Kingston Trio Part 1

The Kingston Trio was organized in spring 1957 by Dave Guard( died March 22, 1991), Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds (died October 1, 2008). In the history of popular music, there are a relative handful of performers who have redefined the content of the music at critical points in history, people whose music left the landscape, and definition of popular music, altered completely. The Kingston Trio were one such group, transforming folk music into a hot commodity and creating a demand that none had existed before.

1958 Kingston Trio
1959 From The Hungry I






1959 Stereo Concert Plus
1959 At Large






1959 Here We Go Again
1959 Live From Newport





The group's first selftitled album was recorded over a three day period in February 1958 and released in June the same year just as the Trio was beginning its engagement at the Hungry I. The song selections reflected the repertoire that the musicians had been working on for two years—re-imagined traditional songs, calypso-flavored tunes, and a mix of both foreign language and contemporary songwriter numbers. The album sold moderately well, including on-site sales at the Hungry I during the Kingston Trio's engagement there through the summer, but it was DJ Paul Colburn at station KLUB in Salt Lake City whose enthusiasm for a single cut on the record spurred the next development in the group's history. Colburn began playing Tom Dooley extensively on his show, prompting a rush of album sales in the Salt Lake area by fans who wanted to listen to the song, as yet unavailable as a single record. Colburn called other DJs around the country urging them to do the same, and national response to the song was so strong that a reluctant Capitol Records finally released the tune as a 45rpm single on August 8, 1958; it reached the #1 spot on the Billboard chart by late November, sold a million copies by Christmas, and was awarded on January 21, 1959. Tom Dooley also spurred the debut album to a #1 position on the charts (the first album by a group to reach the top spot), earned the band a gold record for the album, and remained charted on Billboard's weekly reports for 195 weeks. The success of the album and the single earned the Kingston Trio a Grammy award for Best Country & Western Performance at the awards' inaugural ceremony in 1959. At the time, no folk music category existed in the Grammy's scheme. The next year, largely as a result of the Kingston Trio and Tom Dooley, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences instituted a folk category and the Trio won the first Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording for its second studio album At Large. This was the beginning of a remarkable three year run for the Trio in which their first five studio albums achieved #1 chart status and gold records and by 1961 had earned more than $25 million for Capitol, roughly $180 million in 2010. Notably, the Kingston Trio was responsible for 15% of Capitol's total sales when Capitol also recorded Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole; both artists were also producing high-charting profitable albums. One indication of the Kingston Trio's popularity during this era was that for five consecutive weeks in November and December of 1959, four Kingston Trio albums ranked in the top ten of Billboard Magazine's Top LPs chart,an accomplishment unmatched by any artist before or since. The Trio also charted several single records during this time, made numerous television appearances, and played upwards of 200 engagements per year.