Way back up the thread I asked if anyone knew the flip side of the "Tom Dooley" 45RPM. It was "MTA" which was not included (as I remember) on their first album "the red one". And in my case, it was the lonesome roll of "Darling Cory" that caused me to get my Vega Seeger in '62 (which I still have and frequently use to this day). It is stil the fastest banjo to change keys in, and works well in any Contra dance series of tunes. (No thread creep intended).

I did note that the vast majority of this thread was devoted to the unstated question "Was the Kingston Trio album/group make-up/instruments/style of dress/selection of songs/etc. the most "influential" during the folk scare/late fifties/early sixties/pre-Dylan/pre-Beatles era?"

I'd have to say that since no-one asked the question, "Who were the Kingston Trio?", the question as to which was the most influential album, by which group, answers itself...

And as a sort of test of this, I have tried a sort of experiment, during our weekly jam at O'Hurleys General Store, in Shepherdstown, WV, for the past couple of weeks. The jam has been going for some twenty-seven years now, and musicians come from miles around to attend (mostly from the DC area). As it happens, there are also three sizable Federal learning institutions adjacent to the town, including the National Conservation Training Center, the OPM Senior Management Academy, and the Academy for the Homeland Security/FEMA, which we locals call the "School of Shadow Government". During the course of study at any of these schools, the classes are literally bussed to O'Hurleys, to get a "taste of the local music". Since this area is also one of the two epicenters of Hammered Dulcimer music, the crowds are quite large, with ten to twenty musicians and a crowd ranging up to a hundred crowded into the store's back room.

My test has been simple; a friend of mine who used to open for Tom Paxton on the East Coast many years ago, Steve Hartman, will strike up any of the KTs songs, as well as an occasional PPM, Dylan, Weavers, or even some Clancy Bros. The crowd will roar back the words or chorus of any of the KT songs, but only "Good Night Irene" of the Weavers, usually only "Puff", "500 Miles" or "Hammer" from PPM, and usually only "Don't Think Twice" from Dylan. But always every KT song from the first three albums. And understand, that while many in the audience are in their forties and fifties, many are much younger and a sizeable group come from the local university.

Now does the audience self-select to a certain extent? And the answer is "yes"; but among those who choose to attend, it's whose words they remember...