The albums that influenced me the most were ingrained in my brain cells long before the Trio made headlines. They had little original to add musically, but they did put some polish on, it must be said, and they made folk music popular.

For me, the albums were:

The Weavers at Carnegie Hall
Frank Warner's Elektra album
A mishmash of field collected white and black songs by Folkways
Pete Seeger -- a couple of albums
The Almanac Singers and their union collection
Josef Marais and Miranda
Burl Ive's "Men" and "Songs of the Sea" albums
A Leadbelly album
Belafonte's first couple of albums -- especially the pink one.

Later on I became entranced by the Clancy brothers and Tommy Makem, of course.

I thought of the Trio, the Limelighters and PP&M as sort of eye-candy, even though I enjoyed some of their songs a lot.

When Joan Baez came on the scene she quickly joined my favorites, because her voice was so compelling. And then Dylan signed with Columbia and the race was on...