johnross, I stick by my guns that The Weavers had very little part in the great folk scare as they were not selling many records, were really part of a previous generation's music and quite frankly were just not hip for the gigantic wave of folk music popularity.

I well knew that my astute nomination of The First Kingston Trio album would rankle a few elitist/purists who bark about the Lomax Field recordings. Fact is, no one much cared about anything the Lomax's did until people realized that there was such a thing as folk music to check out and explore. Most of the field recordings by the Lomax's were great for research but featured much authentic braying that was unlistenable. Burl Ives was hardly a tradionalist. Don Firth talks about the vagaries of the way folk music was performed by such acts as the Kingston Trio with some extreme aloofness and snobbishness of popular music that shows much about his personality. He is completely out of touch thinking that tenny boppers bought the records of the era. Albums/LPs were more expensive then singles and that is what we are talking about here. It was the college crowd who did and formed groups and sang and played and pursued other areas of folk music.

Again, I do not perceive this thread as to what was someone's personal choice for their own influence, but what was the Most Influential album in all of folk music.

Knowing the snobbishness of most purist/elitists, it is obvious that they will never give credit to ones such as the Kingston Trio who put more folk music in people's ears then anyone else preceeding them. We're talking about what influenced the most people and yes, the mainstream of society. Not a few curious museum types.