I was a fan of the original Kingston Trio, and still consider that configuration a great act, worthy of remembrance and some respect.  Finally.

 

At their prime, Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds  could have held their own with, say, The Dixie Chicks or any of the top country acts today because they were such powerful singers and charismatic performers who worked so well together they assaulted and took the stage in the manner of military conquest, seemed to enjoy themselves and each other and the audience so much, had an unequalled repertoire of depth, and they were sort of scary in their control, based solely on their personality, group and individual.   Further, their music is universal and still popular, and their style, humor, and image have come round again. 

 

So, I was greatly excited when told a spate of new videos and books would be out this year, and all sorts of things would be giving the Trio credit where deserved.  After all, if Bob Dylan had apparently broken down and said good things in his recent book (he’d never actually said anything bad, but it was just assumed he looked down on them because…….well, just because…..), then maybe – just maybe – The Kingston Trio could be given their due in the – yes, superficial – various musical Halls of Fame where anything approaching justice suggests they should and need to be.  Not for their benefit so much, but to lend credibility to the Halls themselves, the membership of which is voted on by people settling scores from long ago.  Just one example: Leslie Gore is in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame for “It’s My Party,” a single that sold well.  The Kingston Trio, a group that once had four (4) albums on Billboard’s Top Ten at the same time, isn’t in it. 

 

I’ve been through all this, and you can read about it here and some reaction to responses from their current fans here.   In fact, I worried about these new presentations because the current fans were so excited.  I’m not generally impressed with the aging FanBoy contingent of folkies about the Trio these days, who have proven willing in the past, on several websites, to overpraise in exchange for contact with their heroes.  There is a strong element of people never cool in their youth who have become the remaining stalwarts on behalf of the Trio, and are re-imagining those bygone years so that now, somehow, they were.  My impression is that the original Trio would have smiled, nodded, and backed away.   I’ve been wrong before.

 

The first out is The Kingston Trio – Wherever We May Go, named for the first song on the first album that featured John Stewart, who replaced Dave Guard in 1961.  A catchy number from a weak album (my opinion), it was never at hit for them or anyone, but it is a handy segue piece into the introduction for this PBS special.  Called a documentary, which it is not, the producer is one of those who worked on the counterproductive Kingston Trio Reunion project of the early 1980’s, and many of the same faults are there.

 

My problem – and it may well be just my problem – is that I think the Trio has two sets of enemies undermining their evaluation.  One is, of course, the resentful and less talented folkies – many of the Olde Left – who resented beyond sentient understanding the wild popularity of the Trio and their young audience for doing many of the same songs they’d done for years to zero sales and less appreciation.  It was hard to give credit for the upswing in folk music sales to three ridiculously young children of privilege from California.   But even they have come around as they’ve aged, given the gracious credit the Kingstons always gave them.

 

The other and more persistent danger is from their friends, who sloppily miscredit, misconstrue, and seemingly go out of their way to make the Trio ridiculous.  That was evident on the new PBS special.  In short, given their observations and comments, I wonder if they ever understood the Trio at all.  It’s not rocket science, yet……

 

Bob Shane points out – correctly – that the Trio did World Music before the term existed, and the voice-over lists some of their influences: American folk, pop, show tunes, and the Hawaiian and Fijian influences on Shane and Guard, plus their California exposure to Mexican music…..and for illustrative example this segues into Tijuana Jail, which is sort of like seriously crediting Burl Ives – or Elvis - for his vast folk religious repertoire as an intro to a hypothetical live version of him singing Plastic Jesus.  The Trio did songs in Spanish, some serious, some better than others, but Tijuana Jail, sung entirely in English, is on par with their Coplas: a bawdy drinking song, a frat boy sex romp.  Well.  For the 1950’s.  This is a documentary which, one would assume, is an attempt to present them respectfully to a new, younger audience so everyone understands the need to recall them at all.  That dissonance doesn’t help.  Sorry.  It leaves the impression that the Trio thought Tijuana Jail was a folk song of Mexican influence, whereas it arrived from the depths associated with Speedy Gonzales and a Tequila party.  They never thought that, and that makes them look stupid.  It was a hit, though.

 

The show also has the Trio singing El Matador, again as an example of their vast folk reach, but it was a song written by their in-house team of Dave Guard and Jane Bowers and an associate, whose name eludes me.  There are so many songs that could have illustrated the point rather than hit songs that seemed to prove the point of the detractors.  They made albums worthwhile, not just a hit and filler.

 

Worse, the ‘influence’ of the Trio is given a level of scrutiny that doesn’t rise to the level of sad.  Yes, the Beach Boys stole the striped shirts.  Oh, and Sloop John B, they did that song as well from the Trio’s repertoire, but …….so what?   The Trio’s version is absent from the Beach Boy’s take on it, being an actual folk song that predates the Trio, and really shows almost no influence whatsoever.   It’s sensed that merely stating that the Trio was influential does the trick. 

 

But it doesn’t.  There being no video of the Trio doing their spare and haunting version, the need was felt to reuse the unfortunate performance at the Kingston Trio and Friends Reunion which was a screaming match on stage with the various Trios to date, plus Mary Travers.  Unfortunate, because it 1.) sucked, and 2.) bore no resemblance to that impressive cut from the first album.  By shocking coincidence, the same female producer did both shows, which she thought impressive and I think litigious, at least in regards to how the uninitiated would see them.

 

What was very impressive on WWMG is that all the videos were done live, and the Trio sounded great…..just great.  Even the few times Reynolds ran out of steam holding long high notes with a natural light baritone at the end of the song added credibility to them.  The Trio was a monolith in live performance, and those videos show them – looking exhausted if young – at their prime.  But no comment was made, and the uninitiated would think it pre-recorded.  Off screen mike (1) and the Trio sounded great.  They are impressive.   

 

But it leaves a puzzling sensation with the newbies needed for the groundswell, who don’t know what existed before or at the time, what the technology was before and after, what a live show sounded like, what a concert back then was, sociologically, in small towns around the nation.  And how the KT affected all of it for the better. 

 

It’s important to visualize the Trio.  They were big young men.  Guard was six foot four, Shane an inch shorter, Reynolds – the “runt” – still an average five foot eight.  That was markedly taller than America in the 1950’s.  But more than size, the Kingston Trio were, first and foremost, jocks.  Not consumptive inner city dwellers struggling to make it in the New World.  Establishment athletes, and good ones, in impression and carriage, team captains singing together, a much stronger image then than now.  They were the dream dates every mother wanted for their daughters (and maybe…..) and men wanted their sons to be and their daughters to marry.  Their unthreatening stage personalities and music were just the ticket for the World War Two generation, and the Korean War’s, to find comfort and enjoyment in.  At the same time they were international sex symbols to their own generation as they essentially invented the college concert circuit.  

 

As athletes, they were competitive and indestructible in the manner of the very young so blessed.   They were, therefore, not only good and skilled vocalists, but very strong singers, with the leather lungs that lasted into their old age.  They had to be, considering the crappy sound systems they had to play into and the inability to do any mixing except by body positioning around one mike except during live recordings.  None of this is discussed.

 

They had to be, because they had a schedule that would kill today.  Two fifty or three hundred performances in concert, club, or television a year.  Oh, and three albums with twelve songs.  Each year.  For four years.

 

Although the strain is mentioned, it is mentioned out of context.  I thought.

 

Further, the cleft between Guard and the others is given no analysis or comparison to other groups either as a syndrome or as unique.  So when Shane explains in conciliation that he and Guard had resolved some of their arguments, and then Guard died before they could reunite for a tour, it doesn’t give the break the coverage it deserves.  The whole hour show is really a revisionist smoothing over to Bob Shane’s standards, and that’s understandable because he alone owns the name at this time, and he alone can censor anything.  It bodes ill for the new book on them, which will also have the Shane stamp of approval.

 

It won’t do the job needed.  One of the reasons is that Shane fears, I think, a revisitation to his behavior during those first ten years.  There are many personal testimonials at the University of Wisconsin to it, including from fellow members of the Trio, and it isn’t pretty, a lot of it.  Although, it’s impressive because it’s every bit as bad as the rock stars of a decade later, only the Trio wasn’t given ‘credit’ for it when it would have added to their luster.   It’s too bad the Trio won’t ever be given the credit they deserve because of this hesitation.  It’s why official/approved bios suck. 

 

Although it was cool to see ancient video of the Trio, this was no documentary, but a rather forced love fest.  Al Jardine, yeah, Henry Diltz………and that was it.  There are far more, and far more impressive musicians, who owed the Trio big time and should have stepped up, or been asked, anyway.   The reason that didn’t happen is much of what makes the Trio the most interesting unwritten story in modern entertainment.