Topic: Commercial Folk Music Revival
The commercial folk-music revival began on 19 June 1958 when Paul Coburn played "Tom Dooley" [1] on his Salt Lake City, Utah, radio program. The response to the Kingston Trio song goaded Capitol Records into releasing it as a single from their album in August. [2] The album reached the Billboard sales charts in October, and "stayed there for nearly four years." [3]
The taboo against American folk music, which was constructed by the FBI, was broken by an Appalachian murder ballad [4] that some thought was about a naval surgeon recruited by the CIA to spy in Vietnam. [5] Ironically, Dr. Dooley contributed to the fear of communism in southeast Asia in that led to the war in Vietnam and the repoliticalization of the folk-music revival. [6]
The three young men in the Kingston Trio were very different from The Weavers [7] and other New York City-based folk singers. They hadn’t know the familial and financial insecurities of the Depression. As a younger generation, they were affected by World War II. Two members, Dave Guard and Bob Shane, were living on Oahu when it was bombed by the Japanese in 1941. [8] Guard’s father was a civil engineer for the army, [9] while Shane’s father soon joined the naval reserve. [10] The father of the third member, Nick Reynolds, was a career navy man. [11]
Even though Reynolds had listened to bootlegged tapes of the Weavers as a teenager, [12] the group’s musical influences were more Harry Belafonte [13] than rural Southern singers. They heard local music as adolescents: mariachi bands in México [14] and tourist and seamen’s music in Hawaii. [15] Their music was not in the tradition of any of the current popular genres: big bands, African-American rhythm and blues, Southern rockabilly associated with Elvis Presley, or Italian-American styles promoted by Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in Philadelphia.
Record companies and booking agencies had problems finding similar groups to promote because they were they first of their kind. The main employers at the time were night clubs that often hired jazz-influenced groups. The Trio’s manager, Frank Werber, had spent years working backstage at the hungry i in San Francisco, [16] and prepared them to entertain that type of audience. [17]
When the group was still relatively unknown, Werber was able to sign a one-year contract with a national booking agency. Within the year, he and two men from that company formed International Talent Associates. [18] Dick Weissman remembered ITA soon dominated the college concert circuit. [19] By representing so many folk-revival music groups, it was able to offer artists for any budget or schedule. [20]
Werber’s intertwined interests helped the Trio when Guard left the group in 1961. He looked for replacements among groups handled by ITA. [21] John Phillips claimed Werber tried to recruit him as a singer and songwriter. Since Phillips had just formed his own group that was handled by ITA, Werber suggested the other vocalist in The Journeymen become a solo opening act for the Trio, and the instrumentalist take Guard’s place as the guitar and banjo player. [22]
Before the Kingston Trio selected John Stewart to replace Guard, Werber’s subordinate got The Journeymen a recording contract with the Trio’s label, Capitol, [23] and moved them from ITA to a booking agency that didn’t compete with his most important performers. The Journeymen noticed they lost interest in them after the future of the Trio was assured. [24] The three had to extricate themselves from Werber’s managerial control. [25]
Phillips began his professional career with a quartet modeled on popular groups from the early 1950s. When the Smoothies failed to attract an audience, [26] he decided to add some elements of the Kingston Trio sound. Phillips asked people in a New York folk-music store to recommend some session musicians. [27]
Weissman was hired to work on some demos, [28] and he and Phillips became friends. When Phillips’ group returned from its final tour, two of the members quit. Phillips then proposed a trio with the remaining member, Scott McKenzie, and Weissman. [29]
Weissman was the only one who knew any folk songs. He had become involved with the New York City scene when he was a student at Goddard College, and lived in the city after he graduated. [30] He remembered:
"the three of us rehearsed for six weeks, six days a week, ten hours a day, until we had an albums worth of material. The songs were a blend of traditional songs that I brought into the group, some things John wrote, and another song I had written." [31]
The three grew frustrated when other acts they believed were less talented were more successful. Phillips was particularly incensed by the success of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore," [32] which was Billboard’s top selling record in September 1961. [33] Weissman recalled "we worked out an arrangement of the old chestnut Kumbaya." [34]
Their version was based on Pete Seeger’s. [35] They used his pronunciation and his "sleeping" verse, which they paired with "laughing." Weissman adopted the Caribbean rhythms of the Kingston Trio, and the group sang "Oh Lordy" instead of "Oh Lord."
Their melodic development followed that of Seeger on his Carnegie Hall album. On the third line of the full "kumbaya" verse, one person went high. The final repetition of "kumbaya" must have been overdubbed. [36] The group sang the lines in harmony, and, while they were holding the final note, they echo the phrase in harmony.
Their version "began to hit the charts in Minneapolis, Vancouver, and it even got into the top ten records in Boston," where it upset the sensibilities of a minister who thought it "anti-religious." Weissman said, "he counted the number of times that we sang Oh Lordy, and began a campaign to get it off the radio. Unfortunately for us, he succeeded. Our attempt to capitalize on Michael sank in to oblivion." [37]
(To be continued in next post)
End Notes
1. Kingston Trio. "Tom Dooley." The Kingston Trio. Capitol Records T-996. Recorded February 1959, released June 1958.
2. Ronald D. Cohen. Rainbow Quest. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002. 131.
3. Wikipedia. "The Kingston Trio (Album)."
4. Gilliam Banmon Grayson and Henry Whitter recorded the song in 1929. [38] In 1940, Frank Warner transcribed a version from Frank Proffitt that appeared in an anthology published by Alan Lomax in 1947. [39] Lomax and Warner sued for copyright infringement and negotiated rights to the royalties for the Kingston Trio’s version of "Tom Dooley" in 1962. [40]
5. Cohen. 131. You have to wonder if these people actually listened to the Kingston Trio record.
6. Wikipedia. "Thomas Anthony Dooley III." His book, Deliver Us from Evil, was as truthful as Harvey Matusow’s reports on Pete Seeger that were discussed in the post for 18 August 2019. It was published in New York by New American Library in 1956.
7. The members of The Weavers were discussed in the posts for 12 October 2017, 14 July 2019, 28 July 2019, 11 August 2019, 18 August 2019, and 6 October 2019.
8. William J. Bush. Greenback Dollar. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2013. 25.
9. Bush, Greenback. 23.
10. Bush, Greenback. 20.
11. Wikipedia. "Nick Reynolds."
12. Bush, Greenback. 6. The group later saw them perform at the San Francisco Opera House. [41] Dick Weissman said "Guard had attended a Weavers concert in 1957 and then learned to play banjo from Pete Seeger’s instruction book." [42]
13. William J. Bush. "Bob Shane of the Kingston Trio." Lazyka website.
14. Bush, Greenback. 4–5.
15. Bush, Greenback. 4–5 and 26–27.
16. Bush, Greenback. 52–53.
17. Bush, Greenback. 58–59.
18. Bush, Greenback. 124.
19. Dick Weissman. The Music Never Stops. Anaheim Hills, California: Centerstream Publishing, 2016. 39.
20. Weissman, Music. 47.
21. Weissman, Music. 40. ITA suggested Rene Cardenas become their manager. He was an associate of Werber. Weissman remembered: "Werber and Cardenas were interested in us as an insurance policy, in case the trio was unable to find a replacement." John Phillips later said: "Werber had us believing we couldn’t fail to make it. We soon learned that he planned to sign us as insurance against the imminent—but still secret—breakup of the Kingston Trio." [43]
22. John Phillips. Papa John. With Jim Jerome. Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1986. 101. The chronicler of the Kingston Trio, said none of the Trio members remembered auditioning Phillips. [44] Given the duplicity of Werber and Cardenas, everyone’s memory may be accurate. There is evidence Phillips got ensnared: he and his family lived in an apartment owned by Shane, [45] and he began writing songs for the group to pay debts. [46]
23. Phillips, 97; and Weissman, Music, 41.
24. Weissman, Music. 44. "By this time we had become thoroughly skeptical about what Rene Cardenas and Frank Weber were going to be able to do for us. They had dragged us out of the one booking agency that seem to have a lock on pop-folk gigs and college concerts, and put us in an old line booking agency that was best known for booking Louis Armstrong. We regretted leaving ITA, and we also realized that Weber and Cardenas had lost interest in us when the Kingston Trio re-formed."
25. Weissman, Music. 45.
26. Phillips. 95.
27. Phillips, 95; and Weissman, Music, 35.
28. Weissman, Music. 35.
29. Weissman, Music. 36.
30. Weissman, Music.
31. Dick Weissman. Which Side Are You On? New York: Continuum, 2006. 84.
33. Wikipedia. "The Highwaymen (Folk Band)."
34. Weissman, Music. 52.
35. Pete Seeger’s version was discussed in the post for 6 October 2019.
36. Weissman said they overdubbed on their first album. [48] He probably also did that on the instrumental introduction to "Kumbaya."
37. Weissman, Music. 52.
38. Grayson and Whitter. "Tom Dooley." Victor 40235.
39. "Tom Dooley [Laws F36A]." The Traditional Ballad Index. California State University-Fresno website. Version 4.5. The anthology was John Avery Lomax and Alan Lomax. Folk Song U.S.A. New York: Duell, 1947. 82.
40. Michael John Simmons. "Bob Shane: Behind the Stripes." August 2012. Fretboard Journal website.
41. Bush, Greenback. 61.
42. Weissman, Side. 74–75.
43. Phillips. 97.
44. Bush, Greenback. 161.
45. Phillips. 101.
46. Weissman recalled in his autobiography, "desperate for some source of income, John started writing songs with John Stewart, Guard’s replacement," [page 43] while Phillips simply admitted "I was writing songs with John Steward after he replaced Dave Guard in the Kingston Trio." [page 106]
47. "The Highwaymen – Michael / Santiano." Discogs website.
48. Weissman, Music. 42.
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