anti-establishment rock & roll generation. The original group consisted of Glenn Yarbrough, vocal and guitar (b.1930), Lou Gottlieb, vocal and bass (1923-1996), and Alex Hassilev, vocal, guitar, and banjo (b.1932).

In 1959, Gottlieb, a former jazz pianist and member of the folk group the Gateway Singers had just completed his doctoral thesis on 15th century cyclic masses when he heard Hassilev and Yarbrough sing together at Hollywood's Cosmo Alley nightclub. Enchanted with the vocal blend, Gottlieb suggested that the three of them team up to make demos for the Kingston Trio, with Gottlieb himself providing arrangements of traditional folk songs and some original material. The trio jelled so well that they struck out on their own, naming themselves after the Limelite club in Aspen, Colorado, where they had honed their sound and perfected their stage act. That summer, a successful stint at San Francisco's hungry i led them to their recording debut for Elektra and then a series of best sellers for RCA Victor.

As individuals, the Limeliters were each extraordinarily talented, but emotionally incompatible (Hassilev often referred to the group members as "the Bicker Brothers").

Hassilev had a rich, robust voice and was adept at a variety of languages. Gottlieb was an arranger and composer in addition to having a brief career as a stand-up comic. And Yarbrough possessed one of the purest, most exquisite voices on the planet. Unlike many other groups, the Limeliters' individual voices were never lost when singing together. Yarbrough's soaring tenor, Gottlieb's baritone in the middle, and Hassilev's bass-baritone on the bottom blended beautifully, but without losing the uniqueness of each voice. On stage, Gottlieb played stand-up bass and acted as the group's emcee, peppering the act with scholarly witticisms, wry asides, and zany non sequiturs.

Between 1961 and 1963, the Limeliters were one of the hottest acts in show business. They made appearances on television, sang on commercials, and embarked on an exhaustive touring schedule which saw them perform as many as 310 days out of each year. In 1963, the group survived a near-catastrophic plane crash in Provo, Utah, prompting the three to reassess their priorities as performers. Yarbrough was the first to quit, leaving to start his own successful solo career. He had a number 12 charting hit in 1965, "Baby the Rain Must Fall," before losing favor with audiences. For a short while, Ernie Sheldon filled in for Yarbrough before the group finally disbanded in 1965. Hassilev became a producer and actor and Gottlieb moved to Sonoma County in Northern California, where he founded one of the '60s' most notorious hippie communes, the Morningstar Ranch.

In 1973, the original Limeliters reunited and began touring again, albeit to smaller audiences. Yarbrough quit again in 1981 and was replaced by Red Grammer, a talented tenor who easily assumed Yarbrough's role with the group. When Grammer left to pursue a solo career as a children's entertainer, Rick Dougherty joined. The group continued to perform at small venues throughout the '80s and '90s, building up a loyal following consisting mostly of fans from their glory years. Gottlieb's death in 1996 at the age of 72 threatened to put an end to the group's existence, but Hassilev has since kept the flame alive. ~ Cary Ginell, All Music Guide [-] Hide

In the history of popular music, there are a relative handful of performers who have redefined the content of the music at critical points in history: Blind Lemon Jefferson, Benny Goodman & His Orchestra, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin -- people whose music left the landscape, and definition of popular music, altered completely. The... [+] Read More

In the history of popular music, there are a relative handful of performers who have redefined the content of the music at critical points in history: Blind Lemon Jefferson, Benny Goodman & His Orchestra, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin -- people whose music left the landscape, and definition of popular music, altered completely. The Kingston Trio were one such group, transforming folk music into a hot commodity and creating a demand -- where none had existed before -- for young men (sometimes with women) strumming acoustic guitars and banjos and singing folk songs and folk-like novelty songs in harmony, of which the Trio themselves were the defining ensemble for the next five years.

On a purely commercial level, from 1957 until 1963, the Kingston Trio were the most vital and popular folk group in the world. Their record was incontestable, one of the most popular acts in the history of Capitol Records and the American record industry, making them the most popular folk group in history, surpassing the Weavers' earlier success. Equally important, the trio -- Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds, and Bob Shane -- made folk music immensely popular among many millions of listeners who previously had ignored it.

The group's success transcended their actual sales. Without the enviable record of popularity and sales that they built up for folk music, it is unlikely that Columbia Records would ever have had any impetus to allow John Hammond to sign an unknown singer/guitarist named Bob Dylan, or to put Weavers co-founder Pete Seeger under contract; for Warner Bros. to record the Greenwich Village-based trio Peter, Paul & Mary; or Vanguard Records to do as many albums as they actually ended up recording with the re-formed Weavers in the late '50s and early '60s.

The group was founded in Palo Alto, CA, by Dave Guard (1934-1991), a graduate student from Stanford University, and two of his close friends, Bob Shane (born 1934) and Nick Reynolds (born 1933), from Menlo College. Guard and Shane had both been born in Hawaii, and had originally played together in high school in Honolulu. Reynolds hailed from Coronado, CA, the son of a career Navy officer, and had previously attended San Diego State and the University of Arizona before enrolling at Menlo College as a business major. He first spotted Shane asleep in the back of the hall during a very boring lecture on accounting, and the two became friends. They soon started hanging out, drinking, and chasing women together, and this, in turn, led to playing music, initially as a way of being popular at parties -- Shane's guitar and Reynolds' bongos became a fixture at local frat gatherings, and after a few weeks of this, Shane introduced Reynolds to Dave Guard.

It turned out that Hawaiian music fit in perfectly with the luaus that people were throwing locally, and Shane and Guard taught Reynolds some genuine Hawaiian songs. The group was playing at a local tavern two nights a week, but the formation of the Kingston Trio was still not quite in place. Shane returned to Hawaii for a time to work for his father's sporting goods company, and tried to become the future island state's answer to Elvis Presley as a solo act -- meanwhile, Guard and Reynolds began playing with Joe Gannon on bass and singer Barbara Bogue, and became Dave Guard & the Calypsonians. Reynolds then left for a time following his graduation and was replaced by Don McArthur in a group that was known as the Kingston Quartet.

Fate stepped in when a local publicist who'd seen the Calypsonians offered to help out the group, but only if they got rid of Gannon, whose bass playing was less than rudimentary. When he left, Bogue exited as well, and in the resulting shuffle, Reynolds and Shane (back all the way from Hawaii) were brought back into the group, now rechristened the Kingston Trio.

Their initial approach to music was determined by the skills that each member brought or, more accurately, didn't bring to the trio -- Bob Shane sang most of the lead parts simply because he had no familiarity with harmony singing, while Nick Reynolds sang a third above the melody, and Guard handled whatever was left above or below. Guard had taken some banjo lessons, but otherwise they were completely self-taught on their instruments, with Shane teaching Guard his first guitar chords while they were still in high school. Reynolds swapped his ukulele for a tenor guitar.

They were booked into the Purple Onion, a leading night spot in San Francisco, opening for comedienne Phyllis Diller. Guard then sent out postcards to 500 people that all three of them knew at Stanford and Menlo, inviting them to a week's worth of shows at the Purple Onion. The result was a series of sell-out shows, and a one-week engagement that was doubled, before the Trio got its own headlining gig at the club, lasting five months from June to December of 1957. During that summer, the group was spotted by Bob Hope's agent, Jimmy Saphier, who brought demo tapes of the trio to Dot and Capitol Records -- the latter label sent producer Voyle Gilmore, who had previously recorded Frank Sinatra and the Four Freshmen, to the Purple Onion, and a seven-year contract was signed soon after.

The group spent the next few months intensively rehearsing, refining, and polishing their act as they went along, secure in their position at the Purple Onion. They recognized that musical ability alone was not going to keep audiences entertained, and they quickly developed a comic stage banter, which grew out of their own personalities, and learned how to pace themselves, their songs, and their banter for maximum effect, and also how to make it sound spontaneous to audiences night after night.

The group followed the Purple Onion engagement with a national tour that took them to the Holiday Hotel in Reno, NV, Mr. Kelly's in Chicago, and the Village Vanguard in New York, all of them successful appearances. During this tour, the group recorded their self-titled debut album in a series of sessions held over the three days. That record contained a brace of classic Kingston Trio songs, including "Scotch and Soda," "Hard, Ain't It Hard," and "Tom Dooley." The latter song, picked up by a deejay in Salt Lake City who began playing it, became a single in July of 1958 -- it spent October through January in the Billboard Top Ten, selling over three million copies, and becoming, in the estimation of historian Bill Bush, one of that handful of records, such as Elvis' "Heartbreak Hotel" and the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand," that transformed the musical landscape. In the process, the trio earned appearances on The Dinah Shore Show and The Kraft Music Hall. "Tom Dooley" was so successful that it became the basis for a feature film, The Legend of Tom Dooley -- a sort of low-budget variant on Love Me Tender -- starring Michael Landon as the doomed title character.

Their residence in San Francisco was now at the much more prestigious Hungry I. It was there that they recorded their second album, before a live audience in the summer of 1958. The album sold well despite the fact that it broke little new ground, merely showcasing the group's engaging interaction with their audience and some spirited singing. At Large, the trio's third album, was their first done in stereo, and the first recording on which the group began to change their sound, advancing it significantly from their roots. There was extensive use of overdubbing, with multiple voices, guitars, and banjos, so that there were upward of a half-dozen trio "members" heard at any one time singing and playing. By that time, they had broadened their repertory as well, to embrace R&B as well as folk songs. The trio made the cover of Life magazine on August 3, 1959, and were voted the Best Group of the Year for 1959 in the pages of both Billboard and Cashbox magazines, the twin recording industry bibles, as well as two Grammy awards.

None of this exactly pleased the serious folk audience, who felt that the Kingston Trio, in popularizing traditional songs, also cheapened them. Although the group got a reasonably enthusiastic reception at the Newport Folk Festival, they were never embraced by the folk audience of the late '50s. There was also probably some professional resentment, owing to the fact that these three college graduates in their twenties, who had never paid their dues in the labor or anti-Nazi struggles of the 1930s and '40s, or endured the frosty anti-Left political atmosphere of the early and mid-'50s, were suddenly making hundreds of thousands of dollars with the very same repertories that these serious folkies had performed for decades.

The group was, however, immensely popular with almost every segment of the mass audience, but most of all among college students, who found both relaxation and validation in their mix of folk songs, humor, and good spirits. They were sufficiently well liked by older listeners, and embraced by younger audiences to justify their appearances on television series such as The Jack Benny Show (where they mimed to their recordings of "I'm Going Home" and "Tijuana Jail," the latter sung on a set made up as -- you guessed it -- a Tijuana jail).

By the early '60s, there were lots of Kingston Trio imitators running around: the Limeliters (featuring Glenn Yarborough), who actually were contemporaries of the trio; the Highwaymen (from Wesleyan University), who scored big with "Michael"; Bud & Travis; the Journeymen, whose ranks included John Phillips and Dick Weissman, who were probably the most promising of them all; the Halifax Three (with Denny Doherty) from Canada; and, on the "big-band" folk side, the New Christy Minstrels under Randy Sparks, and the Serendipity Singers from the University of Colorado; the Big 3 (with Cass Elliot) and, later, the Shilos (featuring Gram Parsons), all capable of recording popular versions of old folk songs. None matched the trio's exposure or sales, but there was plenty of work to go around in those days, in any case -- folk music was what was happening, and other record labels and folk clubs were willing to try anything to imitate Capitol's success with the Trio. Even Roulette Records, best known for rock & roll acts and as a recording haven for veteran jazz acts such as Count Basie, had a resident folk trio in the Cumberland Three, featuring a singer/songwriter/guitarist named John Stewart. This era was later recalled and satirized in Christopher Guest's comedy A Mighty Wind, in which the Kingston Trio and other collegiate-type folk groups of the period were parodied in the guise of "the Folksmen."

The trio's record of hits continued unabated for the next two years, into 1961 -- according to Bill Bush, they accounted for 20 percent of Capitol Records' profits for the entire year of 1960, during a period when the label's roster also included such legends (and sales powerhouses) as Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. They defined the entire folk-pop genre in much the same way that the Beach Boys defined surf music and the Beatles later defined both the so-called "Merseybeat" sound and the entire British Invasion. Their influence extended far beyond their corner of the music marketplace -- the Trio not only recorded an enviable array of hits but also introduced to the world a number of songs that became hits in the hands of others, including "It Was a Very Good Year" during the 1950s and, in the early '60s, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." As a reflection of the group's impact, their manager, Frank Werber, was one of the most influential behind-the-scenes figures in music, occupying a position in early-'60s popular music not too far from that occupied by Beatles manager Brian Epstein in England from 1963 onward -- he could literally give some aspiring musician a good living and a future at the stroke of a pen, and record labels were eager to audition his clients as potential recording artists.

The Trio's youthful exuberance and mix of upbeat sensibilities and traditional songs seemed perfectly of a piece with the dawn of the Kennedy administration, and their music a veritable soundtrack for college life during the era. Before the new president had even taken office, however, the Kingston Trio faced its first major crisis. In January of 1961, amid growing differences over the musical direction of the group, Dave Guard left the Kingston Trio. The most serious and cerebral member of the group, Guard was the one who knew a lot of the folk songs, especially the songs from other countries, that the Trio had performed and recorded. His very sophistication, however, resulted in his departure, out of a desire to explore folk music on a broader level, with fewer concessions to popular taste. After leaving the Trio, Guard founded a quartet called the Whiskeyhill Singers with Judy Henske, David "Buck" Wheat (who had been the Trio's bassist), and Cyrus Faryar -- their one album for Capitol, done in a style very different from that of the Trio, met with little success, and the group later appeared on the soundtrack of the blockbuster Western How the West Was Won (1962).

The Kingston Trio carried on, however, its success unabated, with new member John Stewart, beginning in early 1961. Stewart, a onetime aspiring rock & roller who had switched to folk music and gotten two of his songs recorded by the Trio, was part of the Cumberland Three when Guard left the Kingston Trio. He was brought into the Kingston Trio following a lag of several months while Shane and Reynolds took time off -- their first break since 1958 -- and his arrival reinvigorated the Trio personally and professionally. Beginning with "Take Her out of Pity," a group original featuring Stewart's first lead vocal with the Trio, and such Stewart compositions as "Coming From the Mountains," the group continued evolving musically, and their records kept selling.

Fate intervened soon after he arrived when the group happened to catch a performance by the trio Peter, Paul & Mary, and heard their rendition of a Pete Seeger song entitled "Where Have All the Flowers Gone." The Kingston Trio duly recorded their own version of the song, which marked a new era for the group -- though the Trio had avoided being topical in a confrontational way, they had added Woody Guthrie songs such as "Pastures of Plenty" to their repertory during the Guard era, and recorded the anti-Nazi ballad "Reuben James" on their first album with Stewart, and introduced some politics in their concerts as time went by; College Concert, recorded in December of 1961, included the comment in the intro of "Goin' Away for to Leave You" describing a piece of square dance music requiring the dancer to throw one's partner "as far right as possible" as "the John Birch Polka," a reference to the ultra-right wing John Birch Society (whose followers believed, among other things, that President [and former General of the Army] Dwight Eisenhower was a communist stooge).

The Trio's version of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" reached number 21, not as high a place as many of their earlier singles, on the pop charts, but it also got picked up by a new category of radio station and listener, making number four on the Billboard Easy Listening chart. More than that, as a song of social protest and serious intent, it became the favorite Trio song for millions of younger folk listeners who had come along in the years since "Tom Dooley." What's more, the timing of the single could not have been better if it had been planned -- it gave the previously apolitical group an antiwar statement to their credit on the pop charts, just as American college campuses were slowly becoming politicized again for the first time since the 1940s; and although American troops' involvement in combat in Vietnam was still a few years away, the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962 spurred a small but vocal antiwar movement into existence, whose members often overlapped with the folk music audience.

The trio was still doing standing-room-only business into 1962 and early 1963 -- by then they'd even recorded one song that expressed the goals and hopes of the burgeoning civil rights movement, "Road to Freedom" on the album #16. The mere fact that it was their 16th album posed problems for the Trio, however -- coming up behind them were performing groups that were more directly political than they were, and more attuned to the next wave of folk music. Where the Trio did Seeger and Guthrie songs, other performers, most notably Peter, Paul & Mary, had picked up on the compositions of Guthrie's self-appointed successor, Bob Dylan, and were soon topping the charts and raising the public consciousness with recordings of "Blowin' in the Wind" and other songs.

The Kingston Trio, by contrast, still had pure entertainment as a big part of their image and purpose, and looked too much like part of the establishment. It was a problem similar to that of the Chad Mitchell Trio, rivals to the Kingston Trio, who had embraced some of Dylan's work (but, thanks to a producer's misjudgment, never issued any of it as singles), and who were known to be "irreverent" -- "irreverent" was fine for comics and entertainers, and acceptable to parents, but it made the Mitchell Trio and the Kingston Trio seem like establishment lackeys, while Dylan (and, to a lesser degree, Phil Ochs) were generating in-your-face challenges to a ton of social and political assumptions that helped hold campuses (or, at least, the communities where they were based) together, in Dylan's case in a voice that was equal parts Woody Guthrie, Dave Van Ronk, and Furry Lewis, and none of it "pretty" in the traditional sense that middle-class audience defined pretty.

By 1962, there was a split in the folk music audience. On one side was the newly identified topical folk audience, principally younger college students and more serious high-school students, augmented by older activist-oriented types who had kept their heads down and their profiles low for most of the late '50s. They identified with Seeger, Guthrie, Lee Hays, and the leftist/union background of the Almanac Singers, which extended into modern politics in antiwar sentiment and a deepening involvement in the civil rights movement. They didn't constitute a majority of listeners, even on many college campuses, but they were committed to folk music and their dedicated attendance at concerts and clubs amplified their influence. On the other side were the pop-folk listeners, or what the leftist listeners would have called the right-wing folk audience. It wasn't that groups like the Kingston Trio or the New Christy Minstrels were right-wing (even if the Minstrels' first Columbia album featured a quote endorsing them from former President Dwight Eisenhower -- Ike was hardly an ideologue, but it would be difficult to imagine him endorsing Bob Dylan's first album, also issued on Columbia), so much as simply offering music that -- the occasional topical, purposeful song aside -- tended to be upbeat and enjoyable without a lot of heavy-lifting in the analysis department. Others would say that the Kingston Trio and their like didn't exploit folk music for political purposes.

The Trio might've survived the loss of the folk listeners, and gotten through this period with their audience of middle-of-the-road college students, augmented with younger children (whose parents always regarded folk music as a safe haven), and older listeners, except that those middle-brow college students had no real commitment to folk music; they liked what sounded good to them, and by early 1963, they were ready to move on to other sounds. The kids going to college in 1962 and 1963, after all, had grown up with rock & roll as part of their musical environment, and while the student attending college in, say, 1957-1961 might've thought of Elvis Presley or Jerry Lee Lewis or Chuck Berry as beneath him, the college student of the early '60s was a lot more flexible.

And just about then, a new wave of rock & roll acts had begun emerging, heralded by the Beach Boys (ironically, also a Capitol act, and who wore striped shirts remarkably like those of the Kingston Trio), the Kingsmen, and similar others. Along with a growing number of R&B-based acts, this music began drawing away the more boisterous, fun-loving segment of the college audience that had always been part of the Trio's core fandom. The situation that the group faced was summed up, albeit in hindsight, in the movie Animal House, in the toga party scene. A drunk Bluto Blutarsky (John Belushi) comes staggering down the stairs, passing a folksinger serenading a group of coeds with "The Cherry Song" ("I gave my love a cherry that had no stone...."), reaches over, smashes the singer's guitar to bits, and stumbles on, muttering, "sorry," while Sam Cooke's "Twistin' the Night Away" plays in the background.

With the college audience gone, all that the Trio could find as listeners were the folkies. But on that stage, they found themselves undercut by the likes of Bob Dylan on the left and Peter, Paul & Mary from the center. The Kingston Trio found themselves swamped by a wave of relevance and topicality on one side and their seeming musical irrelevance on the other. Their sales plummeted toward the end of 1963, and the arrival of the Beatles and the British Invasion in early 1964 sealed their fate. Capitol Records clearly had bigger fish to fry, and in the late spring of that year they and the label parted company.

The Trio continued recording and performing, first for Decca before calling it quits in June of 1967. Ironically, they still had an ear for good songs -- "I'm Going Home" was as fine a folk-style single as anyone recorded in 1964, and they subsequently did excellent recordings of works such as Tom Paxton's "The Last Thing on My Mind" and "Where I'm Bound," and Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain." But the group that had so embodied the confidence and boldness of the Kennedy years seemed totally out of place in Lyndon Johnson's America, with its campuses torn by antiwar protests and its inner cities ablaze in racial strife. Ironically, the same month that the Beatles and Capitol Records were to release yet another album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, that would effect a seismic shift in popular music, few people noticed the Trio's farewell gig at the Hungry I in San Francisco on June 17. Stewart went on to become a very successful songwriter ("Daydream Believer") and recording artist ("Gold"). Nick Reynolds left the music business, moving to Oregon, where he ranched sheep and ran a theater, among other activities. Dave Guard remained active as a musician until his death from cancer in March of 1991, writing several music instruction books and becoming deeply involved with what had become known as world music.

Bob Shane had opposed the breakup, however, and in 1972 re-formed the Kingston Trio (initially as the New Kingston Trio), amid the same '50s nostalgia boom that had already given performers like Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley new careers. By the late '70s, with George Grove and Roger Gambill joining Shane, the group had found a small but enthusiastic audience. In 1981, as part of a concert taped for a public television broadcast, the current and former group members gathered together into a sort of Kingston Trio mega-group (à la Yes on Union), of Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds, Dave Guard, John Stewart, George Grove, and Roger Gambill, with Mary Travers as host, with Lindsey Buckingham -- a longtime Trio fan -- as special guest. The untimely death of Gambill in the late '80s led to Nick Reynolds rejoining, and the Kingston Trio has kept going, as a sort of "folk oldies" outfit, into 1999. A current version of the group, featuring Shane, Grove, and new member Bob Haworth (born 1946), who succeeded Nick Reynolds on the latter's retirement in 1999, continued working through 2004, nearly 50 years after Guard, Shane, and Reynolds first started singing together. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide [-] Hide

The most popular folk group of the 1960s, Peter, Paul & Mary in later decades have also proved themselves to be among the most durable music acts in history. Their longevity dwarfs that of the Weavers, while the fact that the trio continues to be associated with a major record label (Warner Bros.) after decades in the business sets them apart... [+] Read More

The most popular folk group of the 1960s, Peter, Paul & Mary in later decades have also proved themselves to be among the most durable music acts in history. Their longevity dwarfs that of the Weavers, while the fact that the trio continues to be associated with a major record label (Warner Bros.) after decades in the business sets them apart from rivals like the Kingston Trio and the Brothers Four. Then again, perhaps it isn't so surprising -- Peter, Paul & Mary's roots run deeper than almost any other folk act one might care to name, while their appeal crosses audience lines that other acts couldn't (and can't) even approach.

Peter, Paul & Mary were part of the 1960s folk revival, but they can trace their roots and inspiration back to music and events from the late '40s, and the founding of the Weavers. In 1948, the musical and political left had been galvanized behind the presidential campaign of former Vice President Henry Wallace and his running mate, Senator Glen Taylor. In the wake of that ticket's defeat that year, in the course of trying to pick up the pieces, singer/composers Lee Hays and Pete Seeger, whose history together went back to the early '40s, and a group called the Almanac Singers, joined with Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert in forming the Weavers. They subsequently found themselves with the top-selling record in the country, Goodnight, Irene, and for the next two years, the Weavers entertained millions and brought folk music to the public consciousness in a new and vital way through recordings such as "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine." Then, as word of the members' personal leftist political histories began circulating, their bookings came to a halt -- ironically enough, the Weavers as a performing group were virtually apolitical in their songs and presentation, but that didn't save them from being blacklisted by the entertainment industry.

They broke up in late 1952, but they left behind two seeds planted in American popular culture. One, deriving from their success, was a modest folk song revival, in some small clubs and especially on college campuses, mostly as entertainment; and the other, a byproduct of their blacklisting, was the coalescing of newly vital, very politically focused branch of folk music. The latter existed as an underground phenomenon, "apart" from a few relatively friendly locales such as New York City's Greenwich Village; it was invisible to most Americans, but it provided a modest living for older performers, and drew and nurtured new, younger talent.

The entertainment branch manifested itself in the guise of acts like the Easy Riders and their younger successors the Kingston Trio, the Limeliters, the Brothers Four, and the Highwaymen, trios and quartets of male singers who brought a smooth veneer to the music. Each of them had their moment -- and sometimes much more than a moment -- in the sun and on the charts beginning in the late '50s. Older performers such as Pete Seeger of the Weavers (as well as the reunited group itself), Ed McCurdy, and Oscar Brand were also around, selling fewer records but making more serious, purposeful records, aimed at smaller audiences. And younger, grittier performers such as Eric Von Schmidt, Dave Van Ronk, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott were also working and recording. And in 1962 and 1963 came the big-band folk outfits the New Christy Minstrels and the Serendipity Singers, who applied elaborate arrangements, utilizing up to nine singers, to folk melodies.

It was against this backdrop, from the late '40s onward, that Mary Travers (b. November 9, 1936, Louisville, KY), Peter Yarrow (b. May 31, 1938, New York, NY), and Paul Stookey (b. December 30, 1937, Baltimore, MD), all came of age. Travers, the daughter of journalists, was raised in Greenwich Village, and was both politically and musically aware; she'd made her first recordings while still in high school, during 1954, in a chorus backing Pete Seeger for Folkways Records. She became a member of the Song Swappers, doing albums of international folk songs and camp songs, and also participated in a stage production, The Next President, written by and starring topical comedian Mort Sahl. As a singer, she was heavily influenced by Ronnie Gilbert of the Weavers and also by Jo Mapes, a bluesy white folksinger from Los Angeles who'd emerged in the mid-'50s.

Paul Stookey, born Noel Paul Stookey, had become a huge fan of jazz and what was later called R&B in the mid- to late '40s, took up guitar, and had formed his first band, the Birds of Paradise, in high school during the early '50s. He continued singing in college, and also discovered two additional talents, as a raconteur and as a standup comic, with a special knack for improvising sound effects. He gravitated to Greenwich Village, where he began to learn about folk music. He and Travers became friends and occasionally performed and composed music together. Mostly, however, he did his comedy at local clubs and she made her living working at Elaine Starkman's boutique on Bleecker Street. (Starkman, later a pioneering art gallery owner in New York's SoHo, was a well-known Village designer who made the gown Travers wore for her first wedding. In 1961, part of Stookey's comedy act was captured in Jack O'Connell's film Greenwich Village Story, another part of which was also shot at the Starkman boutique, though Travers was never glimpsed).

Peter Yarrow was a graduate of Cornell University who fell into music while serving as a teaching assistant. By the end of 1959, he was playing in Greenwich Village and, the following year, was booked on a CBS network television show about folk music, during which he met Albert Grossman. Grossman, who went on to manage Bob Dylan and the Band, proposed the idea to Yarrow of forming a trio that would offer serious folk songs, but utilize the same kind of mixed male/female voices as the Weavers, and also the humor of the Limeliters, and the overall spirit of fun found in acts like the Kingston Trio. Yarrow and Grossman approached Travers, and Stookey came aboard last, dropping his first name in favor of his better-sounding middle name Paul, and Peter, Paul & Mary was born. With the guidance of arranger Milt Okun, who had worked with Harry Belafonte and the Chad Mitchell Trio, they put together a three-part vocal sound that was distinctive and, after seven months of careful preparation, the group emerged to instant acclaim in Greenwich Village.

They were signed to Warner Bros., and their first, self-titled LP was released in March of 1962. It was accompanied by a single, "Lemon Tree," that rose to number 35 on the charts late that spring. This was a good beginning, but it was their second single, "If I Had a Hammer," that marked their breakthrough. The song, written by Seeger and Hays in the days of the Weavers, was a rousing number with great hooks and a memorable chorus, and also a definite (yet not threatening) philosophical and political edge. As topical songs go, its timing was perfect -- in late 1962, the civil rights movement was becoming a concern to a growing number of middle-class onlookers; "If I Had a Hammer" embodied this zeitgeist in its most idealistic form and, with its upbeat, soulful performance -- which made it seductive even to those listeners who cared little about the political controversy of the times -- the single hit number ten on the charts. It also won the trio their first two Grammy Awards, for Best Performance by a Vocal Group and Best Folk Recording.

In their first six months of existence, Peter, Paul & Mary, working in a somewhat more favorable political climate, had managed to do what the Weavers never had a chance to do, bringing political concerns to the public through song. And it was a massive public, owing to the fact that PP&M also had a foot in the entertainment side of the folk song revival -- their music had a decidedly serious edge, but it and the group were also as much fun to listen to as anything the Limeliters or the Highwaymen were doing. Their stage act, as captured on the In Concert album, poked fun at what they did and at themselves, and one couldn't help but laugh at Stookey's comedy, which drew on music, self-generated sound effects, and a self-deprecating manner second only to Woody Allen (then a standup comic himself). Additionally, although this has seldom been discussed in retrospect, they had Mary Travers, who not only had a big voice that helped make the records extraordinary, but was also drop-dead gorgeous, and a great asset in their photographs, television appearances, and concerts.

The overall effect, between the entertainment and the songs, was as though the Kingston Trio had suddenly started doing the repertory of the Almanac Singers, and people were listening. Phil Ochs would attempt a similar but less successful approach to mixing popular music and ideology with his Gold Suit Tour, trying to turn Elvis Presley into Che Guevara. But John Phillips, at that time a folky himself as a member of the Journeymen, would perfect the formula behind PP&M's visual appeal in 1966 with the Mamas the Papas, by putting his wife, Michelle, an ex-model, out front in that lineup.

With "If I Had a Hammer" wafting over the AM airwaves, the Peter, Paul & Mary LP rose to number one and subsequently spent years on the charts. Their second album, Moving, released in January of 1963, got off to a slightly slower start, but it found its way to number two and a 99-week run with help from "Puff (The Magic Dragon)," a song that Peter Yarrow had written in college. The single rose to number two that spring and became one of the most beloved children's songs of all time, as well as the trio's passport through any potential controversy.

It was on the heels of that year's success that Bob Dylan entered the group's orbit. The young folksinger and songwriter -- who came under Grossman's management in 1963 -- hadn't made much impact with his own recordings on Columbia Records; his lyrics were too piercing and his voice too bluesy, in an environment dominated by much smoother folk sounds. PP&M, however, had no problem with public acceptance, and they took Dylan's song "Blowin' in the Wind" to the public in a way that he never could have. Their recording, released in June of 1963, was an instant hit, shipping over 300,000 copies in less than two weeks -- many times the number of records that Dylan himself had sold up that point -- and eventually rising to number two on the charts. Once more, the trio seemed to grab the moment in history, politics, and art with a song. The era of public activism over civil rights, directed at the administration of President Kennedy, was rising to new heights, and "Blowin' in the Wind" embodied the spirit of the time. In one fell swoop, it established Bob Dylan as the new conscience of a generation, and PP&M as the voice of that conscience, culminating with their performance of the song at the same August 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his I Have A Dream speech.

The trio's third album, In the Wind, which was released in October 1963, not only hit number one on the charts but pulled their two previous albums back into the Top Ten with it. Up to this point, all of the trio's successes took place during a relatively quiet time in popular music, in which there was little distraction from rock & roll. With the exception of Elvis Presley and a handful of newer acts such as the Beach Boys and Del Shannon, the music was going through one of its periodic flat periods, which had left the field open to folk acts like Peter, Paul & Mary. All of that changed as 1964 dawned.

Suddenly, PP&M found themselves competing with the Beatles and other groups out of England, playing a new, forceful, and relatively sophisticated brand of rock & roll. Peter, Paul & Mary were the only folk-revival group to survive the British Invasion and the ensuing folk-rock boom with their audience and visibility largely intact. Their record sales slackened somewhat, especially their singles, which had a hard time competing on AM radio with the sounds of the British Invasion, and it was three years before they would enjoy another Top Ten hit. Their albums, however, continued selling well, and their bookings never dropped off.

One of the reasons for their continued success, popularity, and relevance was a series of political and historical events separate from the music. The civil rights movement was still going strong as the battleground shifted from the Lincoln Memorial to the back roads of Mississippi -- where three college students who had come to help register black voters were murdered in 1964 -- to the halls of Congress. The murder of President Kennedy in November of 1963 and Lyndon Johnson's ascent to the presidency began a series of events that finally forced meaningful civil rights legislation out of Congress. Even as that battle continued raging in the streets, from Birmingham, AL, to Cicero, IL, and other points north. Once the laws were on the books, however, Johnson's presidency also opened up a new political wound on the American landscape with his escalation of the Vietnam War. In that uneasy environment, Peter, Paul & Mary had the history of involvement, the credentials, and the credibility to address this new issue in ways that, say, the Kingston Trio never could have, even if they'd wanted to. Moreover, their records had a way of not only staying relevant -- "If I Had a Hammer" was as topical in 1965 as it had been in 1962, but it was still fun to sing around a campfire -- but evolving in their relevancy; as the Vietnam War ran on, and draft notices and departures for the military and service overseas became more commonplace, cuts like the beautiful "500 Miles," off of their debut album, took on deeply personal resonances for tens, and then hundreds of thousands of people.

For the remainder of the decade, the trio walked a fine line, appealing to liberals and anti-war activists, and raising the consciousnesses of the interested, but also entertaining middle-of-the-road listeners, and especially to parents who felt their music was safe for younger children. They were accomplishing precisely what the Weavers had set out to do a decade and a half earlier (and, not coincidentally, also exactly what the Weavers' political opponents had feared the latter group would do, spreading liberal ideas and politics on the popular landscape with pretty music).

Their commercial fortunes and mass appeal remained intact into the second half of the decade. The album In Concert, an unprecedented (for a folk group) double LP, hit number four during the summer and fall of 1964, and the group's next studio LP, A Song Will Rise got to number eight in the spring of 1965. At the same time, however, its highest-charting single, For Loving Me," only reached number 30. See What Tomorrow Brings peaked at number 11 in late 1965, their first placement outside of the Top Ten with an LP, but hardly unrespectable. By 1966, PP&M were feeling the pressure to embellish their music, however, and began adding significant numbers of backup musicians to their records, and exploring more rock-oriented sounds, on The Peter, Paul & Mary Album and, later, Album 1700. Those albums were considered solidly competitive in the musical environment of 1966 and 1967, amid the sounds of folk-rock and psychedelic rock of the era, and both have held up better than those by most of the competition, mostly owing to the quality of the music and the songs. From the beginning of their history, the trio displayed an uncanny ear for great songs and songwriters -- Stookey had steered Grossman to Bob Dylan before many people in Greenwich Village had even heard of him. And in early 1962, before their debut album had even been released, the Kingston Trio had picked up a then-new Pete Seeger song, Where Have All the Flowers Gone," from one of the group's live performances and had a hit with it. During the years 1965-1966, Peter, Paul & Mary gave the first serious airings to the music of Gordon Lightfoot ("For Lovin' Me"), Laura Nyro ("When I Die"), and John Denver ("For Baby (Goes Bobbie)"), interspersed with the occasional unrecorded Dylan tune, such as When the Ship Comes In" and "Too Much of Nothing." Their sales might not have matched the chart-soaring days of 1963, but the albums had the class, beauty, and substance to stand the test of time.

And when they caught the moment again with a song, the trio proved that they could sell records with the best of them. "I Dig Rock 'n' Roll Music," written by Paul Stookey, brought PP&M back to the upper reaches of the charts and heavy AM radio play with a number nine single in the fall of 1967, right in the middle of the psychedelic boom. The song, which parodied the styles of the Beatles, the Mamas & the Papas, and Donovan, was not only catchy and memorable, but also a reminder to the public that, for all of their devotion to causes and issues, Peter, Paul & Mary was a very funny group as well. For much of the year that followed this commercial comeback, the group was involved in politics, in the form of Senator Eugene McCarthy's anti-war campaign for the White House. They appeared on behalf of McCarthy, and even released a record supporting him. McCarthy's candidacy ultimately failed, in a year that also saw the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, though one personal, positive by-product of the peace campaign was that Peter Yarrow ended up marrying the senator's daughter.

In 1969, they returned to the middle of the charts again with Yarrow's "Day Is Done," a surprisingly autumnal work. They also chalked up another Grammy Award that year for Peter, Paul & Mommy, an album of children's songs that became a mainstay of their catalog, reaching generation after generation of parents and children. During the summer of 1969, Warner Bros. got word that DJs around the country had begun playing one of the tracks off of the then two-year-old Album 1700, "Leaving on a Jet Plane," authored by John Denver. Released that September, the single "Leaving on a Jet Plane" peaked at number one, the trio's only chart-topping single, and also pulled Album 1700 back onto the list of top-selling LPs.

By 1970, PP&M had played many hundreds of concerts together and had spent nine years in harness to each other. It was inevitable that there would be a split at some point, given their different, evolving lives. Mary Travers was now the mother of two daughters, Yarrow was newly married, and Stookey, in addition to wanting to work with new and different musical sounds, had developed a serious belief in Christianity. Amid a flurry of sales behind "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and the release in the spring of Ten Years Together: The Best of Peter, Paul & Mary (which rose to number 15), the trio completed their concert obligations and announced in the fall of 1970 that they were taking a year's sabbatical from Peter, Paul & Mary.

The next eight years saw the three musicians release various solo recordings that failed to catch the public's attention in anything resembling PP&M's impact. Mary Travers continued working in a folk-pop vein for a time, while Peter Yarrow wrote topical songs dealing with the politics of the time, and Paul Stookey proved the most adventurous of the three musically, exploring harder rock sounds as well as jazz, and delving into Christian-oriented music. They moved around each other's orbits, appearing on each other's albums occasionally and even reuniting on behalf of George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, but it was clear by the late '70s that none of them had enough of an audience on his own to sustain a full-time performing career. Travers moved from Warner Bros. to Chrysalis Records, and to a very brief stay with the Arista label, all without any hits, while Yarrow enjoyed a hit as a songwriter with "Torn Between Two Lovers," and also saw one of his '70s compositions, "River of Jordan," turn up in the 1980 comedy film Airplane, sung by Lorna Patterson in an excruciatingly funny scene.

This was all a long way from their 1960s heyday, and a 1978 reunion album also proved a false start, selling more poorly than any LP in their history. The concerts surrounding that album, however, marked the beginning of a gradual re-forming of the trio. Travers, a single mother with two daughters and a menagerie of pets to look after, was nonetheless concerned with the anti-nuclear movement, with which Yarrow had long been involved. Stookey rejoined after some hesitation, and by the early '80s Peter, Paul & Mary were a functioning trio again, playing concerts occasionally and trying to record, including their annual Christmas concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York. Without skipping a beat, they picked up from their early-'60s beginnings, only the civil rights anthems had new meaning in an era when the laws protecting those rights were under attack by the Reagan administration. And they were interspersed with songs about the political strife in El Salvador and the nuclear arms race. As long as they included "Puff (The Magic Dragon)" in their repertory, however, the trio was still largely immune from attack by the right. The real difficulty was getting their work heard by a larger public in the music environment of the 1980s.

By that late date, none of the major labels were interested in the work of folk groups of their vintage so they did it themselves, initially releasing the live reunion album Such Is Love in America on their own Peter, Paul & Mary label. They were associated with Gold Castle Records, a promising independent label, for much of the late '80s, until its failure, but they did get to record a handful of LPs that they ended up owning outright. They retained good relations with Warner Bros., sufficient for Peter Yarrow to personally supervise the digital remastering and transfer of their classic 1960s catalog to compact disc at the end of the 1980s. Finally, in 1992, some 30 years after the trio signed with them, Warner Bros. Records became interested in doing a follow-up to Peter, Paul & Mommy, which had been a perennially good seller in its catalog. The resulting album, Peter, Paul & Mommy, Too and an accompanying television special heralded a return of the group to Warner Bros., which subsequently reissued their entire Gold Castle catalog on CD. Since the 1980s, the group had been moving into the role of elder statesmen of the folk community -- Mary Travers even hosted a television special that brought together the entire present and former membership of the Kingston Trio on stage -- and this status was borne out in 1995 with the Lifelines album. The latter, an all-star concept album featuring the trio performing with colleagues, older and younger -- including Ex-Weaver Ronnie Gilbert and blues legend B.B. King -- was sufficiently successful to generate a concert follow-up, Lifelines Live, the following year. In 1998, they carried the same all-star singalong concept a step further, in a slightly different direction, with Around the Campfire, and in 1999, Warner Bros. issued its second PP&M best-of compilation, Songs of Conscience and Concern. The trio, starting their fifth decade together at the outset of the 21st century, remained as committed to good music and to fighting the good fight as they were in 1962. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide [-] Hide

The Rooftop Singers were the most successful of the folk revival's one-hit wonders -- their single major chart entry, "Walk Right In," was a number one record and also the biggest-selling single in the history of their label, Vanguard Records.

The group was a trio consisting of Erik Darling, Bill Svanoe, and Lynne Taylor, formed in... [+] Read More

The Rooftop Singers were the most successful of the folk revival's one-hit wonders -- their single major chart entry, "Walk Right In," was a number one record and also the biggest-selling single in the history of their label, Vanguard Records.

The group was a trio consisting of Erik Darling, Bill Svanoe, and Lynne Taylor, formed in late 1962. Darling (b. 1933) had been Pete Seeger's successor in the Weavers from 1958 through 1962, and had previously worked as a member of a jazz-folk influenced trio, the Tarriers, who had a modest hit with "Banana Boat Song." He'd also appeared on dozens of recordings (mostly on Vanguard, to which the Weavers were signed) by other artists during the late 1950s and early 1960s as a guitar accompanist.

It was sometime after exiting the Weavers in June of 1962 that Darling chanced to hear "Walk Right In," a ragtime-style number originally recorded by Gus Cannon and Cannon's Jug Stompers in 1929. Darling decided to put together a group to record the song, and hooked up with Bill Svanoe, a former fine arts major and economics student who had turned to playing guitar and singing full-time. Lynne Taylor was a jazz singer who had been working in East Coast nightclubs since her teens. She had appeared on bills with Frank Sinatra, Sophie Tucker, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and played the Village Vanguard in New York for 28 weeks, later singing with Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich's band.

The trio cut "Walk Right In" for Vanguard in 1963, in a version with updated lyrics and a new arrangement featuring paired 12-string acoustic guitars, which reached the number one spot later that year and yielded an album of the same title. The group differed markedly from the Weavers and most of the popular folk trios of the era, being far more influenced by blues and ragtime, as well as less profoundly earnest in its political sensibilities. Lynne Taylor's singing showed more of a jazz influence than was usual, while Darling and Svanoe's guitar playing showed higher-than-average dexterity.

The Rooftop Singers made it to the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 (and there was a resulting live album), but their popularity only lasted about a year. By the middle of the decade, they were supplanted by rawer solo singers like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Tom Rush, bolder vocal outfits like the Seekers, and louder folk-rock bands like the Byrds and the early Jefferson Airplane. The trio released further singles, including "Tom Cat" and "Mama Don't Allow," and a pair of albums, Goodtime and Rainy River, before splitting up in 1967. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide [-] Hide

During the folk boom of the late '50s and early '60s, the NLCR introduced the authentic string-band sound of the 1920s and '30s, in the process educating a generation that had never heard this uniquely American sound of old-time music. While maintaining music with a social conscience, they added guts and reality to the folk movement, performing... [+] Read More

During the folk boom of the late '50s and early '60s, the NLCR introduced the authentic string-band sound of the 1920s and '30s, in the process educating a generation that had never heard this uniquely American sound of old-time music. While maintaining music with a social conscience, they added guts and reality to the folk movement, performing with humor and obvious reverence for the music.

Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tom Paley in 1958 modeled their band after groups like the Skillet Lickers, the Fruit Jar Drinkers, and the Aristocratic Pigs, choosing a name in keeping with the past. When Tracy Schwarz replaced Paley in 1962, The Ramblers added solo songs from the Appalachian folk repertoire, religious and secular, educating a large segment of the American population about traditional music. Folkways recorded the NLCR on five albums in the early 60s, making the Ramblers famous and leading to TV appearances, successful tours, and appearances at the Newport Folk Festival. A songbook with 125 of their songs came out in 1964 and sold well.

The NLCR served at least three important purposes: They brought real folk music to a huge audience, they entertained us well with their highly entertaining acts, and they led us to rediscover the original music on which they had based their band. Tracy Schwarz went on the road with his wife and then his son, gradually leaning toward Cajun squeezebox music; Mike Seeger toured with his wife, Alice, and did many solo spots; and John Cohen continued playing in another string band, while making award-winning documentaries about the old music. ~ David Vinopal, All Music Guide [-] Hide

It might be hard to credit, but Lonnie Donegan was one of the greatest pioneers of modern British music -- and its first genuine star. He started the skiffle movement -- playing folk or blues songs on acoustic guitar, accompanied by bass and washboard -- and launched thousands of boys with guitars who'd form the original British Invasion.... [+] Read More

It might be hard to credit, but Lonnie Donegan was one of the greatest pioneers of modern British music -- and its first genuine star. He started the skiffle movement -- playing folk or blues songs on acoustic guitar, accompanied by bass and washboard -- and launched thousands of boys with guitars who'd form the original British Invasion. Interestingly, for all its billing as "The Very Best Of," Donegan's first, and most influential, hit doesn't appear here -- his cover of Leadbelly's "Rock Island Line." Instead, the collection picks up with "Lost John," his second smash, and follows his career to what was essentially the bitter end in 1965 (although he'd see a rebirth in the late '90s). He quickly established a style for most of his discs, with a slow opening and diving right in frantically, the band following bravely, and it worked most of the time, especially when he did mix it up with some slower cuts. And he did perform a huge service, exposing a generation to old blues, folk, and country songs (like Jimmie Rodgers' "Mule Skinner Blues"), albeit sung in a fake American accent. However, coming closer to home for two novelty songs ("Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor" and "My Old Man's a Dustman") that have remained perennial favorites. With the advent of the Beatles, Donegan's days were numbered, and his chart positions reflected that, even if his music was as good as ever, and the final hurrah of "World Cup Willie" (written for the 1966 World Cup, staged in Britain), completely failed to chart. But Donegan's significance in British music should never be forgotten -- he literally changed the course of pop forever. Now, if only they'd got that first hit on here, it would have made for a truly complete collection. ~ Chris Nickson, All Music Guide [-] Hide

More than 20 years after the New Lost City Ramblers' last studio recordings, Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tracy Schwarz got back together for There Ain't No Way Out, a 26-track celebration of old-timey music, including bluegrass, yodel blues, spirituals, Cajun, and what is usually referred to generically as "folk" music. They haven't lost much... [+] Read More

More than 20 years after the New Lost City Ramblers' last studio recordings, Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tracy Schwarz got back together for There Ain't No Way Out, a 26-track celebration of old-timey music, including bluegrass, yodel blues, spirituals, Cajun, and what is usually referred to generically as "folk" music. They haven't lost much of their edge, even if -- by their own admission -- there are younger, sharper players out there in the wake of the path they opened. Highlights include a sweetly sung "God's Gonna Ease My Troublin' Mind," A.P. Carter's "Anchored in Love Divine," the Dixon Brothers' "Weave Room Blues" (which has a Jimmie Rodgers sound to it), "Cumberland Gap," "Shady Grove," "Skip to My Lou," and "Crapshooters Hop." They still harmonize beautifully, their instruments sing even sweeter, and the advantages of modern recording aren't lost on this sharp body of music. The notes, featuring contributions by all three players, are exceptionally detailed and informative about their history, as well as that of the songs. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide [-] Hide

A precious collection from one of folk music's legendary figures, Ballads, Banjo Tunes and Sacred Songs of Western North Carolina collects a few of his songs from his 1928 Brunswick sessions (the immortal "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground," "Dry Bones") and adds over a dozen songs -- from a total of over 350 -- recorded in March 1949 for the... [+] Read More

A precious collection from one of folk music's legendary figures, Ballads, Banjo Tunes and Sacred Songs of Western North Carolina collects a few of his songs from his 1928 Brunswick sessions (the immortal "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground," "Dry Bones") and adds over a dozen songs -- from a total of over 350 -- recorded in March 1949 for the Library of Congress as his "Memory Collection." The Minstrel of the Appalachians really comes alive on this collection, introducing most of his 1949 recordings with song histories and where he collected them. Also included is a priceless track named "Dedication," in which Lunsford spends five minutes recalling both his early life and his later career as a country lawyer and song collector. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide [-] Hide

Greatest Hits is a reasonably comprehensive collection of Joan Baez's best-known songs, concentrating mainly on her crossover hits. Although it misses several fine items, the compilation remains an effective introduction for the curious listener. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

Greatest Hits is a reasonably comprehensive collection of Joan Baez's best-known songs, concentrating mainly on her crossover hits. Although it misses several fine items, the compilation remains an effective introduction for the curious listener. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide [-] Hide

You'd think the last word in Woody Guthrie reissues would have appeared before this. After all, the legendary folksinger recorded most of his best work nearly 60 years before this was released, and the bulk of it has been regularly reissued in fine collections on Folkways, Rounder, and other labels. So this CD is as surprising as it is welcome.... [+] Read More

You'd think the last word in Woody Guthrie reissues would have appeared before this. After all, the legendary folksinger recorded most of his best work nearly 60 years before this was released, and the bulk of it has been regularly reissued in fine collections on Folkways, Rounder, and other labels. So this CD is as surprising as it is welcome. What makes it probably the single best Guthrie disc you can own? For one thing, the compilers had total access to the archives of Folkways Records founder Moses Asch, for whom the singer made the lion's share of his most important recordings. And they picked for this package 27 songs that showcase the incredible range of his writing and performing talent -- everything from children's ditties ("Car Song") to social commentary ("Do-Re-Mi") to historical tales ("End of the Line"). Then there's the title track -- Guthrie's most famous tune -- which was only sporadically available until this CD. It's here in two versions, including one that features the famous yet previously unreleased "private property" verses.

The sound quality is as notable as the program. The compilers went back to the master recordings and did a magnificent job of cleaning things up without altering what Guthrie waxed. The result sounds pure and intimate -- as if the singer were right there in the room with you. Finally, there's a superb 36-page book with all sorts of fascinating detail on Asch, Guthrie, and every track. The best news: This is only the first volume in a four-CD series. ~ Jeff Burger, All Music Guide [-] Hide