Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio

Subject: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:06 PM

I LOATHED the Kingston Trio (after they'd got me hooked on folk music, with "Tom Dooley"), simply HATED them...couldn't even stand to look at their album covers.

Please, Friends....if you were a Kingston T. fan from the get go, don't take this personally. Remember, I was a disturbed adolescent, living my life vicariously through "real" folksingers who Picked cotton, rode the rods, sometimes even rode the blinds (a strange concept to me, since we had drapes), swung 'der nine pound hammos, were forever crossing the Horn, killed a whale before breakfast every morning, and in general, Rambled, and Gambled a lot before building their Little Sod Shanties. The trio looked EXACTLY like the popular students at my school who got dates, good grades, and in general, ignored weirdos like me.

So when I started seeing these commercials, (complete with black and white videos) of the now geriatric (and partially dead) Kingston Trio, I was prepared for my old "folkier than thou" attitude to surface. It didn't. The music seemed quite pleasant actually. Sure, they were a "corporate Folk group" with management that FORCED them to rehearse constantly, and none of them had ever been Communists, Anarchists, or probably even McCain supporters, but heck, they chose some pretty good material, and now we all know that they sure weren't the ONLY ones to claim copyrights on semi-trad material.

Dog-gone it, I kinda like them now. ".......so here we are....in the Tijuana jail........rasberries strawberries....where have all the flow.....Hang down yer head Tom D..........."

Rick

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:14 PM

Rick:

For a similar shock, find yourself a picture of Willie Nelson from about the time when the KT was first popular.
Corporate?

We all get older, getting smarter is optional. : - 0

John

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Mark Clark
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:14 PM

I know how you feel, Rick. I bought every KT album up until I bought "The Weavers at Carnegie Hall." After that, I never would even listen to the KT. I didn't even listen to PP&M except on the radio—never did buy a PP&M album. When my mother emptied her house a couple of years ago to move to a retirement community, I quitely collected my old KT collection.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: DougR
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:16 PM

How did you feel about Peter, Paul and Mary? The same way as you did KT?

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:20 PM

Hi John. I SAW Willie (at the Horshoe Tavern in Toronto) while I was going to Art School.

Shiny business suit. Double cutaway Baldwin electric. Brylcremed hair. Singing mostly Country covers. Wheeeew!

Mark. The Weavers at Carnegie hall did it for me too.

......Wake Up Wake Up.....Darlin' Corrrrrrrie!

Rick

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:22 PM

Doug, I like them a LOT better.....for their first two albums. Somehow they seemed hipper. Saw them live (in a bar) and they were verrrry funny.

Rick

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Fortunato
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:28 PM

I didn't buy an album by The Kingston Trio, or The Limelighters, or Peter, Paul and Mary. I sang some of 'their' songs at parties or in groups for high school and college shows. I did buy those of Tom Rush and Joan Baez and Dave Van Ronk and Doc Watson and so on. When the gigs started coming I drew on the latter artists, pushing past them to their precursors. The Trio was not unpleasant and can be credited with poplarizing folk music. They were simply so far from the roots of the music that they compared to Dave Van Ronk rather like light beer and Guiness, both beer, one just doesn't have guts enough to hold my attention.

Now, I don't watch TV so I haven't seen the adds Rick describes, are they selling Mitch Miller's bouncing ball version of This Land is Your Land?
:~)

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Charley Noble
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:30 PM

I also have a confession to make. I harbored a huge stash of KT albums back in the early 1960's, and I really owe them a debt of thanks for making my college social life more pleasant, making it ever so much easier to find a circle of people to share folk songs with, many of which I had learned at home but until KT came along I had never run across someone in my own age group (other than immediate family friends) who ever sang such songs.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: JenEllen
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:38 PM

I dunno, I've always had a soft spot for Dave Guard's 'Scotch and Soda'...sentimental ol'gal that I am, but yeah, for the most part they seemed too white bread at the time to be 'real'. I saw the recent commercial too, and I think I might be a little more relaxed about it now, so long as I could just listen and not have to see them singing it. The image still rubs me the wrong way.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: CRANKY YANKEE
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:48 PM

Dammit, THEY DIOD CONTRIBUTE GREATLY TO THE RE-POPULARIZATION OF FOLK MUSIC. They did sing sourly but there was a lot of good material for new folksingers (who's singing , I hope was not sour)

I was still in the USAF (career type) and had been doing my own "civil rights" progrm. (I had the first integrated C&W group to record for a major lable, in 1959) when I first heard Peter Paul and Mary. I was driving into Sacramento from Mather AFB when I heard their "Blowing in The Wind" on an AM "Pop" station. "Finally", I thought to myself. I was so overcome by emotion that I had to stop the car and sit by the side of the road because I couldn't see clearly enough through the tears.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: SINSULL
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:49 PM

Love/hate/love/hate...but Hell! I was only 15 at the time. Now - I live some of their stuff and hate some but no longer listen to their albums. Not even sure where they are. They did a song called "Ruby Red" (flipside of Tom Dooley 45RPM> Anyone know of a recording by anyone else?

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: JenEllen
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:53 PM

These are the only ones I know of here but the KT versions listed seem to be the only Pockriss/Vance versions. Anyone else?

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: mousethief
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 12:59 PM

Hang down the Kingston Trio
Hang 'em from a broad oak tree.
Hang down the Kingston Trio
More money for you and me.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:00 PM

Me too. The Kingston Trio started me on my long downhill slide into the madness of "folk" music. It was the New Lost City Rambler's RFD album that sidetracked me into old time music. I've never returned. Still remember all the words to MTA and Scotch and Soda.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: GUEST,Cretinous Yahoo
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:05 PM

I have always liked the KT. Sure they were "poppy" but they did dredge up some good material that might not have otherwise surfaced. I have a stack of their old albums, but, almost never play them, for two reasons, they were not as good as I remembered them, and, they make me melancholy.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:05 PM

I had pretty much the same reaction to the KT as you did, Rick. Listened to em briefly, until I heard the Weavers at Carnegie Hall, and then couldn't stand em anymore.

Then moved on to Baez, and various others, and thence to Dylan.

I figure the KT made a useful contribution, but the times were changin' fast...

- LH

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Wesley S
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:06 PM

They were a link in the chain for a lot of us. No one starts off reading Shakespeare - they have to start with Mother Goose. It was a lot easier to get exposed to the Kingston Trio - I don't remember any radio stations playing Woody Guthrie at the time.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: DougR
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:11 PM

Why do you suppose the momentum Folk Music gained in the 60's didn't continue to grow? The Beatles? Elvis?

DougR

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: mousethief
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:11 PM

Well said, Wesley. Why is it that once people learn to love Shakespeare, they don't automatically hate Mother Goose? Yet when people use the KT or PPM or the Limeliters as a springboard to more genuinely folky folk, they nearly always despise the springboard they've left behind?

So wonder I.

Alex

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:12 PM

I love the Kingston Trio.

I still play their stuff and it sounds amateurish but that was exactly the point - so wonderfully refreshing for that time, circa 1957?).

From them I was introduced to Ian & Sylvia, PPM, the original Highwaymen, CMT, Limelighters, and BMT (Bock, Muir & Trickett) and eventually hundreds.

KT was first, then Ian & Sylvia made me a life long folkie. But, I wouldn't have been ready to listen to them without the KT primer.

Their cultural significance has rarely been acknowleged.

They were integral in bridging the gap between the weavers and PPM which led to Dylan and then to Southeast Manhatten becomning the creative epicenter of the planet for a few decades.

KT allowed milions around the world to say, "here's an art form I can participate in. if they let these bosos do it, so the hell can I.

Had it not been for KT, I think acceptance would have been much more difficult for BD.

Says me, Bob P

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: GUEST,Melani
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:19 PM

I, too, grew up on the Kingston Trio--and does anybody remember the Highwaymen, a four-man version of the same? They were the ones who did "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore," which probably most of us would be embarassed to sing now, but at the time it was the coolest thing on the radio. What finally pushed me over the edge to tradionalism was a barbershop festival I went to with my aunt, featuring four guys in black slacks, white shirts, black ties and powder-blue blazers, singing, "Hard Travelin'." When they got to the part about workin' in the Pittsbirg steel mills, I realized that they had probably had different life experiences than Woody Guthrie.

I recently played an old KT album for my teenage daughter, who grew up at the Hyde St. Pier chantey sings hearing fairly tradional versions of chanteys. She collaped in hysterics at their version of "Santianno." But ya gotta admit, they started it for us.

Oh, and "The Sloop John B" still sails regularly at Hyde St. Pier.

Subject: Cranky Yankee's history
From: GUEST,I don't think so
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:22 PM

According to Cranky Yankee: "I was still in the USAF (career type) and had been doing my own "civil rights" progrm. (I had the first integrated C&W group to record for a major lable, in 1959) when I first heard Peter Paul and Mary. I was driving into Sacramento from Mather AFB when I heard their "Blowing in The Wind" on an AM "Pop" station."

1959, Cranky?

Peter, Paul and Mary say that they first met each other in 1961.

Bob Dylan wrote "Blowin' In The Wind" in 1962.

Peter, Paul and Mary recorded "Blowin' In The WInd" in 1963.

1959? I don't think so.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: SINSULL
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:39 PM

Thanks, JenEllen. They are also the earliest in this list anyway but I will check out the others.
SINS

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Fortunato
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:42 PM

Here in Washington Dick Cerri was on the radio with Music Americana by 1962 (when I noticed)playing Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, The Weavers, et al. We were fortunate here in DC. Then we were the Bluegrass capital with radio, local TV and The Shamrock in Georgetown with live Bluegrass. Don Reno and Red Smiley and Jimmie Dean were on Channel 5! Mississippi John Hurt was playing up town.

The Kingston Trio was no seminal influence here. Dave Guard's Scotch and Soda was memorable.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: DougR
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 01:59 PM

Hey, Fortunato, I use to go to The Shamrock a lot when I worked in D.C. Great place.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Fortunato
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 02:06 PM

Yes, Doug it was grand. Lots of early influence on my music. Are you still around?

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 02:22 PM

Ya know, I don't think ANYONE would disagree how IMPORTANT the Trio was, as far as hookin' folks in, but one of the things I noticed while listening to the commercials is that they WEREN'T bad musically. Not at all. There were some nice harmonies, lotsa dynamics, and from an innovated standpoint, the tenor guitar hadn't really been used since The Delmore Brothers. Also the plectrum banjo. The tenor banjo of course became a staple of the Irish bands, but the plectrum (longer neck, four strings, "G" tuning) had become virtually obsolete.

One ABSOLUTE.

The CF Martin Company absolutely kissed the ground they walked on! All those orders for D-28s, thanks to Bob Shane.

Rick

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Midchuck
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 02:30 PM

One ABSOLUTE.

The CF Martin Company absolutely kissed the ground they walked on! All those orders for D-28s, thanks to Bob Shane.

Rick

Do I get accused (again) of being a cynic if I suggest that the KT are, indirectly, one of the reasons that Martins from the '70s are widely considered to be the least desireable, compared to either older or more recent ones? Because they started the folk craze, which made everyone want a Martin, which made Martin try to increase production too fast...

Peter

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: GUEST,Pete Peterson
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 02:45 PM

I took almost the same path as about four other posters here-- first couple Kingston Trio albums, then somebody played Weavers at Carnegie Hall and I was hooked-- thence to solo Pete Seeger thence to the New Lost City Ramblers then to the people whose records they copied.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: M.Ted
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 02:49 PM

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Mark Clark
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 02:51 PM

That shows how long it's been since I thought about the KT, I (mis)remembered Shane's name as Nick. But you're right, Rick, they weren't bad musically.

I'm told that Dave Guard used to fly friends to Pittsburg just so they could hear Banjo Billy Bryant playing with Mac Martin and the Dixie Travelers.

In spite of their commercialism, they understood roots music, as did PP&M. My kid brother was managing a coffee house in Des Moines c. 1963 when PP&M played a big concert there. After they concert they showed up at the coffee house and they all sat around playing bluegrass all night. It turned out they preferred roots music when they wern't being PP&M.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Bert
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 03:51 PM

The music seemed quite pleasant actually. Aw Rick! what a WICKED thing to say *GRIN*.

Doug, "Why do you suppose the momentum Folk Music gained in the 60's didn't continue to grow?" - I would guess that the blacklist had a little to do with it.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: DougR
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 04:10 PM

Bert: I had forgotten about that. Thanks. I would think that it would. However, I wonder, too, if the Beatles and Elvis didn't contribute to it too. The ending of the Viet Nam war could have contributed too, I suppose.

DougR

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Joe Offer
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 04:15 PM

I have to confess that I had nothing but admiration for the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary until about 1995. Then I started having some doubts, but I still listen to my KT and PP&M CD's every few months. I also have to confess that I really can't sing in what I'd call a "trad" style - my singing sounds more like what you'd hear from PP&M and the KT, with a little less "bounce." Rick, I'm so glad you no longer hate me for singing like the Kingston Trio. In exchange, I won't hate you for singing like Gordon Lightfoot [evil grin].
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: mousethief
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 05:07 PM

'Cept the Vietnam War didn't end until 1975, long after folk was dead in pop culture.

Alex

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Wesley S
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 06:00 PM

Slick will always sell better. Steve Earle will never sell as many records as Faith Hill. And the Kingston Trio will always outsell the Delmore Brothers. The vast majority of listeners are not going to want to work hard enough to develop a taste for music that the radio hasn't already decided is "popular". It's just too much work for them. In my opinion.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: mousethief
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 06:04 PM

In other words, specialized tastes are ... well ... specialized.

Alex

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: DougR
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 06:14 PM

I was thread creeping anyway with that question. Sorry Rick.

dougr

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: ddw
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 06:30 PM

Joe O — What a terrible thing to say about Rick. I happen to know from first-hand observation that Rick knows at least four different tunes and Gordy only knows two.

*BG*

david

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 06:34 PM

I heard the KT, PP&M and maybe Joan Baez about the same time I heard Bob Beers, Pete Seeger, The NLCR, Jean Redpath, Richard Dyer-Bennet and a local fellow who knew dozens of Child ballads.....there was never any choice. The Kingston boys were sort of musical, and they DID lure a few folks down the garden path, but it just seemed to me that the music was supposed to sound 'different', and I knew some folks who were singing it that way, so I never spent a dime on PP&M or KT....I had very few dimes, and they went toward other things.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 07:27 PM

I saw the Kingston Trio for the first time in my 50 years last year. It was the most enteraining evening I had had in several years. They played lots of KT songs and each did a solo piece. George Grove is exceptionally good. I wondered why I was so entertained by so many overly arranged bits of song. (I still can't stand Coplas) It wasn't the music that was entertaining, it was the group.

My first meeting with folk music was Hootenany, saturday nite at 7:00 for the summer of 59. For every group of slick production there was Rolf Harris or Judy Henske. The KT were and still are more the sum of the parts than just the music. They entertained and that is after all the business. I know some very dull musical scholars. I know some very scholarly enetertainers. On a nite out with my ewife and friends I'll take the entertainers.

Don

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Chicken Charlie
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 09:08 PM

We all climb the mountain from different sides. If KT or PPM or the Limelighters got you interested in folk, why fuss? The Weavers' arrangements always excited & impressed me; I still give credit for that even after hearing more "authentic" versions of stuff they did. I think I said this before on another KT thread, but you've gotta be ready. If the first folker I ever heard had been John Jacob Niles, I would have run, not walked, to the nearest exit. Now I can appreciate him. Well, for about one song, anyway.

CC

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Chicken Charlie
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 09:15 PM

Oh, I forgot, Rick. One does not cross the Horn, one rounds it. Or sails in the teeth of it. Or feels the blind Horn's hate, if one is so moved. Otherwise one risks bad jokes like, "What do you get when you cross the Horn with ......"

CC

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Midchuck
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 09:21 PM

I wondered why I was so entertained by so many overly arranged bits of song. (I still can't stand Coplas)

I have the record the KT obviously stole it from. Theo Bikel and Cynthia Gooding, A Man and a Maid (or something close to that - too lazy to walk downstairs just to check the jacket. Came out in the late '50s, so it's monaural, but you can't have everything. Classic and great. You could probably stand their Coplas.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 09:39 PM

Joe it's Florence Foster Jenkins I'll never forgive you for singing like!

peter...I think the BIG run on Martins started in the early sixties, and probably WAS the result of the Trio's poularity. They Did deplete a lot of their good old wood, but from reading the various Martin histories, it would seem that some questionable business decisions hurt their quality as well. Funny thing though is that a lot of those Martins from the "bad" period are startin' to sound awfully good today. I see a lot of them pass through the 12th Fret. One thing IS certain though. The seventies guitars ALL seem to need neck resets badly. Is THAT connected with the folk guitar boom? They made a HELL of a lot of instruments quickly.

Doug, thread creep all you want. I can't help it even when I really try!

Rick

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Mark Clark
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 09:51 PM

Well now I'm really crestfallen. Rick, I thought you'd be really impressed with my Banjo Billy Bryant reference. <g>

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Midchuck
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 09:55 PM

Rick, I think the neck resets are mostly because any seventies Martin is now between 20 and 30 years old (Duhh!). I think a neck reset between 20 and 40 years old is a given.

What I understand is that a lot of seventies Martins have the bridge saddle just a little too far forward, or maybe back, in relation to the frets, so that they don't intonate right, especially if you play above first position (I'd be pretty safe).

I get the impression that Martin was on the way out until Chris IV took over just in time.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 10:54 PM

I loved the Kingston Trio, PPM and Dylan (early 60's), the Limelighters, the Chad Mitchell Trio because they were cosynchronous (hey Amos! I think I made up a word!) with the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. I started litening to them all at the same time, loved them all, and followed the ones who tore my heart right out - the CB & TM. They - along with the others - The Weavers, Pete, Odetta, Paxton, Doc, Big Bill B, the Dubliners are the reason I'm a professional performer today. God Bless 'em all!

Seamus

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: catspaw49
Date: 24 Jul 01 - 11:33 PM

I liked them well enough and still do, but the group that got to me first was the Chad Mitchell Trio. They did some trad, but they did some wonderfully humorous social commentary.

I don't think that anyone can deny any of these groups and people their rightful place in bringing folk to a new generation and they were all pretty fine musically. So I don't listen to them much anymore, but their influences were huge on most of us.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Revisionist opinion on the Kingston Trio
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 25 Jul 01 - 01:19 AM

Mark I DID catch the "Banjo" Billy reference, but I'm so used to you being as much of a "obscurity nerd" as me, I just EXPECT it from you!!

Good point about the intonation Peter. The neck re-sets I'm not so sure about. I read that the ANGLE itself seemed to change around that period, making the neck re-set almost a dead-certainty in less time than normal.

The books aren't very kind to Frank Martin about his tenure, and it seems that Chris IV is a real "guitar guy". That had to help right off the bat.

We should also mention that Vega sold a lot more long-necks because of Dave Guard than Pete.

Nobody's mentioned (so I will) that the addition of John Stewart changed their music quite a bit....lot more lyrical.

Rick