with his guitar, polishing some new and some old folk material he will present Tom suggested the he and Laura elope, and on May 25, 1866, Laura packed her clothes in a bundle and went off to meet Tom in the forest. "Unlike Thomas Dula, as his name was originally spelled, was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina in 1844. At Guard's request, the Kingston Trio records it, sung by Guard's colleague in the Trio, Mr. Bob Shane. He graduated from Stanford with a degree in economics in 1956.[3]. we were told, and we heard there were radio reports for the military to check The Tarriers were best known for writing The Banana Boat Song, which became a huge hit for Harry Belafonte under the name Day-O.), In 2010, Shane was cleaning out a closet and found a box of old reel-to-reel tapes that the Trio made in 1957 during their initial stand at the Purple Onion. more in keeping with the musical direction we would have probably assumed him to by a Salt Lake City disc-jockey, The During the next several years in Australia, Dave had a musical-variety television show called Dave's Place. Why did it . At the time, none of us could read music, and this was the best way of doing that. Reynolds left the group in 1967 after the British Invasion rendered the folk style effectively antiquated in the minds of pop music fans, and moved his family to Oregon, where he stayed until the 1980s. We got a 1939 Beechcraft D-18, with a split tail that sat on the ground, Shane says. Guard left Punahou at the end of his junior year, completing his final year of high school at the Menlo School, a private prep school that helped him prepare for acceptance and matriculation at nearby Stanford University. During that time, he worked up a solo act and got a regular gig at the Pearl City Tavern in Honolulu. The album included the Kingston Trio standard "Scotch and Soda," which he had arranged in 1956 but which for thirty years had been performed in The Trio only by Bob Shane. San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle 67 years The original Trio of Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds and Dave Guard reunited for a PBS television specialrecorded in 1981. We would go see folk acts in San Francisco when they were playing, Shane says. We also sang a couple of songs from Samoa. They joined up with Menlo College student Joe Gannon, who played rudimentary bass, and singer Barbara Bogue. I did a few different things like singing Harry Belafonte and Hank Williams songs, but what most people dont know is I was the first Elvis Presley impersonator in the world, Shane says. When did Bill Zorn leave the Kingston Trio? That June, they found themselves playing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu when they got some surprising news. In late June, Tom panicked and ran for the border. By 1960, the group won the first Grammy for best folk album. The occasions when it attempted serious renditions of folk ballads ("Tom Dooley," for instance) it fell short. to The original members were Dave Guard (b. October 19, 1934, San Francisco, California, U.S.d. And people would ask, Why would you do that? And I said, How else are you going to meet the chicks?, The Trio was traveling so much they decided it would be more efficient to rent their own airplane to get them to gigs. On November 17, 1958, the Kingston Trios Tom Dooley hits #1 on the Billboard pop chart. In 1940, a folklorist named Frank Warner made a field recording of Wilkes County native Frank Proffitt singing a version of the song that had the same melody but somewhat different lyrics as the Grayson and Whitter version. Guard worked closely in Honolulu with slack-key guitar icon Gabby Pahinui to record and produce Pure Gabby, an album of classic Hawaiian melodies played with slack key tunings. He hosted his own ABC-TV national variety show, Dave's Place, on Sunday nights for 13 weeks in late 1965. Reynolds, Bob Shane and Dave Guard formed the Kingston Trio in 1957, originally as calypso group. Tom Dooley sold more than 3 million units. I had always liked it," he explained. Tom Dooley They Shirley Collins, the English folk singer, succinctly summed up the opinion of most of the traditionalists toward the Trio: I despised them. But she did add, The audience loved them!. In 2004, shortly after his 70th birthday, he suffered a major heart attack. Among the groups hits were MTA, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and Scotch and Soda, the latter featuring Reynolds. With only Dave on vocals this time, this Kingston Dave Guard was born on October 19, 1934 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Get four issues of the keepsake Fretboard Journal for just $60. In 1959, before the folk category was established, the group won a Grammy Award for the best country and western recording for "Tom Dooley," the group's best-selling single. In 1959, before the folk category was established, the group won a Grammy for the best country-Western recording for Tom Dooley, the groups best-selling single. They were scheduled to close the event, but an outcry from some of the other performers, who felt that Kingston Trio were just capitalizing on folk music, caused George Wein, the festivals organizer, to have them go on next to last and have Earl Scruggs close the show. The original trio had nine gold albums, The Kingston Trio at the Hungry i, its most successful. - 1960 - Capitol Records. Product Description. Mary Travers/Living or Deceased. Dave's father, a civil engineer and U.S. Army Reserve colonel, encouraged Dave to pursue a career in business. from The Kingston Trio. Bob Shane bought the name and in 1976 added two singers to continue appearing March 22, 1991, Rollinsford, New Hampshire), Bob Shane (b. February 1, 1934, Hilo, Hawaiid. He performed both under his own name, anonymously and under an alias as a supporting musician and vocalist on Australian recording sessions with, among others, Lionel Long, The Twiliters, The Green Hill Singers, Tina Date, and The Tolmen. KINGSTON TRIO original instruments Vega banjo, Martin D-25, and Martin tenor | The kingston trio, Country music singers, Banjo. ", Dave, who grew up in Hawaii, has another island project. "My daughter Catherine's ambition to be in show business launched me on Bobby was considered the sex symbol and I was the short, little guy, Reynolds said. SPECKLED ROAN - The Kingston Trio - from Make Way! Shane, who had started out on ukulele years before switching to tenor guitar and later six-string guitar, taught Guard a few chords and they began working out a few songs. IMPORTANT! In addition to writing and recording, Guard also found time to produce the video Workout for Equestrians with Ingrid Gsottschneider for Golden Arrow Enterprises.[12]. We hung his bass from the center of the aisle, so there were two guys at each side who could not even see each other because the bass was hanging there., Shane says that most of the shows from that period blend together in his memory, but one in particular stands out. But that was as much to check out the competition as anything else. In the late 1970s, Dave rekindled his interest Dave also is busy He did four tracks on a 12-track cassette recorded to accompany the "All Along the Merrimac" tour of New Hampshire and a final solo album, Up & In (1988), which received mixed reviews. Druid adventure as a travel recipe," said Dave, "and we had some travel They refashioned themselves as the Kingston Quartet (they maintained their link to calypso music by naming themselves after the capital of Jamaica) and tried to get jobs at various local nightspots, but they had little success. Their hits included Tom Dooley, The M.T.A., The Tijuana Jail, Where Have All The Flowers Gone, A Worried Man, plus many others. Eventually, their one-week trial booking stretched from June until December. Kingston Trio found themselves being one of the biggest things to happen on the music Many thanks to Carol Berry When Tom heard that deputies from Wilkes County were coming to arrest him, he ran away, only to be hunted down and arrested by Grayson. Then, go back on the Internet to this Dave Guard/Up & In, Folk Era Records 1988 - courtesy of Peter Overly. As one of the founding members of The Kingston Trio, Dave Guard's music, into this age. Fans of legendary folk icons The Kingston Trio can re-discover their timeless music all over again. By early 1961 Shane and Reynolds had found a replacement. While Tom was awaiting the second trial, a now-unknown composer wrote the second song about the murder, which opened with the Hang your head Tom Dula line. I went back in 1961 to record an album of Gabby and his guitar, but I couldn't The Trio hit on the idea of playing on college campuses, the first band to discover this lucrative market. On March 15, 1959, their plane developed trouble on the way to a gig at Notre Dame and started to go down. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. In the late '50's, up until the Beatles hit, The Kingston Trio were the biggest performing group in the country. . His memorial service in Portsmouth, New Hampshire was attended by Bob Shane, Glen Yarbrough, the Limeliters and many other figures from the folk world. This is the lyric that evolved into the hit song of the Kingston Trio. The period of the original Kingston Trio "was the highlight of our careers," said Reynolds in a telephone interview. During that time, word about the Trios powerful singing and hilarious stage patter made its way down south to Los Angeles. away. She really liked the music, but she had a soft spot for the Kingston Trio because in 1956, when she was a teenager, Dave Guard pulled her out of a wrecked car. And although he was doing pretty well as a solo performer, he really missed singing in harmony. One of the best songs from this short-lived The great thing about the Kingston Trio was that we could do all three things.. We were smart enough to say when we formed the band that if there ever gets to the point where somebodys really pissed-off with the whole thing, he has the freedom to go anywhere he wants, Shane says. Mr. Guard, a native of Honolulu, graduated from Stanford University with an economics degree in 1956. We flew in that thing all the hell over. Dave Guard formed Dave Guard & The Whiskeyhill Singers immediately after his departure from The Kingston Trio. He now lives in Arizona, where he oversees the Kingston Trios business interests. Out of these formative, scuffling years The Kingston Trio emerged in 1957. Among the group's hits were "The MTA," "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" Bob Shane, founder and last original member of the chart-topping folk group The Kingston Trio, died days before his 86th birthday. And then a sole voice from the top of a bleacher called out Horseshit! And the whole place went crazy. The Kingston Trie 25 Years Non-Stop, Xeres, 1982. illustrator of the book, "Deirde: A Celtic Legend," and they will It was fresh and quirky and fun. In 1959 alone, they had four albums at the same time among the ten top-selling albums. Dave Guard, founder of the Kingston Trio, which brought folk music from the coffeehouses to mainstream America with songs such as the haunting "Tom Dooley" and the rollicking "MTA," has died. He was 75. Warner recorded his version in 1952; it was later covered by the Folksay Trio and the Tarriers. We seemed to be the only tourists in Northern Ireland By 1960, the group won the first Grammy for the best folk album. The Kingston Trio's many songs include "Tom Dooley", "A Worried Man", "Hard Travelin'", "The Tijuana Jail", "Greenback Dollar", "Reverend Mr. Black", "Sloop John B", "Scotch and Soda", "Merry Minuet", "Hard, Ain't It Hard", "Zombie Jamboree", "M.T.A. Guard called his group Dave Guard and the Calypsonians, with a Weavers-style signature sound that was principally two guitars, a banjo, and rollicking vocals. Guard was aware that among the Kingston Trio, he was the only one who could read music and who had some understanding of music theory; his partners basically played by rote, and the three of them sang in simple three-part harmony. Judy Henske was eventually replaced by Liz Seneff, but the Whiskeyhill Singers were disbanded in late 1962 after Guard left for Australia. Gottlieb died in 1996 (age 72), Yarbrough died in 2016 (age 86), and Hassilev (born 1932), the last founding member, who had remained active in the group, retired in 2006, leaving the group to carry on without any of the original members. keeping his home base here. (No more country music awards for them! See full bio Born: October 19, 1934 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA Died: Guard and Reynolds called Bob Shane in Hawaii, who was finding life in the family sporting goods business uninspiring. He quickly discovered that people really wanted to hear all the old songs. 1959. Im very upset, said Nick Reynolds, a member of the trio since its founding in 1957. in small bars or for frat parties. take. blues, calypso, or jazz? The roots of the Kingston Trio go back to the early 1950s, to the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, where fellow students Bob Shane and Dave Guard first met. 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