While I was looking around for something else on the Internet not too long ago, I clicked on a link to the Kingston Trio homepage and heard the great banjo licks from the intro to “It Takes a Worried Man” (I guess the actual name is “Worried Man Blues”), and I was transported back to my college days.
All kinds of great songs started playing in my head. “Scotch and Soda,” “MTA,” “Tom Dooley,” “John B Sails,” “Scarlet Ribbons,” “Seasons in the Son,” “Worried Man.” Wow!
If you’re about my age, in college in the late ’50s and early ’60s, I’m willing to bet that the Kingston Trio was among your music favorites back then. In late ’57, when I was a freshman at Oshkosh State College (now UW-Oshkosh), the trio had a huge hit with “Tom Dooley.” It sold over 3 million copies, and in 1958 when the song went gold, the guys became legendary for their pop-folk brand of music. Even if you aren’t old enough to recall their meteoric rise in the music world, you might be surprised how many of their recordings you have heard.
The Kingston Trio’s music was born out of a rich tradition of American folk music, but the refreshing way they played and sang the songs brought the genre into the mainstream for the first time. Most of my college friends had albums by the Kingston Trio, and you could walk from room to room in the fraternity house and hear almost nothing else. We all knew all the words to all the songs and sang along to the records. I still know all the words. The Kingston Trio was definitely a factor in influencing the musical taste of my generation.
When “Tom Dooley” went gold in 1958, the folk revival was born. In no time, groups like The Limeliters, the Smothers Brothers, The Brothers Four, the Chad Mitchell Trio, the New Christy Minstrels, The Weavers, Simon and Garfunkel, and Peter, Paul, and Mary became enormous stars. The ’60s “folk revival” started by the Kingston Trio set the stage for stars such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Byrds and others.
Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds and Dave Guard were the original Kingston Trio.
In 1957 these college students, buddies, started a band in Palo Alto. Bob Shane, usually considered as the “founder,” said, “I formed The Kingston Trio with Nick Reynolds and Dave Guard right out of college in 1957. We were in the San Francisco Bay area. I had gone to high school with Dave, and Nick and I met in an accounting class at Menlo College. Dave was attending Stanford, which was just down the road. We started out singing and playing together in beer gardens and at frat parties.”
Shane, who stayed with the group until 2004, said that The Kingston Trio got its name from Kingston, Jamaica, “because at the time we started singing and playing we were doing a lot of calypso music.” And you can hear a little of the calypso sound in some of their most popular songs. But mostly they used folk music as their basis.
They took folk music and added a little comedy. The band worked hard and found an enthusiastic audience, and about one year later, The Kingston Trio recorded their first album. Later that year, four of their albums were listed by Billboard Magazine in their list of the top 10. It was the first time that had ever happened, and it hasn’t happened since.
Although the times have changed since the ’50s, the Kingston Trio has continued to play, remaining popular for a simple reason — they played great songs that sound as good today as the first time you heard them. Fifty-eight years after “Tom Dooley” hit No. 1, the Kingston Trio (with new personnel) is still touring the country 30 weeks a year, bringing back all the great memories and making new ones!
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