No, lemme revise that a bit. I said that "Each step along the way influences the next step, and that next step would not have happened had it not been for the one preceding it."

Giving that another think, I'm more of the opinion that there was such a groundswell of interest in folk music throughout the Fifties, with coffeehouses opening up in New York, Cambridge, Chicago Denver, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Seattle where folk singers gathered, along with a few dedicated folk clubs like the Gate of Horn in Chicago and the Hungry i and the Tin Angel in San Francisco, that one would have to be a bit slow not to realize that here was a big wave coming in that one could quite possibly surf on.

I agree with the first part of my sentence, "Each step along the way influences the next step," but not totally with the second part, "that the next step would not have happened had it not been for the one preceding it." How the next step would be influenced would be the question. The wave would have continued to rise and more and more people would have gotten involved in folk music even if the Kingston Trio hadn't come along. It might not have been a big blip on the popular music charts, but it would have been there, nevertheless. But at the same time, things were ripe for someone to jump on the surf board, and had it not been the Kingston Trio, it could very easily have been some other group. Or possibly some individual (Belafonte was well under weigh by then, he filled theaters and auditoriums wherever he sang, and he was selling a lot of records) . Conditions were right for just about anyone who wanted to give it a shot.

Don Firth