The Kingston Trio - Make Way

Genre : Folk

Year : 1961, Monophonic

Record Label : Capitol

Overall Rating : ***** *** (out of 10*)

. I picked this LP up and posted its cover a couple weeks ago, which is reproduced above, except I photoshopped out its "Full Dimensional Stereo" header, as my copy is monaural. I converted it over the last couple afternoons; partly cuz I'm nuts about The Kingston Trio; partly cuz I wanted to make sure I hadn't forgotten how to do this. . Track Listing :

01. En El Agua (2:21)

02. Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies (2:56)

03. The Jug of Punch (3:40)

04. Bonny Hielan Laddie (2:50)

05. Utawena (1:43)

06. Hard Travelin' (2:36)

07. Hangman (2:54)

08. Speckled Roan (3:08)

09. The River is Wide (3:43)

10. Oh, Yes, Oh (2:45)

11. Blow the Candle Out (2:41)

12. Blue Eyed Girl (2:16)

. The album is in decent shape for being almost 50 years old - a few major scratches and no skips. Mostly, it just suffers from being monaural, which has a sucky sound quality. Stereo albums really were a quantum leap forward in technology. . Make Way doesn't have any hit singles, but it did make it to #2 on the Billboard Albums chart. It has a nice blend of ballads (The River is Wide), humor (Oh, Yes, Oh), a Spanish track (En El Agua), a Cowboy one (Hangman), a Scottish one (Bonny Hielan Laddie), and even a Yiddish (or African? or Spanish?) one (Utawena). . In the late 50's and early 60's, TK3 were putting out 3 albums per year; 12 tracks per album. That's a heckuva lot of songs, most of which are now forgotten. Which is a shame really, cuz there's some nice stuff here. In the early 90's, Capitol released a lot of CD's containing two TK3 albums per disc. You can buy one of these with Make Way on it at Amazon.com; other than that, your only option is vinyl. . We'll give Make Way an "8-Star" rating, because all of their stuff from the early 60's is great. The only deductions are for it being Monaural, and not having any radio-play tracks on it.