Kingston Trio Research Paper

The Kingston Trio began in Palo Alto with three friends, Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds, and Dave Guard (who were more or less self-taught in their music), in 1957. The three were very popular at parties with their music and when they got booked at the Purple Onion their career truly blossomed. After an entire week of sold-out performances, the Purple Onion was the sight of their headline gigs for the summer of 1957. Following this, a seven year contract with Capitol Records was at the door. With the contract, the trio wanted to add another dimension to their performances in an effort to further entertain their audiences. The trio soon came up with a comic stage banter to play off of their personalities and add some spontaneity to their act. The trio later went on a very successful tour around the United States and recorded their first album. Of their songs, “Tom Dooley” was the biggest hit.

Their second album was recorded there in front of a live audience and sold fairly well. When they went on to their third album, they used stereo and they had merged with the world of R&B. Following the album, the trio was on the cover of Life Magazine and voted Best Group the Year in 1959 and they won two Grammy Awards. The Kingston Trio were one of the biggest things of the era; they were almost the Beatles before the Beatles were the Beatles. Ironically though, they weren’t very popular with the folk audience. Many of this audience felt that they had cheapened their music genre and hadn’t really earned the right to call themselves folk artists because they were absent during the biggest struggles of the 1930s to the early 1950s. However, the trio was still very influential on a number of musicians, leading to a number of imitators around the Americas. The Kingston Trio went to define the folk-pop genre just like the Beach Boys would define surf music and the Beatles would define the British Invasion