Tickets at our usual outlets
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Tickets at our usual outlets |
Friday, April 16 If you saw the Center for the Arts' production of |
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"...there are a relative handful of performers who have redefined the content of the music "The Trio’s voices blended so perfectly. "...the Kingston Trio gave a stunning performance to a sold out crowd." - Southpoint News "...the voices were still strong belting out golden standards The Center for the Arts commitment to bringing world-class performers to Nevada County is at the heart of their mission. As a result, Grass Valley's Veteran Memorial Auditorium was filled to the rafters for The Center's presentation of the Smothers Brothers in October. Following on that success the Center will present folk music pioneers, The Kingston Trio, on Friday, April 16.
The Kingston Trio is one of the few groups today that has survived the many changes in the world of music. They have remained consistent in their sound, which explains their consistent popularity. There are a handful of performers who have redefined the content of popular music at critical points in history. The Kingston Trio are one such group, transforming folk music into a hot commodity and creating a demand for acoustic guitars and banjos and singing songs in harmony. On a commercial level, from 1957 until 1963, the Kingston Trio were the most vital and popular folk group in the world. The trio spearheaded a boom in the popularity of folk music that suddenly made it important to millions of listeners. Without the enviable record of popularity and sales that they built up for folk music, it is unlikely that Columbia Records would ever signed an unknown singer/guitarist named Bob Dylan, or to put Pete Seeger under contract, or for Warner Brothers to record Peter, Paul and Mary. The group was founded in 1957 in Palo Alto, CA. They were booked into the Purple Onion, a leading night spot in San Francisco, opening for comedienne Phyllis Diller. The result was a series of sold-out shows leading to a five month engagement, from June to December of 1957. During that summer, Capitol Records producer Voyle Gilmore, who had previously recorded Frank Sinatra and the Four Freshmen, saw them play at the Purple Onion, and a seven-year contract was signed soon after. The group followed the Purple Onion engagement with a national tour that took them to successful engagements in Chicago and New York. During this tour, the group recorded its debut album including a brace of classic Kingston Trio songs such as Scotch and Soda, Hard, Ain't It Hard, and Tom Dooley. The latter song became a single in July of 1958 spending October through January in the Billboard Top Ten, selling over three million copies and becoming one of a handful of records, such as Elvis' Heartbreak Hotel and the Beatles' I Want to Hold Your Hand, that transformed the musical landscape. Their residence in San Francisco was now at the much more prestigious Hungry I, and it was there that they recorded their second album, before a live audience in the summer of 1958. By that time, they had broadened their repertory as well, to embrace R&B as well as folk songs. The Trio made the cover of Life magazine on August 3, 1959, and were voted the Best Group of the Year for 1959 in the pages of both Billboard and Cashbox magazines, and were presented with two Grammy Awards. The Trio's record of hits continued unabated. They defined the entire folk-pop genre in much the same way that the Beach Boys defined surf music and the Beatles later defined the entire British Invasion. The Trio's youthful exuberance and mix of upbeat sensibilities and traditional songs seemed perfectly of a piece with the dawn of the Kennedy administration, and their music a veritable soundtrack for college life during the era. The group happened to catch a performance by the trio Peter, Paul and Mary, and heard their rendition of a Pete Seeger song entitled Where Have All the Flowers Gone. The Kingston Trio recorded their own version of the song which became a favorite for millions of younger folk listeners who had come along in the years since Tom Dooley. The Trio were still doing standing-room-only business into 1962 and early 1963. They still had an ear for good songs -- I'm Going Home was as fine a folk-style single as anyone recorded in 1964, and they subsequently did excellent recordings of works such as Tom Paxton's The Last Thing on My Mind and Where I'm Bound, as well as Gordon Lightfoot's Early Morning Rain. In 1981, as part of a concert taped for a public television broadcast, group members gathered together into a sort of Kingston Trio mega-group of Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds, Dave Guard, John Stewart, George Grove, and Roger Gambill, with Mary Travers as host, with Lindsey Buckingham -- a longtime Trio fan -- as special guest. The untimely death of Gambill in the late '80s led to Nick Reynolds rejoining, and the Kingston Trio have kept going since into the 21st century. Today the Trio -- in its 53nd year as of 2010 -- consists of Grove, Bill Zorn (late of the Limeliters), and Rick Dougherty (also a Limeliters alumnus).
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Grass Valley, California 95945