The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #86844 Message #1619452
Posted By: Joe Offer
03-Dec-05 - 04:15 PM
Thread Name: Limeliters vs. Kingston Trio
Subject: RE: Limeliters vs. Kingston Trio
For the record, here's what Bobby Haworth said on his message board on October 12, 2005:Ross, it's great to hear from you! I hope we keep in touch as time goes on.
What happened, you ask? Well, as you guessed, when Shane left the whole group dynamic changed. I've know Bill Zorn since his New Christy Minstrel days back in the 1960's - thought we had a good friendship. But several months before Bob's heart incident George and I had gone to Bill (he and Rick Dougherty had just left The Limeliters and were working on putting the show with Glenn Yarbrough together) and asked if he might someday consider taking Shane's place if he decided to retire. His response was that he was so loyal to Rick that he couldn't contemplate leaving him high and dry - so could we make it The Kingston Quartet? Well, we didn't think that would work, although I find it interesting that some folks have subsequently suggested that as a viable option. Anyway, my take on this situation is that Bill's loyalty to Rick and his enamorment with Rick's vocal abilities led him to work on Shane over time to get me ousted and put Rick in my place. There's no disputing the fact that Rick has a beautiful voice, but things were going fine as they were and the saddest thing about the whole matter was the way it was handled. I was given very little notice on this and probably would not have found out as early as I did had it not been for my walking in on a conversation that George and Bob were having on July 4th. As I entered the room I detected that talk suddenly switched gears and I had my suspicions that something was up. Why couldn't they have just come out and told me that they wanted to make a change? It was all arranged behind my back and then I guess they planned to spring it on me after our last gig in July. It really put our financial situation in a tailspin as it was, but had I not known about it until nearly a month later we would have really been in trouble. As it was, Meri managed to do some fiscal two-steps that at least bought us some time to get back on our feet. So, sadly, I don't have many nice thoughts about a couple of the key players in this.
But - we're on to better things. On the upside, I can now walk on stage and sing whatever the hell music I want to. I can now do my own material, play any brand of guitar and do the show the way I want to do it. As wonderful as it was to be a member of such a seminal group, there were some restrictions that made it, in the end, just a gig. Now I have the freedom to be creative in my own way. Also, our work for Parkinson's has proven to be an endeavor that we can be proud of. Through our fund-raising efforts we hope to drive research toward a cure in the next few years. Our many friends who have Parkinson's are progressing through the disease and it's a sad thing to see. We want to do anything we can to make them well.
I have to say that to my mind, the Limeliters and the Kingston Trio no longer exist, and they can't be put back together. I saw the Kingston Trio two or three times in the late 1980's and early 1990's, when Bob Shane was still around - but it still didn't seem like the Kingston Trio to me. The Limeliters survived the loss of Glenn Yarbrough and still did quite well with their music - but I think the loss of Lou Gottlieb finished them off. I think Alex Hasilev is a wonderful performer, but I don't think he can continue the Limeliters on his own, without Gottlieb.
I've received complaints about the combative posts from Gargoyle, Martin Gibson, and others in this thread. There's good information here, so I don't want to shut down the thread. Boys, please behave. Show us that you can actually carry on a logical discussion, and we'll all be impressed - and grateful. Name-calling doesn't add to the discussion.
-Joe Offer-