Customer Reviews

Very Best of Kingston Trio

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

I really wanted to hear the original group and the original recordings. This is a later (somewhere from the mid 1960s on) live performance, and these guys sound so bored, and frequently slightly off key, it's as if they go out of their way to butcher the material and make the classics unrecogizable. Fit only for the recycle bin.

This is the legendary double LP set that Decca rejected in 1966, and was finally released in 1969 on the rare Tetragrammaton label. In LP form it is a Kingston Trio "holy grail" and very elusive. The masters were stolen, then mysteriously returned. All these CDs with similar titles, calling Wimoweh "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," etc. (except the Rear family box set version) are from the pirated masters.
The performances are fabulous, with the Kingston Trio at its most wild and irreverent at times, and trying to chase the Byrds or other folk-rock groups at other times. One Too Many Mornings, Colours, Tomorrow is a Long Time, and Baby You've Been on My Mind are all modern numbers available nowhere else in their catalog (the last track had an inferior studio version on an obscure 45). This Train/Roving Gambler is a marvelous medley never recorded elsewhere. And Getaway John is a fabulous remake of a Guard-era Trio song, done with even better emotional depth than the original. Most of the other tracks are great live versions of their studio recordings, but Hard aint it Hard and Greenback Dollar are done amidst giggles and intentional lyric changes, to an appreciative crowd. Enjoy!

This truly is the very best of the Kingston Trio.

All of your favorites are included in this collection, including, of course, "Tom Dooley", "Hard Ain't It Hard" and "MTA".

Unlike some other collections, the songs on this CD were not once part of an original album but were compiled for the express purpose of producing this CD for Time-Life and they overlap both the Dave Guard and the John Stewart eras of the Kingston Trio (after Guard left in 1961).

Red Grammer simply was not as entertaining a tenor for the Limeliters as was the man that he replaced, Glenn Yarborough, but the Kingston Trio's transition from Guard to Stewart was made seamlessly enough. I can't tell any difference in the quality between the later and earlier recordings.

I'm guessing, however, that most of these songs were recorded fairly early because they include a number of traditional folk ballads that were later made into rock-and-roll hits. In this album, they are sung AS folk songs, of course, and they are sung without comment - which leads me to believe that the "rock" versions have not yet appeared.

These include the Trio's rendition of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Blowin' In the Wind" before they became protest songs, a fairly understated but intriguing version of "The Wreck of the John B" before it became a Beach Boys classic ("Sloop John B"), and "They Call the Wind Maria" before it was popularized by the Clint Eastwood movie "Paint Your Wagon".

Most interesting of all is the rendition of the African lullaby "Wimoweh" before the Tokens arranged it to become "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".

The rock-and-roll/movie soundtrack versions of these songs are good too, but this truly is "folk music" that has not yet been cookie-cut for commercial purposes and for distribution to a mass audience.

Does it really take a worried man to sing a worried song? If I could sing and strum a banjo like a Kingston Trio member, I wouldn't give a damn about a greenback dollar. I'd do it for room and board and would have very little to worry about.

The songs are great. But these particular recordings are terrible, even considering their vintage. If you want to hear what the Kingston Trio sounds like, pick up a collection that doesn't sound like it was recorded in a storm sewer.

My husband was a big fan of the group and I bought this because I liked the selections, but we were both very disappointed by the quality of the recordings. It's not an official version, so none of the songs were studio-recorded, which would be okay if the quality was even half good. But they all sound like they were recorded with a personal tape recorder - in many cases hard to hear, with a lot of background noise. I wouldn't buy this unless I already owned other Kingston Trio recordings and wanted this to round out a collection.