DJ - "The Kingston Trio."

(Recorded song plays "Looking For The Sunshine.")

"That is the title song from the brand new album by the Kingston Trio, 'Looking For The Sunshine.' What a pleasure it is to say that, the brand new album."

BOB SHANE - "Boy, I'll say!"

DJ - "I'm here with Bob Shane, Roger Gambill, and George Grove, the current configuration of the Trio. In fact, the longest in terms of longevity as far as staying together is concerned."

BOB SHANE - "We've been together for 7 years now. The first group was four and a half and the second group was five and a half."

DJ - "So, add it all up together, does that make 25? No? Never mind. This is not a math exercise. All in all, Bob, it has been a quarter of a century. To what do you contribute the longevity and popularity of the Kingston Trio?"

BOB SHANE - "Well, my dad told me if I smoked 5 cigars in the morning and 5 cigars at night..." (LOL)

DJ - "Sounds like George Burns not the Kingston Trio! Do you step back and try to be objective about it and analyze it?"

BOB SHANE - "No. We are a working, professional, entertaining act. This is what we do for a living and if we sell a few records to boot that's fine. Primarily, we always have been a touring, entertaining entity. That's it."

DJ - "But there was a point, whether you intended it to be or not, it doesn't matter because there are higher powers at work here, there was a point where the Trio spearheaded an entire folk boom in this country. Why do you think you were in the vanguard of that?"

BOB SHANE - "Well, I really don't know, to tell you the truth. We started off playing calypso. That's how we got the name 'Kingston.'"

DJ - "Right."

BOB SHANE - "And then somebody else seemed to be doing it better, so we just went on to the next thing which was sort of folk oriented material because we had all been involved with listening to the Weavers, Josh White, and right down the line, Cynthia Gooding and Theodore Bikel and things like that on the old Folkways Albums. And we had also listened to Harry Belafonte and Elvis Presley and Hank Williams and everybody you could think of. So we just like all kinds of music. We had three guys with banjos and guitars. Heck, by the year 1959 we got a Grammy for being the best country and western group of the year. They didn't know what we were, either!"

"But we were just there at the right place at the right time. And some people saw our success and saw the fact that we were doing it with a lot of folk music and currently written folk-sounding music, which will probably be the folk music of tomorrow, but a lot of people just jumped on the band wagon and goes, 'Fun!'"

DJ - "Well, I have been promising our listeners for theh last couple of weeks that Bob Shane himself would be here to tell the TRUE story of 'Tom Dooley,' which was, perhaps, your biggest success in those early days. Would you now fulfill that promise on this broadcast?"

BOB SHANE - "No!" (LOL)

ROGER GAMBILL - "Wrap it up!" (LOL)

BOB SHANE - "Sure. We recorded the song in '58 and it was part of the first album. I heard it originally on a Tarriers album, a speeded up version, and then the other fellows heard the version the guy who is given credit, I guess, for collecting it, Warner, something like that..."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Lomax."

BOB SHANE - "No, no, it was a guy named..."

DJ - "Jeff Waner."

BOB SHANE - "Jeff Warner or something like that. They saw him audition at the Purple Onion and they heard him do it. So we took the backgrounds we had on that and we eventually rewrote it just enough to try and claim it for our own and signed our name to it, got sued and lost because it was in Lomax's collection before that. But, after we sold about 6,000,000 records of this thing, we went to Wilkes County, North Carolina, where, strangely enough, both of my partners now are from, originally, and we went to the grave out in Ferguson, North Carolina. As we were coming back from the grave, there were these three old fellows sitting at a country store. They pointed at me and laughed at me and I went over there and said 'What's so funny?' And they said, 'Well, if you go down to the courthouse at Statesville, North Carolina, look in the archives' records there in the prison at Statesville.' That's where Tom Dula was incarcerated from 1863 to '67 for killing Laura Foster. He just awaited hanging there all that time during the Civil War period until after the war, and it is on record that the county coroner wrote in there and said, 'Go ahead and hang the poor devil before he dies of the dread disease while in prison.' And all along, Tom Dula evidently claimed that he killed Laura Foster because she gave him syphilis."

DJ - "And that is the true story..."

BOB SHANE - "As I know it!" (LOL)

DJ - "When you recorded it for that first time, did you instantly hear it as a single? How did it get chosen?"

BOB SHANE - "No, we chose all the material the same way we always chose the material, just singing a whole bunch of kinds of music that we liked. A couple of deejays in Salt Lake City picked 'Tom Dooley' off and started plugging it as a kick and it put enough pressure on the album that it happened we were playing a concert in Salt Lake City that week and it sold 5,000 albums at one store! And we saw something was coming and that they were buying it for 'Tom Dooley' and getting interested in the rest of the music at the same time. So, you can say that 'Tom Dooley' actually kicked off the whole buying of that album to start with so that people would listen to it all on one time, all those different songs, and they like all of 'em."

ROGER GAMBILL - "The song at the time was over 75 years old, so it should prove something to people in the music business now that we've run out of notes, see, and we are going to have to go back and do things a different way with a different attitude and it's going to go back to interpretation again. A good tune and good interpretation."

DJ - "Good taste is timeless."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Let's hope."

DJ - "Would you do a little of it for us?"

TRIO SINGS PART OF "TOM DOOLEY"

DJ - "Now, why do you think such a tale would capture the imagination of the public the way that it did?"

BOB SHANE - "Well, if you had a public hanging in Madison Square Garden it would probably be sold out in an hour." (LOL)

DJ - "And that is that! I asked you this once on the phone, Bob. I wonder if you remember your answer. I said that it's been 25 years of playing that song now. Do you ever get tired of it? Do you remember what you said?"

BOB SHANE - "Ha, ha, it depends on how I felt at the time!"

DJ - "You remember Chico Esquella?"

BOB SHANE - "No."

DJ - "That's the character on 'Saturday Night Live' who says, 'Baseboll has been very good to me.' And your reply was..."

BOB SHANE - (In Spanish accent) "Tom Dooley has been very good to me." (LOL)

ROGER GAMBILL - "I would like to, if we could hang him again, we would (EML - even more laughter) if we could find some poor devil!"

DJ - "That was Roger Gambill, second longest in longevity..."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Let's explain that! It probably needs to be a little more defined."

BOB SHANE - "The second longest in the group."

DJ - "That says it. Roger, do you remember the first time you ever heard the Trio? I don't mean played with them."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Oh, yes! Yes, I've studied music since the time I was five and I'm almost 41 years old, so I'm of that vintage."

DJ - "O. K."

ROGER GAMBILL - "I was in high school in 1957 - 58 and participating in music and here's three guys from California who were absolutely number one, singing a song about our local folk hero, Tom Dooley. So, I attached myself, especially being a man from North Carolina, and being influenced by gospel and blue grass and all of that kind of music, I really became an enormous fan of the group. And I continued to do all kind of music but I was very familiar with the music and I really was one of those people that got to live out a fantasy. When you become a fan of a group and you sing along with them, you learn their tunes, having no idea I would one day be representing an honest evolution of that same thing. But I think it was one of the reasons that I have been able to contribute some."

DJ - "How did you make the connection? How did your fandom translate into..."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Well, it was intimidating a little bit and I thought about it for a while before I told Bob I would like to do it and I still kind of gave myself a couple of years and had I not felt like it was going somewhere, and this has been ten years ago, I think I would have stepped aside. But we did see it evolve and it's been a lot of fun. Each week has been better. Each year has been better. It's been a ten year overnight success again." (Laughter)

DJ - "I'm going to put the same question to George Grove who is the new kid in the group."

GEORGE GROVE - "I don't blame you for doing that!"

DJ - "George, how many years has it been for you?"

GEORGE GROVE - "I'm working on seven, now."

DJ - "The new kid, seven years, I see. (All, laughter.) When did you first hear of the Trio?"

GEORGE GROVE - "Well, when I was about (intentionally mumbles) years old."

BOB SHANE - "Thank you, George!"

GEORGE GROVE - "My oldest sister brought home the 'hungry i' album. At the time I had been studying piano for 6 or 7 years, which I majored in, piano and trumpet."

BOB SHANE - "It's really been handy!"

GEORGE GROVE - "When I heard the Kingston Trio with the banjo and guitar, I said, 'That's for me!' and it culminated in being persuaded, shall I say, in going to Atlanta. Roger called me and said, 'Would you come down and consider doing this?'"

DJ - "What had you been doing professionally pre-Trio?"

GEORGE GROVE - "I had written and recorded TV jingles and I had been in Nashville, playing guitar and banjo, that route. But then they called me and I went down to Atlanta and they discovered that we held the same basic tenet, that honesty is the most important thing..."

ROGER GAMBILL - "And if you can fake that, you've got it made! (LOL) He's not giving himself enough credit. He's the technician in the group and adds a very strong musical validity and it hasn't affected Bob or me either one!" (LOL)

DJ - "Did I not hear or read that there has even been a new dimension of the Trio in terms of symphonic involvement? Who can tell me about that?"

BOB SHANE - "True, we do about 20 symphonic concerts a year now. We've built them up in the last two or three years. In fact, we are probably going to do a lot more. We just got offers from Anchorage, Oklahoma City, Denver, and every place you can think of that have symphonies. We are a good pop thing for their symphonies and fund-raisers. It's a good match; a nice easy match because the songs we do are simple and they sound really nice with a symphony."

ROGER GAMBILL - "To hear 'Scotch and Soda' with an 80 piece symphony is super!"

DJ - "You know, you just said the magic words. I have been told not to let this man out of this room unless he does, in fact, perform that song."

ROGER GAMBILL - "You can keep him whether he performs that song or not!" (LOL)

DJ - "Bob, on an average, every night?"

BOB SHANE - "I've sung this song probably about 9,000 times."

DJ - "Do you remember the first time..."

BOB SHANE - "Sometimes I know it."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Have you ever heard the story of where he got this tune? Tell him where you got it. This is a good story, Pete."

DJ - "All right."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Your listeners will enjoy this."

BOB SHANE - "A guy walked up to me and said, 'Here's a song called 'Scotch and Soda.' Will you do it?'" (LOL)

DJ - "A raconteur if ever there was one."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Come on, now. The Seavers are back in town. Tell the story."

BOB SHANE - "Sure. O. K. Well, this is for you, Tom Seavers.

"When Tom Seavers was about nine, his parents gave us 'Scotch and Soda' in Fresno, California. Dave Guard was going out with his older sister, Katie, at the time at Stanford. We stopped off at their house driving down from Stanford to L. A. around Thanksgiving and we stopped off at their place for dinner. After dinner, they brought this piece of music out that they had heard in 1932 in Phoenix, Arizona, on their honeymoon, that a backroom piano player had been playing. They liked the song so much that they had him write it out for them but he never signed it. They had this old sheet and they took it out and sang the song for us and we said we would like that song.

"Originally, Dave Guard was going to sing it but he couldn't get the right feeling into it, so I ended up singing it. The song is anonymous and at a later date, Dave went and put his name on it to collect the writer's royalties on it which, I think, we gave some to the Seavers." (Laughter)

DJ - "We'll find out, I'm sure!"

BOB SHANE - "Tom, get a hold of us!"

ROGER GAMBILL - "And if you believe that, may London Bridge one day appear in Arizona!"

(BOB SINGS "SCOTCH AND SODA.")

DJ - "A million college romances just flashed through in the tri-state listening area!"

BOB SHANE - "It never did any good for me!" (Laughter)

ROGER GAMBILL - "You were luckier than most, Pete! (LOL) I thought we were going to talk about OUR accomplishments!" (LOL)

DJ - "Oh, my, my, I'm outnumbered here. You noticed that, I'm sure. I have to ask you about the reunion special that ran on Public Broadcasting a year or so because it was such a fun and at the same time, moving program for the viewers. Was it that for the participants as well?"

BOB SHANE - "Uh, different things for different participants."

DJ - "All right."

BOB SHANE - "I'm sure."

DJ - "Did you, George and Roger, feel comfortable in that context or intimidated by it?"

ROGER GAMBILL - "Perfectly comfortable."

GEORGE GROVE - "Totally comfortable."

DJ - "No problems?"

ROGER GAMBILL - "None. Nick Reynolds, for instance, and John Stewart, also, Dave Guard, uh, we're not as close to Dave as we are with Nick. Nick and I are just the best of friends."

DJ - "He wrote the liner notes for your..."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Yes, we see Nick quite often and we correspond and chat on the phone about this and that or the other and Nick is just a big fan of the group. And John opened the show for us up at Lake Tahoe at Caesar's Palace last summer.

"No, they've been so supportive. Nick is so excited now that the group has evolved to a point that it's let him know that it SHOULD be continued, you know, because he said, in '68, 'It's over.' He is so excited now. He is like a kid. Somebody came over to the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco the other night and Nick was just going crazy, applauding from six or eight tables and this guy said, 'Would you please keep it down? We want to hear!' And he was just, you know, he was a little kid with it! And that's nice. George and I both feel that way 'cause we love it! I think that's what we put into it, probably more than musical expertise on my part."

DJ - "I have to ask you about this because it got such wide spread dissemination at the time. Shortly after the special was taped, there was a big article in the "Wall Street Journal" which claimed that the entire thing was a sham and that the relationship of the guys was dirt poor and that there was a lot of hostility and antagonism and if you watched the tape, you can see it, etcetera, etcetera. A, were you aware that was being said, and, I guess, Bob, mainly directed at you, B, was there any validity to that?"

BOB SHANE - "I've watched the tape and you don't see that. You don't see that on the tape. Somebody evidently got that from the grapevine that there were feelings like that. I think I'm a better actor than that! (Laughter) Really, I've seen the tape myself. No, the antagonism that was there was...there was a rip between Dave Guard and myself. We've gotten that pretty well straightened out since then. We had gone different ways.

You have to remember, first of all, Dave quit in '61 at the peak of our thing. And there were some definite ill feelings about that. We made the most of it and we got John Stewart and we just continued, you know, but here's this fellow, coming back years later, who we had to pay 'X' amount of dollars to, you kow, a tremendous amount, and he's coming back later saying, 'I want to work again.' And so, I felt kind of pressed by that.

"As a result, well, when we rehearsed that show, I went into the studio with John and Dave and Nick and I said, 'Look, I want to drop any hostilities for this time and period and let's have a good time and do the best we can with it.' When we rehearsed the stuff in the studio, we were going to do the old songs just like they were. When we got done doing them, somewhere along the line, Dave started changing them. And it was so perplexing because we had just the day before rehearsed them another way. And it was as if he was trying to say, 'Look, here's what I can do for it now.' I would look over at Nick and Nick would say, 'Just follow me. I think I've got the beat!' (Laughter) He was changing beats and things and it just blew me! Then I realized it was going to be difficult anyway because I had been with three groups, I'm going to have to play three different rhythms. (Laughter) You know? So, that is what it was. It really was. It was a real kick to it but it was kind of a tongue-in-cheek kick. It was not that great, 'Oh, we're back together again!'"

DJ - "Then we won't be seeing them on a regular basis then?"

BOB SHANE - "You won't be seeing them again if I have anything to do with it! (LOL) Maybe 25 years from now."

DJ - "All right, we'd look forward to that. We're going to hold you to that promise! Maybe there is something to be said, though, for keeping one's feistiness and not mellowing after a quarter of a century."

BOB SHANE - Well, you got to figure, and I'm not feeling sorry for myself, essentially, because I really did the right thing, but I was involved in paying a lot of money to Dave Guard but when I did a stock trade-out in '76 and bought the name, I had to give my entire earnings and my entire stock in the corporation that I had built up all that time just for the name, when we originally had placed a much lesser figure on it. (Laughter) Just business-wise, you know, I'm going to be very protective about that."

DJ - "As well you should be as the one most responsible for..."

BOB SHANE - "I don't know if it was the guy in the 'Wall Street Journal' or who that said that Bob Shane had bought this thing and it was just a gravy train for all the other guys and I said, 'No, you've got to look at it a little differently. I already had an awful lot of my life invested in it and I went out and got a couple of partners that I KNOW for a FACT, are BETTER than the original group! I'm the one who call tell you that."

DJ - "That's right and maybe the only one."

BOB SHANE - "And they are BETTER and we are a BETTER group and work BETTER and feel BETTER in EVERY way than the old group did."

DJ - "Well, people will see that tonight at Carnegie Hall in a 25th anniversary concert for the benefit of SPCA. Who else might we expect to see on the stage tonight, guys?"

ROGER GAMBILL - "You can see Mary Travers, Tom Paxton, Bob Gibson, Josh White, Jr..."

BOB SHANE - "No, he says Josh White, now. I think he dropped the Junior."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Is he getting that old?" (Laughter)

BOB SHANE - "His father taught me how to play the guitar. Donnie, if you're listening, I'm sorry!" (LOL)

DJ - "I have one more question, Bob, and all of you may contribute to this. Rock and roll, the British invasion, the Beatles in particular, that changed the gravy train of the Trio at the time, what was your response to it?"

BOB SHANE - "We have always felt, right from the beginning, that we were just singing music. We got lucky with the sales. We have always been, primarily, a live act. That's our life. We enjoy working live. And in our peak years of the original group, in the sales of records, we still made more money off of the live performances."

DJ - "I didn't know that."

ROGER GAMBILL - "That part of the industry has changed completely."

DJ - "In an indirect way, the Trio had an influence on rock and roll as well."

BOB SHANE - "Oh, boy! We've had virtually every major rock group that has been around for years, come up to us at one time or another and say, 'If it hadn't been for you guys, we would have never picked up guitars.' There are people who will say, 'Did you really teach Joe Walsh how to tune a guitar when he was thirteen in Hawaii?' And I said, 'Probably.'" (LOL)

DJ - "I can't tell you what a thrill this was for me today. I thank you, so much, for taking your time out for this mixed bag. Is there something you can play for us in closing?"

BOB SHANE - "Sure."

ROGER GAMBILL - "What were we gonna do? Do you have a preference?"

DJ - "Oh, I could say 'Greenback Dollar' or I could say..."

ROGER GAMBILL - "There's only room in the studio for one guitar, that's the reason we don't have the full ensemble."

DJ - "How about your choice?"

ROGER GAMBILL - "Let's do the 'Merry Minuet.'"

DJ - "O. K."

BOB SHANE - "Sure."

(TRIO SINGS "THE MERRY MINUET.")

ROGER GAMBILL - "The proceeds to that song will go toward getting James Watts into the Sierra Club!"

DJ - "My thanks to the 1983 edition of the Kingston Trio. I will next see you gentlemen on stage tonight at Carnegie Hall."

ROGER GAMBILL - "Thank you, Pete. It was a delight."

(RECORDED SONG OF "GREENBACK DOLLAR" plays [by the Stewart Trio])

End of Interview