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Best
of the Decca Years |
 MCA/Decca MCAD-1177 1 |
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Like many of his generation, Tom Paxton remembers exactly where he was the first time he heard the Kingston Trio. "It was at a drama school party at the University of Oklahoma, in 1958," he recently reminisced. "The noise was deafening, but the radio was on. Through the party bedlam, I heard something different. I glued my ear to the speaker and heard 'Tom Dooley' for the first time -- it was tremendous. Later that year, I heard and saw The Trio at the field house. I remember saying to my date, as we left, 'I have to do this'." Bob Shane (b. Hilo, Hawaii, Feb 1, 1934), Nick Reynolds (b. Coronado, California, July 27, 1933), and Dave Guard (b. Honolulu, Hawaii, October 19, 1934) were marketed as a "folk" group by their first label, Capitol Records, and accepted as such by the public. But reality was more complicated: the Trio's repertoire, almost from the beginning, ranged from traditional material through American and foreign pop songs, British music hall, cabaret material and even a Broadway hit, "They Call The Wind Maria," from the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe's 1951 "Paint Your Wagon." Before long, they added country songs and Ray Charles' "Leave My Woman Alone" to their recorded repertoire. As the singer-songwriter scene developed, the Trio helped give the likes of Paxton, Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot and many others an early career lift. Why, the whole concept of "Folk Rock" came from people who had been inspired by the Kingston Trio, plugging in their guitars and adding the drums in order to capture some rock and roll energy. Impressive song scouts, The Kingston Trio recorded "Sloop John B." before the Beach Boys, "Seasons In The Sun" before Terry Jacks, "Lemon Tree" before Peter, Paul and Mary of Trini Lopez, "Jackson" before either Johnny Cash & June Carter or Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, "The First Time (Ever I Say Your Face)" before Roberta Flack, and both "It Was A Very Good Year" and "Loves Been Good To Me" before Frank Sinatra did. The Beach Boys even appropriated the Trio's striped shirts. Prolific in the recording studio, the Trio released as many as four albums per year. Of their 19 albums to hit Billboard's top 50 (forget those that didn't), fourteen made the top 10, and five reached #1; three of those holding that position for more than ten weeks. Among the first acts to release albums recorded "live" in concert, The Trio was equally welcome in night clubs, concert halls or on television, and pioneered college appearances. Their touring schedule kept them on the road as much as 300 days a year. Even Guard's departure, in 1961, didn't seem to hurt the trio. After auditioning several possible replacements, Reynolds, Shane and manager Frank Werber settled on John Stewart (b. San Diego, California, Sept 5, 1939). Stewart had already written songs for the Trio and had a personality compatible with the remaining duo. "John coming in was a great idea," notes long-time friend Rod McKuen, "because he contributed some great songs and his harmonies were different -- kind of hillbilly, while Nick and Bob had that college thing." The hits continued unabated. Until . . . CREW CUTS GIVE WAY TO MOP TOPS Werber and Perenchio were able to extract $750,000 from Decca, Werber says, a good amount in those days, and an offer that Capitol -- then home to the Beatles and the Beach Boys -- wouldn't match. The Trio subsequently recorded four studio albums, and a final 2-disc live project that the label declined to release. Sales were initially promising, but it was clear that, between the British invasion and Decca's relative lack of folk music marketing expertise, The Kingston Trio's days as a hit recording act were over. With Stewart anxious to pursue his own career and Reynolds weary of the road; the Kingston Trio disbanded in 1967. Within a couple of years, Shane recruited members of what would be called the New Kingston Trio. In 1988 Reynolds rejoined Shane. The third member of today's Kingston Trio, George Grove, has been with Shane for more than 22 years, longer than Guard and Stewart combined. The Kingston Trio are currently on the road 35 weeks per year, Reynolds estimates, playing symphony dates, performing arts theater and private corporate shows. THE BEST OF THE DECCA YEARS In the interest of listenability, the track order is not chronological. But the material, as through the Trio's career, ranges from traditional to country to pop. There's even a Broadway song here, though the Trio didn't realize it at the time of recording. "Stay Awhile," which opens this collection was the Trio's tribute to the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, an Irish group who supplied them with material from time to time. The melody is a traditional Irish Song. "Writing is the big money in the business," says Shane, "We'd take melodies that had been around for a long time and put new words to them." "Long Time Blues" is one of three Mason Williams songs here. He's been singing folk music (like Paxton, in Oklahoma) even before the Trio hit with "Tom Dooley," but admits that "When the first Kingston Trio album came out, folk music suddenly became (commercially) viable -- everybody wanted to hear it." When the Trio moved to Decca, Williams became a frequent contributor to the songbook. This version of "Long Time Blues" was initially rejected; the tune subsequently re-recorded and released with electric guitars and percussion. With Trio purists in mind, we included the original acoustic recording. Rod McKuen had met the Trio when both were playing the Copacabana night club in New York City; The Trio in the main room, and Rod McKuen and the Eggheads alternating in the lounge with Wayne Newton. "I liked them," says McKuen, "they were nice kids, with terrific harmony." Dave was the most serious, Nick was the hardest working, and Bob was the laziest -- but he had the best voice, so he got most of the solos." Including that on "Love's Been Good To Me." "Poverty Hill" co-writer Fred Hellerman was a founding member of the Weavers, the first folk group of any commercial consequence and one of the Trio's favorites. "Michael Harrington had written a book called 'The Other America,' the whole point of which was that there was a hidden America that people didn't talk about much or pay any attention to," Hellerman explains. There was no such place as "Paradise Mountain," he adds, though "Recently I visited a friend in Western North Carolina. It's real hardscrabble country that's become a somewhat important summer area, with people coming up from Florida to spend the hot season there in the mountains." "My Ramblin' Boy" is the first of two Tom Paxton compositions here. "I'm certain," he states today, "that having 'I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound' and ' My Ramblin' Boy' recorded by the Kingston Trio brought me the attention of a whole new audience and brought a real boost to my career." Both have, subsequently to the Trio recordings, become standards in the pop-folk repertoire. Mason Williams' "Three Song" is, he says, the result of a dream. "I woke up one night in Witchita Falls, Texas, with the idea that you could sing a song, and a second song, and when you sang them together, you'd have a third song -- it has a bit of a puzzle quality to it." Back to Paxton for " I Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound." Says the composer, "I heard a year or two after writing the song that it is a definite faux pas in San Francisco to ever refer to the city as 'Frisco.' So I was tickled to hear that the guys hand changed the line 'I hear he's out by Frisco Bay' to 'I hear he's out in Monterey'." Rod McKuen who was in the studio when the Trio recorded the song says that "Rusting in the Rain" continues to be one of his favorites. "The amazing thing is that Rod, who didn't play an instrument, wrote all those songs a cappella," notes Stewart. "I love the imagery in 'Rusting in the Rain'." "They Are Gone," says Williams came during a period when he was "real fascinated by bossa nova and toying with the sort of pop market that included singers like Jack Jones." "Lei Pakalana" was ". . . one of the first songs Bobby and I ever sang together," Reynolds recalls. "Although I didn't grow up I Hawaii, my father loved Hawaiian songs and played guitar and we had some Hawaiian records. Bobby would teach me the words phonetically -- I don't think he even knew what the lyrics meant." "Lei Pakalana" was originally a local hit, circa 1947, for Richard Kahui, a singer-pianist who brought jazz elements to Hawaiian music. Stewart sat out this recording, at the end of a session. "They sang it in one take," he notes, "Better than anyone else could." "The farther along the 'Stewart' Trio got along," says Shane, "the more trouble we had finding songs. Other groups would record material we'd already discarded, and we were running out of public-domain songs." John Stewart rose to the occasion. "I took acid once, on Monterey Beach," says Stewart, "and 'Children of the Morning' and 'Hit and Run' were my post acid trip songs; that kind of imagery was all over the place then." Of the latter number, Stewart quotes Mark Twain: "Once you realize it's all insane, it makes sense." Glen Campbell was one of the few auxiliary musicians to play on occasional Trio sessions back in Capitol days, and wrote "Less of Me" inspired by a sign on the wall of a radio station in Canton, Ohio, where he was appearing as a member of the Beach Boys. Stewart plays the (in his words) "campfire harmonica"; the drummer is probably Jerry Garelli. "Lock All the Windows" is a clear indication that Stewart was ripe for a solo career. Says Shane, "That was one of the songs (on the 'Children of the Morning' album) that I really liked. I had a whole fraternity house at the University of Alabama singing that song, once, to the sorority across the way." Stewart remembers "Gonna Go Down The River" as one of the songs he sang with the Trio during his auditions for the group. "Besides being a songwriter and being able to tell jokes on stage, my rock and roll roots really made that song cook." The Trio would occasionally sit on a song for some time before recording and/or releasing it; see "Lei Pakalana" above. Shortly after writing this song, co-composer Dallas Frazier wrote "Alley Oop," 'the Hollywood argyles' 1960 novelty hit; he also wrote the Oak Ridge Boys' "Elvira." The harmonica is played by Billy Roberts, probably best known as the composer of the 60s rock standards "Hey, Joe." This album concludes with "I'm Going Home," an all-stops-out ramblin' kind of song supplied to the Trio by one Fred Geis, who met them in Chicago and presented himself as a genuine knight of the rails, or hobo. The song had become a highlight of the Trio's live set -- it remains one of the few Decca recordings they perform onstage -- when they discovered that Geis had (inadvertently?) appropriated the melody, virtually intact, from the title song of "Hello, Dolly!" composer Jerry Herman's first Broadway show, 1961's "Milk and Honey" (the subject matter, however, is quite different: Herman's song is about Israel). Herman also found out, and legal action followed. "Some years later, I was back (at home) in Oregon," Reynolds continues, "and Freddie called and said 'What can I do? I can't pay them back, because I've spent all the money!' I told him ' Don't look at me; I'm retired.'" When the Kingston Trio finally decided to disband, all seemed to agree, it was largely because it wasn't as much fun as it had been. Stewart: "When I joined, I was a singer-songwriter, and when I left, it had become the era of the singer-songwriter. After hanging out with people like Eric Anderson and Phil Ochs in the Village, I just had to do that. And Nick felt it was long enough for him, too." "We decided to split a year early, giving us time for 800 'last' concerts and twelve 'last' TV shows. Luckily, I realized how much fun it was while I was still in The Trio; I didn't have to wait until later." -- Todd Everett, All direct quotes are from interviews conducted expressly for this project. Thanks, of course, to those who contributed their time for the record. Thanks too, to Mary Katherine Aladdin; Caroline Newcomb; and the writings of Paul Surratt, Ben Blake, Jack Rubeck and Allen Shaw. Those with internet access may wish to point their browsers to www.folkera.com, and proceed from there. |
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