As a freshman in high school, I attended a show where four seniors sang the Kingston Trio's "Bad Man's Blunder" while playing guitars and such. I was really impressed. Remember, in the early Sixties the idea that ordinary people could sing and play instruments was rather novel; our popular music was crooners (Andy Williams, Tony Bennett, et al.) and choirs (Ray Conniff Singers, Percy Faith, Mitch Miller and the Gang, et al.) I looked at those guys and thought, "Heck, I could do that!" So I started buying Kingston Trio records and imitating the seniors who were imitating the Trio.

I've often wondered what would have happened if the USA had not had the folk music boom of the early Sixties. Thanks to the Trio and their kind, we had a whole generation of young people who could play three chords on a guitar...and then the Beatles showed up playing three-chords rock songs. The folkies had prepared the soil, so to speak, and the British Invasion rockers planted the seeds.

The immediate results were the Beach Boys, who rocked some songs that the Trio sang and freely admitted they stole the vertical-striped-shirts idea from the Trio. And then the rock industry exploded.