The Band: The Band

The Band: The Band (1969)

Glenn: I should probably admit up front that until about six months ago I had no feelings whatsoever for The Band. Sure, they rocked it with Dylan, and I’d seen enough of The Last Waltz to be glad that punk rock was able to dispose of the coke-crusted cremains of dinosaur rock (seriously, there’s so much self-congratulatory bullshit smeared all over the celluloid that it’s hard to see what’s happening). But I’d never been interested in The Band’s music, per se. At best, they provided fodder to late-night acoustic guitar jams (“The Weight,” “Up On Cripple Creek”). At worst, they seemed to typify all that was wrong with rock: way-too-sorrowful ballads, pretentious romanticizing of rural life, too-earnest singing, “funky” but actually leaden drumming, bad organ solos (there’s a special place in hell for “Chest Fever,” ugh). I hated their version of “Long Black Veil” — and I hated that my brothers always tried to play their too-damn-slow version instead of the superior Johnny Cash version.

Suffice it to say that I was blaming The Band for things beyond their control. Just because one can hear the roots of Journey and Foreigner in “Chest Fever” doesn’t mean that The Band is to blame. In fact, they should be celebrated for their very real accomplishments and general awesomeness. I was blind, but now I see.

“A lot of good people have done gone on”

John Hartford was one of the great unsung heroes of the American roots music revival.  His banjo and fiddle chops were top-notch.  His songwriting was robust.  He made some great records in the late 60s, including “Gentle On My Mind,” which later became a hit for Glen Campbell.  During that time he was a staple musician on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Johnny Cash Show, and The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.  He also contributed mightily to the countrified sound of the Byrds’ watershed Sweetheart of the Rodeo (hear his fiddle on “I Am a Pilgrim”).  His early-70s albums reinvented bluegrass, particularly 1970’s Aereo-Plain.  Often considered his masterpiece, Aereo-Plain has long been out of print and is now very difficult to find.  For more about it, check the Rising Storm.

In addition to composing and performing music, Hartford was a writer, a dancer, a licensed steamboat pilot, and even provided some narration for Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary.  Hartford was the weird heart and soul of newgrass music – a true and vibrant individual.

Buy this stuff

The Byrds – “I Am a Pilgrim” from Sweetheart of the Rodeo [1968]

“Gentle On My Mind” (1967) from Natural to Be Gone, 1967-1970 [2002]

“Back in the Goodle Days” from Aereo-Plain [1971]

Posted by Jordy

Fishing at 3 a.m.

Henry Thomas – “Fishing Blues” (1928) from The Anthology of American Folk Music (1952)

I know that I posted this before, but last night I was awoken at 3:30 am by a neighbor blasting this song at full volume. Infuriating, but at least the guy’s got good taste. Please enjoy at any time that won’t piss your neighbors off.

More about the AAoFM

Taj Mahal performing “Fishing Blues”:

Posted by Glenn

Wilco’s rock and roll mythology

Wilco – “The Late Greats” from A Ghost Is Born (2004) and “Monday” from Being There (1996)

Wilco sometimes writes wonderfully suggestive songs about a mythological rock and roll universe.

I, for one, would love to hear a triple bill with The Late Greats, The Kay-Settes Starring Butcher’s Blind, and Choo Choo Charlie’s Plenty Good Band.

Maybe Romeo, he of the golden vocal cords, could join the bands for a Kiss cover or two. Beautiful and stoned.

What are your favorite fictional rock bands?

Buy the Wilc-sters

Posted by Glenn

Anthology of American Folk Music, pt. 3 of 3: Songs

Does a body good.

Welcome to the third and final installment of our humble series on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. For those of you who’ve missed the previous installments, please scroll down to our two previous posts.

Volume 3 of the Anthology, Songs, features blues and non-narrative songs, many mysterious in origin. The strangest and most otherworldly tunes are found on the Songs discs. More importantly, Songs is where Harry Smith’s skill as an editor and compiler is to be admired. Essentially, Smith was putting together a mixtape. So Dock Boggs’s cackling, bitter “Sugar Baby” is followed up by Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s sweet but inexplicable “I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground” — one kind of world-weariness matched up against another. Elsewhere, Uncle Dave Macon’s rollicking celebration of the Coal Creek Rebellion is followed up by Mississippi John Hurt’s mellow rejection of an oppressive job which itself leads into a jug band’s version of a railroad work song. That mixtape-quality is what gives the Anthology much of its mystique.

By the way, “I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground” is one of the classics. Listen to it here.

Buell Kazee – “East Virginia” (1927)

Buell Kazee, a Baptist minister from Kentucky, is responsible for many of my favorites on the Anthology. This song resembles a blues and features spare banjo and high-lonesome style of singing, similar to Clarence Ashley. “East Virgina” is the second track on the first Songs disc, following up Ashley’s “The Coo Coo Bird.” Note how these two songs work together to call forth an image of a mysterious mountain landscape, full of “dark hollers where the sun refuse to shine.”

Blind Lemon Jefferson – “See That My Grave is Kept Clean” (1928)

Texan and sometime-professional-wrestler Blind Lemon Jefferson was a nationally popular blues artist in the 1920s and an associate of Leadbelly who froze to death on the streets of Chicago. It’s not hard to tell why Jefferson garnered popularity when he did — his introspective singing is nuanced and his guitar playing has a seductive groove. This song is reportedly the last Jefferson recorded before his early and awful death. As such, he must be mentioned along with those artists we’ve examined in previous months whose early deaths give their music a romantic and possibily morbid allure. To that end, be sure to check Jefferson’s spine-chilling bell tolls at 2:30. They toll for thee.

Henry Thomas – “Fishing Blues” (1928)

SWR spiritual advisor Jeff Wheeler’s fave, Henry Thomas, contributes the perfect closing song to the Anthology. This tune will make you smile, grab your rod-and-reel, and head to the nearest fishin’ hole. In his notes, Harry Smith claims that “references to fishing, other than as sexual symbolism, are rare in American folk music.” At any rate, “Fishing Blues” is the perfect song to open your weekend with, and the perfect song to close this series with.

Buy the Anthology of American Folk Music

Posted by Glenn

Anthology of American Folk Music, pt. 2 of 3: Social Music

Before we get started on the second volume of the Anthology of American Folk Music, some information about the image above. When Harry Smith’s 1952 Anthology was reissued in the 1960s, no doubt to capitalize on the burgeoning folk music revival, the albums were plastered this Depression-era photograph, taken by social realist artist Ben Shahn, famous for his portraits of Sacco & Vanzetti. Harry Smith was furious about the cover. His intent was to preserve lost recordings, and to compile them in such a way that highlighted their regional differences but underlined their emotive similarities, not to lend them a vague political charge that, in retrospect, seems more fashionable than political.

The third and fourth discs of the six-disc Anthology contain what Harry Smith termed Social Music — dance songs on disc 3, church and religious songs on disc 4. The dance music is fascinating, in part because most of it is so off-kilter; it’s hard to imagine people dancing to the melancholy fiddle warbles that dominate disc 3. The religious music on the fourth disc is my favorite on the Anthology — it has a spiritual authority I’ll discuss a bit later.

Frank Cloutier and the Victoria Cafe Orchestra – “Moonshiner’s Dance Part 1” (1927)

One of the few full-band tunes on the Anthology, this dance song is a crazed medley of popular and ragtime tunes, none of which I recognize, but some of the titles, apparently, are “Over the Waves,” “At the Cross,” “When You Wore a Tulip,” and “Maggie.” And can any of y’all make out the exchange at 1:19? To me it sounds like:

“What’re you gonna do with that towel, Herbert?”
“Kill somebody, Chucky!”

There’s no way that can be right.

Alabama Sacred Harp Singers – “Rocky Road” (1928)

Sacred Harp singing, or shape note singing, has been a choral style of sacred music in New England and the South since Revolutionary times, and seems to be making some inroads into the mainstream as of late. As far as I can tell, shape note singing is based on simple solfeggio scales, with individual notes notated by both shape and position on the clef, so that it is easier to sight read. The term “Sacred Harp” comes from the name of one of the prominent songbooks, The Sacred Harp, from 1844 (though many of the songs date back further). These songs, including “Rocky Road,” are characterized by four-part a capella harmony, usually quite raw, and can be sung by hundreds of people at a time. The effect is staggering. Listen for yourself, and find out more here.

Rev. Sister Mary Nelson – “Judgement” (1927)

This song exemplifies the power of the religious songs on the Social Music set. Nelson cajoles and exhorts and and warns, at one point accusing her congregation of hypocrisy, but the performance contains such pure joy that it’s kind of hard to take. Listen closely to the background singing: doesn’t it sound like a 10-year-old boy is shouting along? Not much is known of Sister Nelson, but she seems to have been born late in the 19th century and to have led a Pentecostal church in Memphis.

Stray thought (WARNING: IDLE THINKING AHEAD): It occurs to me that old-time religious music is so exciting for two reasons. First, it is dead serious. Serious about divine inspiration, about justice, about emotion, about humility, about this life and the next. The religious impulse, the will toward God, whatever you want to call it, is an unavoidable part of human experience, but is hard to capture successfully in art, and many of these old-time religious songs seem to do just that.

But secondly, maybe more importantly, old-time religious music is free of the culture-war baggage that present-day religious music hauls along. We’ve mentioned Sufjan Stevens at this blog before, one of the few musicians today tackling religious themes without lapsing into evangelicalism or fundamentalism. (In our old mate Jordy’s parlance, Sufjan “helps make Christianity hip,” a funny thought.) But he’s the exception rather than the rule. The good music I can think of that does tackle Christianity is either intellectualized to the point that it can’t convey religious ectasy (Pedro the Lion, Danielson) or is one-dimensional about the religious life (The Hold Steady — I love ’em, but sometimes doesn’t it seem like their redemption is a bit trite?). So…..I don’t know. But the religious music on the Anthology hits on at least ten different emotions that accompany religious feeling and religious life, and I wonder whether that kind of range, a propos of religion, is even possible in music these (secular) days.

Check in tomorrow for Part 3 of this series on the Anthology of American Folk Music!

Buy the Anthology

Posted by Glenn

Anthology of American Folk Music, pt. 1 of 3: Ballads

For the next three days I will be discussing the Anthology of American Folk Music, which I have recently acquired in a handsome-as-hell reissue package. These 6 CDs have been called “the holy grail of folk music,” but I prefer to think of them not as an impossible gleaming cup floating in a shaft of light in some far-flung castle, but as a chipped hand-thrown clay mug we mere mortals can drink from whenever we’d like, whether we are worthy like Parsifal or not (and we’re probably not).

Harry Smith, a beatnik and experimental filmmaker, spent years combing through commercially recorded music of the late 1920s and early 1930s to compile the Anthology. Smith wanted to put together a truly populist anthology of old-time music, which is why he used commercial recordings on gramophone disc rather than earlier wax cylinder recordings or the field recordings of Alan Lomax, Zora Neale Hurston, and the like. Smith’s assumption is an interesting prospect. Folk culture by definition is both populist and extremely localized, and quality commerical recordings are able to account for both strands of folk culture: popularity and particularity. As Smith put it, these recordings, many of which sold tens of thousands of copies when first released, made available “the rhythmically and verbally specialized musics of groups living in mutual social and cultural isolation.”

The anthology is divvied up into three sets: Ballads, Social Music, and Songs. Today I will focus on three of my favorites from the Ballads disc. By the way, narrowing twenty-seven ballads down to three is very, very difficult, so I have tried to include my favorites while also giving you faithful readers an accurate representation of what is included.

Clarence Ashley – “The House Carpenter” (1930)

Also known as “Tom,” Ashley was from the East Tennessee mountains, and his high lonesome voice and banjo picking sounds like the shadowed hollows and mysterious grassy balds. During the 1960s folk music revival, he began playing the college and festival circuit with the likes of Doc Watson. One of the odd pleasures of the Anthology is the goofy notes that Harry Smith wrote for each selection. For the songs on the “Ballads” discs, these notes take the form of lurid headlines: “Wife and Mother Follows Carpenter to Sea; Mourns Babe as Ship Goes Down.” It is absolutely chilling when the narrator of the song, after convincing the house carpenter’s wife to board his ship and set sail, says, casually, as she weeps for her lost child: “Well, we hadn’t been on ship but about two weeks. I’m sure that it was not three.” And, according to Wikipedia, this song is based on the Child ballad “The Daemon Lover.”

Charlie Poole & The North Carolina Ramblers – “White House Blues” (1926)

Many of the songs on the Ballads discs concern news items of previous years: boll weevils, Casey Jones, the Titantic, automated cobbling machines. There’s even a song supposedly written by Charles Giteau, James A. Garfield’s assassin. My favorite is this assassination lament sung by Charlie Poole, a hard-drinking moonshining textile worker from my area of the country, the NC Piedmont. “Roosevelt’s in the White House, he’s doing his best. McKinley’s in the graveyard, taking his rest.”

Mississippi John Hurt – “Frankie” (1928)

John Hurt’s name is one of the few I recognized when I first began listening to the Anthology. It’s clear that Bob Dylan modeled some of his early singing after Hurt’s low-pitched, buzzing voice. For me, Hurt’s vocal performance embodies the weird allure of the Anthology: the promise of a palpable past, more genius songs than even the 84 included here. Plus, John Fahey said this version of “Frankie & Johnny” featured some of the best guitar-playing ever, and who am I to disagree?

Coincidentally, music blog River’s Invitation is posting folk songs this week. Do check them out. Clarence Ashley’s “The Coo-Coo Bird” is absolutely essential.

UPDATE: Please check out The Old, Weird America for an in-depth analysis of the Harry Smith Anthology.

Buy the Anthology

Posted by Glenn

Sorrow

Illinois's dumbest holiday

Sufjan Stevens – “Casimir Pulaski Day” from Come On Feel The Illinoise (2005)

I don’t listen to this one too much when I am actually feeling sad, but when it comes on I can’t help but being swept up in the low-key sorrow in this tale of love, grief, and waiting.

The song does a pretty good job of translating a philosophical concern (the absence of God’s hand in human tragedy) into emotional affect, by using, guess what, specificity, storytelling, and a great fucking melody–hallmarks of any good song. Its literary affectations (“and the cardinal hits the window”) skirt the edge of corn canyon but end up underscoring the story with a sort of mysterious subtext that opens it up. Great, great song.

(By the way, Jord-dog and other SWR mutts: sometimes I have trouble distinguishing emotions from other states of mind, so my subsequent posts in this series may stretch the boundaries a bit. Like, hope is an emotion, I’m pretty sure, but is romantic love? How about meanness? Regret? Dejection? Guilt? It’s like taste–you can say that something tastes crunchy, but come on, that’s texture, not flavor. But texture is as important as flavor sometimes. Hmm.)

Buy it here

Posted by Glenn

“Well, all right/We’ll live and love with all our might”

Buddy Holly – “Well…All Right” single [1958], “Rave On” from Buddy Holly [1958] and “That’ll Be The Day” from The “Chirping” Crickets [1957]

Fifty years ago today, a private plane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson crashed in an Iowa cornfield, killing all three, and instantly setting the progress of rock music back by at least five years.  Listen to “Well…All Right” and you’ll see what I mean.  To say that Holly was “ahead of his time” is cliche, but it is true, and that song proves it.  The emotions expressed in that song (not to mention the music itself) are more complex than anything anyone would hear until 1965, with the release of Rubber Soul.  Blind Faith did a great cover of this song on their album.  But listen to the original first.

This event was immortalized as “The Day The Music Died” in Don McLean’s “American Pie,” an eight-minute epic that traces the history of rock ‘n roll from Feb. 3, 1959 through about 1970 and connects Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper to Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Byrds, The Rolling Stones, and Janis Joplin.  Listen to Don McLean too, but listen to Buddy Holly first.

Buy Buddy

Posted by Adam

“On a Saturday night in a town like this I forget all my songs about trains”

Josh Ritter – “Me & Jiggs” from Golden Age of Radio (2002)

Josh Ritter – “To the Dogs or Whoever” from The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter (2007)

I discover a lot of music by watching David Letterman.  Josh Ritter was on the show about a year ago, and after seeing him perform “To The Dogs or Whoever” I was hooked.  Check the video out for yourself.  I had never heard of Mr. Ritter at that point and I figured he was a new artist promoting his first album.  But I soon found out that the album he was promoting on Letterman was his fifth studio album and was actually a departure from his first four folk-tinged, alt-country-ish albums.  The track “Me & Jiggs” is from Golden Age of Radio, his first major release.  His eponymous first album was self-released in 2000 (Golden Age was also recorded in 2000 and self-released in 2001.  It was re-released in 2002 on the Signature Sounds label).

“Me & Jiggs” reminds me of hot summer nights in a wistful, romantic version of the small town where I grew up.  The mention of Townes Van Zandt in this song prompted me to start listening to him; TVZ is now one of my favorites.

Just try to memorize all the words to “To the Dogs or Whoever.”  Go ahead, try it.

Buy Josh Ritter

Posted by Adam

Robert Johnson, the Rolling Stones, and burning out

King of the Delta Blues Singers

Robert Johnson – “Love In Vain Blues” and “Stop Breakin’ Down Blues” from The Complete Recordings (1990) [originally recorded 1936]

The Rolling Stones – “Love In Vain” from Let It Bleed (1969) and “Stop Breaking Down” from Exile On Main Street (1972)

Most serious fans of classic rock surely know the myth of Robert Johnson–another musician whose premature death seems to give his music the flavor of the unknown. I’ve returned to his music lately and I’m struck by the sheer tunefulness of his songs–something that the Rolling Stones recognized and capitalized on, as evidenced in these classic covers.

But the Robert Johnson originals are where the real power is. Imagine Keith Richards sitting around in late ’60s Swinging London, taking pills, wrapping himself up in frilly scarves, surrounding himself with beautiful plasticine women–and these cuts, off the King of the Delta Blues Singers, Vol. 2, come on over the hi-fi. It must have been a shock to hear that kind of power–it’s still a shock today, and I would be willing to bet that these songs would retain their power and mystery if Johnson had lived to open for the likes of Blueshammer.

Here’s a fascinating article on Johnson’s myth, and the possible discovery of a new photograph of the King of the Delta Blues Singers. If you’re new to Robert Johnson, start there.

Buy Robert Johnson

Buy the Stones

Posted by Glenn

On John Coltrane and “Burning Out”

Coltrane on soprano sax, Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet.

John Coltrane -“India” from The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (1997)

John Coltrane – “Jupiter” from Interstellar Space (1972)

I’ve wanted to do a post on John Coltrane for a while now, and given our recent discussions of “Burning out vs. fading away,” I figured now was as good a time as any (Coltrane died at age 40 of liver cancer). I’ll start by talking about Coltrane’s music.

The first track is “India,” recorded in 1961 at New York City’s Village Vanguard jazz club. I love the instrumentation here — Coltrane on soprano sax, Eric Dolphy (another premature death, 1964 at age 36) on bass clarinet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison and Reggie Workman on bass, Elvin Jones on drums, Ahmed Abdul-Malik on oud, and Gavin Bushnell on oboe. Now, until hearing Dolphy’s bass clarinet solo here, I thought bass clarinet was the domain of unpopular girls in high school bands, but I now know better. The liner notes to The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings say that the oud is providing the drone heard throughout the piece, but I don’t know much about the oud, and don’t know how it can create a drone (the liner notes also mention that there is indeed some confusion as to exactly what instrument is being played here). Any string players care to enlighten me? Also I have a hard time telling the soprano sax and oboe apart, but I think the first solo is Coltrane, and the third is Bushnell, but I’m not sure. Both sound equally squeaky to me. They both could be Coltrane. The second solo is the bass clarinet.

This music was revolutionary in 1961, a mere two years after Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (which featured Coltrane) was released. Compared to this, Kind of Blue, which is a great bop album, sounds relentlessly structured. These Vanguard concerts, recorded over four nights in November of 1961, showed Coltrane already moving away from the hard bop style and into the free jazz exhibited on his later albums.

The second track is “Jupiter,” from Interstellar Space. This is a particularly interesting album, as it consists entirely of duets between Coltrane on tenor sax (and sleigh bells, as heard at the beginning and end of this track) and Rashied Ali on drums. This was the result of one of Coltrane’s final studio sessions, recorded in February 1967 (he died in August of that year). The album was released posthumously. I like this album quite a bit. It is as “free” as Coltrane ever got in his soloing, and yet it is never overwhelming like Ascension (Coltrane’s msot famous and most ambitious free jazz album) can sometimes be with its eleven musicians.

The Coltrane myth, as most every early-death-of-a-musician-myth does, centers on the question of what he would have done had he not died when he did. And the answer, plain and simple,  is that we will never know.

Now, on the question of burning out versus fading away, which Jordy’s recent post raised. I have been thinking about it in terms of why we tend to give artists who die prematurely more notoriety than those whose lives are not cut short. Glenn mentioned in a comment to Jordy’s post that premature death is good for the myth of an artist. I think that is true, but I’d like to take the discussion a bit further. The reason artists (not just musicians) oftentimes get more attention if they die prematurely is due to our society’s attitudes about death. We are afraid of death, in part because it is the great unknown. I think that we look to the work of artists who have died prematurely for insight into the big black hole of death. We think that maybe, because they died “before their time” (whatever that means), their art holds they key to understanding the one thing that no living person can truly understand. Of course, when these artists were alive they were just as clueless as we are, but we listen to their music or study their books or paintings in hopes that they will have some kind of  insight into this whole death thing.

I’m speaking entirely about Western traditions here — I know next to nothing about Eastern traditions regarding these matters. Can anyone out there shed some light on how these things are viewed in the non-Western world?

Buy the Trane

Posted by Adam

Moses come ridin’ up on a quasar: A Somewhat Brief Primer To ’70s Live Dead

The Grateful Dead – “Greatest Story Ever Told” from Steppin’ Out With The Grateful Dead: England 1972
The Grateful Dead – “Not Fade Away > Playing In The Band” from Dick’s Picks Vol 10: Winterland, 12/29/1977
The Grateful Dead – “Scarlet Begonias > Fire On The Mountain” from Barton Hall, Cornell University, 5/8/1977
The Grateful Dead – “Friend of the Devil” from American Beauty (1972)

A few weeks back, my pal (and excellent poet) Ryland burned me two discs of the very best of the Grateful Dead, live in the ’70s. As my brother says, “It’s good to have a Deadhead friend, to seperate the wheat from the chaff.” Or the leaves from the stems and seeds, as it were. Here are a few excerpts for all SWR-heads.

“Greatest Story” is good-time boogie rock. “Not Fade Away” is a frantic Buddy Holly cover that segues into (the separate mp3) “Playing in the Band,” in this iteration an ambient groove. (A glance at that night’s setlist shows that versions of “Playing” were scattered throughout the set.) “Scarlet > Fire” is (I’m told) the classic version from a classic show. And “Friend of the Devil” for all y’all who don’t like 20 minute noodle-fests. There’s certainly more Dead to be heard (just trying googling, good god), but these tracks represent the pinnacle of what I’ve listened to, so far.

Buy the Dead

Download the Dead

Or check out setlists here

Posted by Glenn

Favorite Song to Play, Part II

Emmylou Harris – “Goin’ Back to Harlan” from Wrecking Ball [1995]

Wrecking Ball is a perfect album.  There is no other to compare it to.  Combine the production of Lanois with the additional production sensibilities of like-minded Malcolm Burn (one of my favorite producers), bring them to Emmylou Harris and you get a genre-bending masterpiece.

This song was penned by Anna McGarrigle, whose debut album I have yet to obtain, although I plan to sometime in the very near future.  I like to play this song most often on an electric guitar and a Shure SM-57, looping some vocal beats and finger-picking the rest out.  It’s a damn good time, and spooky as sin.

I go crazy in the head when I hear this song.

Tabs for those who need them

I can’t believe you don’t own this album.  Honestly.  Buy it yesterday.

Posted by Phil

“Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James?”

The Trio in their heyday. Back to front: Dave Guard, Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds

The Kingston Trio – “Sinking of the Reuben James” from Live at the Crazy Horse (1994)

I’m posting this because one of the founding members of The Kingston Trio, Nick Reynolds, has just died.  The Kingston Trio was at the forefront of the 1960’s folk music revival.  Their popularity in the late 1950’s and early 60’s (They had four top 10 albums in 1959 alone.  The Beatles are only other group to have four top ten albums in a single year) paved the way for the likes of Peter, Paul and Mary, The Byrds, and the Beach Boys, not to mention Bob Dylan and his contemporaries.

A live recording of the Kingston Trio captures the between-song jokes and banter that their studio recordings lack.  This particular recording was made in 1992 and lacks the contributions of Dave Guard, another founding member of the Trio, who died in 1991.  But 2/3 of the original Trio, Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane, are present, along with George Grove, who performed with various incarnations of the Trio for over 20 years.

Buy the Trio

Posted by Adam