These three clean-cut college graduates helped feed the folk-music renaissance of the 1950s and early ’60s, which itself spawned another generation of (more topical) folk-song writers. This album was one of my father’s favorites, so I heard it a lot as a kid.
In 1957, fresh out of college, Nick Reynolds, Dave Guard and Bob Shane took old folk songs, dusted them off, added some humor to the delivery, and quickly acquired a fan base among college students in the Bay Area of California. They were discovered in a club, signed to Capitol Records and within a year, had a gold hit, “Tom Dooley,” in 1958.
The Trio rode the wave of folk-song mania through the mid-’60s, when the British invasion led by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones pushed most folk artists off the charts.
This album, their fifth chronologically, was released in 1959 and features a mixture of oldtime folk songs and sea chanties and newly minted songs by composers writing in the folk song idiom. Instrumentation included guitar, ukelele, banjo, bongos, and overdubbing! Producers back then, as now, had a performer sing a duet with him or herself, to create a fuller sound. The trick gives the Trio a larger presence, though they probably had decent voices without the electronic massaging.
[Nowadays overdubbing is used to conceal the fact that many popular singers have pretty crappy voices -- maybe tuneful but lacking volume -- which explains why some artists sound fine in recordings but awful in live concerts (except of course for those who lipsync their own music). Anybody here thinking of Ashlee Simpson right about now?]
“Molly Dee,” the first track on the A side, is the product of a 19-year-old John Stewart, who later became a member of the Trio and a famous songwriter/performer in is own right. Stewart captures the feel of an old folksong so well that I never realize until now that “Molly Dee” is not an old time folk song.
“Across the Wide Missouri,” also known as “Shenandoah,” is a popular American sea chantey. According to www.mi5th.org, it started as a land ballad, telling the story of a wandering trader who falls in love with a daughter of the Native American chief, Shenandoah. Riverboat crews carried it down to the sea, where sailors added it to their repertoire of chanteys to make their repetitive work more bearable. It became popular among the US Army Cavalry during the 1840s, too. I remember singing this song with my high school choir as part of our European tour repertoire.
The third cut, “Haul Away,” is another chantey, probably from the 18th century. Not as romantic as the previous tune, it’s more rollicking. You can imagine sailors singing this song as they pull on the halyards to raise sail.
“The Wanderer” is a calypso-flavored tune by Brooklyn-born Irving (Lord Burgess) Burgie, who also wrote the familiar “Day-O” banana-boat song made famous by Harry Belafonte. Burgie’s mom was from Barbados and turned the music he heard around him into popular “new folk song” hits of the 1950s. It bears no resemblance to a later pop-music hit of the same name by Dion DiMucci.
Lou Gottlieb (1923-1996) penned “‘Round About the Mountain” in the 1950s. It tells how God “loves the sailor man.” It has the feel of a sea chantey, but lacks the short verses of a real chantey. The Trio sings the song with their characteristic gusto.
“Oleanna” is a classic folk song, springing from the huge numbers of Scandinavians immigrating to the US during the mid-1800s. It’s a Norwegian parody of the outrageous promises violinist Ole Bull made to would-be emigrants to his (failed) utopian communities in the USA. Pete Seeger made it popular in the US before the Trio adapted the lyrics and added it to this album.
Starting the flip side is “The Unfortunate Miss Bailey,” a song written in the 1700s for the stage and later adopted by sailors as a chantey. It tells the story of a charming sea captain who seduces a maiden, who later hangs herself out of shame and despair and eventually haunts the captain at sea. He pays her ghost for the cost of her grave, and Miss Bailey’s ghost departs.
“San Miguel,” written by a Texas songwriter, Jane Bowers, is about the unrequited love of a man for Doña Maria Elena Cantrell, the woman for whom he works. Guard solos on this one.
You would think “E Inu Tatou E” would be some kind of Hawai’ian or Polynesian love song. In fact it’s a drinking song written by the Hawai’ian bandleader and guitarist George Archer in 1947. I have no idea what it’s saying, but I’ll have another!
“A Rollin’ Stone” gathers no moss, or so this quiet song says. It was penned by another figure in the folk song revival of the ’50s, Stan Wilson.
The last two tracks are traditional folk songs. “Goober Peas” dates from the Confederate South, when boiled peanuts (goober peas) were usually all poor Southerners (and soldiers) had to eat. “A Worried Man” (“Worried Man Blues”) is another old song, first recorded by The Carter Family in the 1930s and Woody Guthrie in the ’40s. The Trio revised the lyrics and made the song less bluesy and more cheerful.
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This album is now available in CD.
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