Tom Dooley

    We are committed to posting any cartoon that mentions The Ballad of Tom Dooley.  I'm a huge fan of the Kingston Trio.

Stay Awhile - Kingston Trio

Album Title : Stay Awhile

Artist : The Kingston Trio

Genre : Classic Folk

Year : 1965

Overall Rating : 9*/10

Who?
    I've been a Kingston Trio fan for decades.  In the late 50's and early 60's, they were one of the hottest  groups around, and their hits Tom Dooley and M.T.A. were chart-toppers.

    Alas, Folk Music moved into social issues in the mid-60's, and the Kingston Trio were slow to recognize this.  By 1965, their peppy, cerebral music was out of fashion.  People were listening to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, and K3 had been dropped by the longtime distributor, Capitol Records.

Why Should I Care?
    By 1965, The Kingston Trio was with Decca Records, and Dave Guard had left the group, replaced by an up-and-coming John Stewart.   He infused new energy into their songs, and had finally convinced them to do some cutting-edge social tunes.  Stay Awhile has two Tom Paxton songs; another by Mason Williams, and even one penned by Rod McKuen.  John Stewart's Stories Of Old (Track 09) is as powerful a statement against social injustice as you can find.

    But it was too late.  The Kingston Trio had lost their relevance, and no one was buying their records to discover their evolution.  Which is too bad, cuz this is really a fantastic album.

Track Listing (my favorites in pink) :

(01) Hanna Lee

(02) Three Song

(03) Gonna Go Down The River

(04) Rusting In The Rain

(05) Dooley

(06) If I Had A Ship

(07) Yes I Can Feel It

(08) Bottle Of Wine

(09) Stories Of Old

(10) Where I'm Bound

(11) If You See Me Go

(12) Stay Awhile

   I picked this LP up for $2, and it's in very good shape.  No skips, and not many big scratches.  Easy to convert to MP3.  There really aren't any weak tracks on it; I could've 'pinked' all 12.  I've been enjoying it for the past couple weeks, and I'm nowhere close to being tired of it.  Highly recommended.  9*/10 Stars.

The Kingston Trio - Here We Go Again

Genre : Classic Folk

Year : 1959

Number of Tracks : 12

Approximate Time : 29 minutes

Overall Rating : 7½*/10

. The Kingston Trio put out 4 (!) albums in 1959 (two were live albums), and Here We Go Again was the last of the quartet of releases. Twelve tracks, only one of which is more than 3 minutes long, and that one was only 3:03. You can buy HWGA as part of a "twofer" at Amazon. But where's the fun in that? I ripped my copy from a monaural LP, which had no skips and a remarkably small number of scratches for a half-century old piece of vinyl. . What's To Like... It doesn't contain any of their big hits, which is a plus to me. The only two tracks that make it to K3 Greatest Hits CD's are Across The Wide Missouri and A Worried Man. As always, there's a wide variety of songs - ballads, banjo-picking rags, spirituals, and humorous tunes. . IMHO, the best of the bunch are : Oleanna (a silly song about a worldwide hit of a song), E Inu Tatou E (a Tahitian drinking ditty, if Google is to be believed); and Goober Peas (a peppy little number about Confederate soldiers who prefer eating to fighting Yanks). . I'm gonzo about The Kingston Trio, so of course I liked Here We Go Again. My LP-to-CD conversion operation was on the fritz for a while; first due to software issues (Windoze-7 doesn't like every Windoze-XP program), and then hardware issues (the turntable decided to cut its sound volume by about 75%). But these have been resolved now, so expect more reviews of obscure and long-forgotten albums in the months to come. 7½ Stars.

Complete Track List : (01) Molly Dee. (02) Across The Wide Missouri. (03) Haul Away. (04) The Wanderer. (05) 'Round About The Mountain. (06) Oleanna. (07) The Unfortunate Miss Bailey. (08) San Miguel. (09) E Inu Tatou E. (10) A Rollin' Stone. (11) Goober Peas. (12) A Worried Man.

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.

Vinyl Happiness...

... is finding a great new LP store in downtown Phoenix called Revolver Records. Their website can be seen here. . My two used-album sites here in the East Valley have become really sucky lately. $5-$7 for scratchy records, and not a single rock-&-roll LP in the $1 record bins at either EV site. . I spent two hours in vinyl nirvana today at Revolver Records, and didn't even get to their 30 or so boxes of $1 albums. I cleaned them out of their Kingston Trio stash, including the one pictured above. It was $1.99, without any skips or warps, and with a reasonably small number of scratches. . Next Saturday afternoon, we've tentatively planned to visit another Vinyl site in Phoenix called Tracks In Wax. You can view their website here. I visited TIW once, about 15 years ago, and its LP inventory was unbelievably huge We'll see if that is still true.