The Kingston Trio: An Appreciation By John Allen Small

Note: Mr. Small is an award-winning newspaper columnist and broadcaster who resides in Ravia, Oklahoma. He is a life-long fan of folk music in general and The Kingston Trio in particular. This is an expanded and updated version of a newspaper column originally published in 1991.

The year was 1968. That much I remember, because 1968 was a year for occurrences destined to become deeply etched within the memory of even a five year old: the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy;  the Tet Offensive, and the National Democratic Convention in Chicago. For whatever reason, one particular album seemed to spend a great amount of time on my Father's old turntable during these strange and unpredictable times: A Time to Think by The Kingston Trio. And one song in particular took on a special significance for me. Even today, Ally Ally Oxen Free seems far more heartfelt and poignant to me in its call to make the world a better place than Blowin' in the Wind, The Eve of Destruction, or any of the other better known protest songs dominating the airwaves at the time. Certainly its lyrics were far more encouraging to a five-year-old, who had already learned to worry about the fate of his home planet.

At that point I didn't know that the configuration of Bobby Shane, Nick Reynolds and John Stewart was actually the second incarnation of The Kingston Trio. My Father had all of the group's Capitol albums, dating back to the early days of Dave Guard and "Tom Dooley", but I hadn't yet had the opportunity to formally discover these earlier gems. I didn't know that "A Time to Think" was already several years old by the time I'd noticed it. And I certainly had no way of knowing, in that autumn of 1968, that Shane, Stewart and Reynolds had actually disbanded the year before. What I did know-aside from the fact that Alley Alley Oxen Free provided a much-needed sense of hope-was that these three fellows sounded so good together. There was a certain magic about their sound. I didn't know how to describe it then, and I'm still not sure I could do it justice 30 years later. I just knew that I liked it.

That must have been music to my Father's ears, because it didn't take long for him to provide a more proper introduction to The Kingston Trio-both of them. By the time I was six I knew all the words to both Tom Dooley and Greenback Dollar (of course, I wasn't allowed to sing the latter in public). Eventually it got to the point that, every time Dad put a Kingston Trio album on the turntable, both of my younger brothers and I would sing along. Often so loudly that Dad had little choice but to turn the volume way WAY up in order to hear The Kingston Trio over the Small Trio. We couldn't help ourselves. The Kingston's music was so lively, so full of joy and life and excitement, that singing along seemed practically mandatory. Deep down inside, I don't think Dad really minded our own tone-deaf contributions all that much; if nothing else, he knew he had passed along the love of the music to his sons. I wonder if he realizes just how precious a gift that was. And it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to suggest that The Kingston Trio actually helped guide me through the turbulence of my teenage years to emerge relatively unscathed. Their music infected me in a way that the rockers and the punkers and the disco ninnies and the heavy metal freaks simply could not.

While so many of my classmates were frying their brain cells to the likes of Led Zepplin and KISS and AC/DC, I was shuffling through the high school corridors humming Run the Ridges and MTA (ask my wife. She was my girlfriend then. And she remembers). Did my love for the Trio make me more clean-cut somehow? It's hard to say. The only thing I know for certain is that by the time I'd graduated [high school], I had never taken drugs, or developed a problem with alcohol. I still respected my Mother and Father. And all that is still true today. I leave it to others to draw their own conclusions. Others have explained, far better than I could ever hope to, The Kingston Trio's influence upon the American popular music scene. Numerous articles have been devoted to describing how the initial success of Tom Dooley and the Trio's subsequent acclaim grew out of the public's hunger for something that, while still fun and energetic, had a bit more depth and complexity than, say Hound dog or Wake Up Little Susie.

Experts have traced the Trio's influence upon such diverse acts as The Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, Manhattan Transfer and the Indigo Girls. There are even those who can make a strong case that the Kingston Trio helped pave the way for the onslaught of Beatlemania in America. Such information is already a matter of public record, so it would serve little purpose to repeat it here. Of far greater value-at least as far as this writer is concerned-is the sheer joy that The Kingston Trio (in ALL of its configurations) has brought to so many people over so many years. The best way I can honor The Kingston Trio is to simply play their records, and to introduce their music to my sons the same way my Father introduced it to his. Just last night I caught my seven-year-old Joshua singing along to my copy of Hit and Run while he and his little brother William danced around the living room. What is a Father to do? I did what my Father would have done. I turned up the volume. Then I did my Dad one better. I got out there and danced along with them. I'd like to think Bobby Shane might appreciate that.

© 1999 by John Allen Small


Natalie Dean
From the Spartanburg Herald October 16th, 2000

It was like meeting a childhood sweetheart 40 years later. Waistlines, hairlines, punchlines wavered, but the "wailin' songs and good guitar" didn't as The Kingston Trio charmed a multi-generational audience at the second concert to grace the newly renovated memorial auditorium Sunday.

Bob Shane, George Grove and Bob Haworth proceeded to "sing what must be sung. Oh, boy..." during the afternoon's fund-raiser for the ETV Endowment and Spartanburg Technical College Foundation. Bob Shane put everyone immediately at ease with his opening zinger, "Y'all wonder why we invited so few of you," referring to the half-filled hall, and continued to pepper the performance with bawdy jokes.

Shane was more often a target by his fellow musicians, in a repartee that never lost momentum to the last word.
From George Grove's apology after a particularly bad Irish bar joke delivered by Shane, "We cannot come to the conclusion that things would have been different had oxygen been present at Bob's birth," through quips such as "Somewhere, there's a village missing their idiot," the pace never lessened.
Opening with "Hard, Ain't It Hard," and rolling immediately into "Three Jolly Coachmen," they slowed down just enough to spin a misty memory with "Early Mornin' Rain."

With historical commentary, Shane next told audiences, "We're going to take you back to 1963." "Yeah, we're gonna do our most recent hit," interjected Grove, a song that was pulled six weeks after a release because of the interjection of "damn" about a "Greenback Dollar." The expletive was replaced with an acoustic strike for several more years.

The post-50 jokes pleased even the X-generation patrons, of which there were surprisingly many. Bud Jones, 25, of Andrews Farm Road, accompanied Lauren Flandry, 26, of Duncan Park. Admitting they were "new fans," they "just recently heard a few songs," they said, perhaps within the week. Their favorite, said Flandry, was "Tom Dooley." "Yes," said Jones, "Tom Dooley" definitely. And "Scotch and Soda." They got their tickets from parents who were there "supporting a good cause."

"Some guy once asked us if we were gonna have any records for sale because he lost all his in the divorce," Shane said, just before break. During the intermission, the Trio did sell CDs, T-shirts and hats complete with autographs and promoted an Alaskan cruise featuring them next fall [2001]. Clutching just-purchased memorabilia, Jane D'Uralia thought the concert brought back good memories. Her husband, Paul said he'd heard them in 1965 and 1966. Paul's favorite? '"Scotch And Soda", or course,' he smiled. "I haven't lost my records through divorce. Yet," he said, eyeing Jane.