Just to clarify what I really said that Martin Gibson misinterpreted when his knee started to jerk in his eagerness to say something insulting about me (a hobby of his):

When I used the term "vagaries" (def:   erratic, unpredictable behavior), I was referring to the recording industry, not the Kingston Trio's performance. I don't see how the word could apply in the manner in which Marty seems to think I meant it, which indicates to me that he either doesn't read very carefully or that he needs a good dictionary.

Guard, Shane, and Reynolds were all good musicians, and the Kingston Trio's arrangements were well worked out and showed a good measure of creativity. Indeed, to my mind, their renditions of some songs were the best ones out. For example, their arrangements of some of the songs Pete Seeger first introduced, such as "Guantanamera" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" were excellently arranged and done beautifully and with sensitivity. I believe that Seeger himself praised them for this.

I do not consider the Kingston Trio to be lightweights. But at the same time, other than exposing a lot people to folk songs for the first time, in the long run, they were not that influential.

Where the vagaries I spoke of come in are with the recording industry, and shortly thereafter the television networks (the early-Sixties proliferation of "Hootenannies" and "Shindigs," featuring mostly pop-folk groups), who smelled money in the air, saw the trend and, like a lot of politicians, said "The people are going that way, and I am their leader!" then ran like hell to get out in front. The Kingston Trio came on the scene at a fortunate time for both themselves and the record industry. The subsequent success of similar groups, also pushed by the record industry (The Brothers Four, The Limeliters, the New Christy Minstels, et al), attest to this. Had it not been the Kingston Trio, it would have been one of these other groups, because the field had been ripened for this sort of thing by Burl Ives, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Susan Reed, Odetta (first album 1953), the Weavers, Harry Belafonte, and a whole host of lesser-known others who came well before 1957-58 when the Kingston Trio first appeared on the scene.

A side-note here:   in 1959, when Bob (Deckman) Nelson and I were barnstorming in the San Francisco Bay area and auditioning at various clubs such as the Purple Onion, we kept being told by club owners that we needed to get a third member, someone who played the banjo, because trios were what the public wanted. Bob and I saw The Smothers Brothers in their first professional gig at the Purple Onion, and they were a trio then! Tommy and Dicky did all the funny stuff and the third member kept his mouth shut and just played the banjo! The banjo player was not really part of the act, but there only to fill out the club-owner's idea of what sells. Bob and I had talked to the club owner, so we knew what he thought "sells."

In any case, with the advent of the Kingston Trio's first hit with "Tom Dooley," folk songs suddenly moved from a healthy and growing trend into the somewhat murky field of commercial pop music. The "vagaries" to which I refer, are the arcane demands of the commercial music industry, the often inexplicable whims of the A & R people, and the ever-shifting tastes of those who buy the latest records and fill the clubs. These latter, in the Bay Area where many of these trios and groups got their start, were almost totally tourists. One rarely found local people at the Hungry i or the Purple Onion, or folks whose interest in folk music was more than superficial (other than Bob and I and a few others, who were there to check the places out). They were there to dig the newest "acts," which could just as easily have been troupes of one-armed jugglers, had it not been that wise-cracking "folk" groups wearing identical vertically striped shirts with button-down collars were what was currently "in."

If you were seriously interested in folk music—and I'm not talking "ethnic purists" here (although we ran into a lot of them), I'm talking about people who had a serious interest in the songs themselves, not just in being a commercial success with whatever kind of music was currently selling—the places to be in the Bay Area were Berkeley and Sausalito. Bob and I spent most of our time there, mostly in Sausalito.

Martin claims that until "Tom Dooley" hit the charts ". . . folk music was not even a genre of it's own until them." Yes it was. If it wasn't, then opera, early music, chamber music, lieder, blues, and jazz were not "genres of their own" either. Most record stores larger than a phone booth had bins containing folk music (the aforementioned Burl Ives, Susan Reed, et al) right along with chamber music, opera, jazz, etc.. The largest sections were, of course, popular music, and after 1958, that's where you found the Kingston Trio's records:   in the popular music bins.   

And as to the statistic about 85¢ out of every dollar spent on records being spent by girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen, this was told to me in 1960 by a fellow named Bill McNearny, who worked for a record distributor and it was his business to know this sort of thing. I may be slightly off by a percentage point or two, because what Bill said was ". . . about eighty-five cents. . . ."   He went on to say that most of this money is spent on stacks of 45 rpm records of the latest heartthrobs, that get played to death over a period of a couple of weeks, then get replaced by another stack of said heartthrob's newest hit—or by the newest heartthrob. Recordings of most music genres either break even or lose money, so, as Bill told me (verified by things I read elsewhere, such as Billboard Magazine), it was (maybe still is) basically adolescent girls who subsidize recordings of lieder singers and string quartets. This includes albums.

The Kingston Trio's first album did indeed introduce folk songs to a lot of people who probably hadn't paid much attention to them before, and a percentage of these were inspired to take up guitars and banjos. Some of them developed a genuine interest in the music itself, stuck with it, and learned what it's really all about. But when the Beatles and the British Invasion replace folk music in record stores' pop-hit bins, many others traded their acoustic guitars in on electrics with an eye on attempting to surf the next big wave.

I agree with John Ross, who said, "In terms of the long-term folk revival, the Kingston Trio and all those other groups wearing matching shirts that followed them were a temporary diversion rather than a long-term influence."

Now, it may be just my personal taste, but I don't really think "Zombie Jamboree" or "Lemon Tree" necessarily epitomize folk music. If that makes me an aloof snob of ancient vintage, then I'll happily cop to the charge.

And to wrap this up, I also agree with Abby Sales. In addition to the Carter Family, the album that, in the long run, probably influenced more people with a really serious interest in folk music than any other was undoubtedly the Harry Smith Anthology Here's what the Smithsonian has to say about it (quoting at length):

Anthology of American Folk Music
Edited by Harry Smith
SFW CD 40090 (1952, Reissued 1997)

The Anthology of American Folk Music, Edited by Harry Smith, is one of the most influential releases in the history of recorded sound. Originally issued by Folkways in 1952 as three volumes of 2 LPs each, (a total of 84 tracks), it had been commercially unavailable for many years before this 1997 reissue.

The importance and quality of the Anthology reissue and the accompanying documentation was recognized by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, which   bestowed two Grammy Awards on Folkways for this project: 1997 Best Historic Album, and 1997 Best Album Notes.

When it was initially released [in 1952 - DF], the Anthology brought virtually unknown parts of America's musical landscape to the public's attention. It inspired a generation of musicians to go in search of the traditions, and, in some cases, the musicians whose recordings Harry Smith had selected to include in the Anthology.

Released at a time when the commercial recording industry had largely congealed into a few relatively homogeneous mass markets, the Anthology successfully answered a widespread need for fresh inspiration, aesthetic authority, and uncommon artistry in popular music. It played a seminal role in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, which has had lasting political, economic, and aesthetic impact on American culture. For more than half a century, the collection has profoundly influenced fans, ethnomusicologists, music historians, and cultural critics; it has inspired generations of popular musicians, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Jerry Garcia. Many of the songs included in the Anthology have now become classics.

One needs to distinguish between popular fads and long-term trends. That pretty well says it.

Don Firth