What are “The 50 Most Successful Folk Group Recordings of All Time?” Enjoy a musical feast following your Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, Nov. 25, 2010 by tuning in to WICN 90.5 FM in central Massachusetts (streaming online at wicn.org) from 7-11 p.m. and getting host Nick Noble’s take on this during Folk Revival.

Nick Noble

Noble has hosted Folk Revival on Thursdays on the Worcester public radio station for many years. Highlighting folk music as a living and ever-changing tradition, the program features what he refers to as “folk of the folk renaissance,” the earlier recordings that influenced that period (generally 1950-1970), and contemporary artists carrying on the legacy.

Noble initially conceived of and broadcast The 50 Most Successful Folk Group Recordings of All Time in late 2008 while he was working on his book, Number #1: the story of the Highwaymen: a journey through folk music history – the Folk Revival, “The Great Folk Scare,” and their legacies, published under his real name, Richard E. Noble, and available through online retailers.

“As mentioned in the book, very little had been written about those artists – particularly groups like the Weavers, the Tarriers, the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, the Limeliters, the Highwaymen, the New Christy Minstrels, Peter-Paul-&-Mary, the Rooftop Singers, the Chad Mitchell Trio, etc. – who took the boom in traditional and traditional-style folk music in the 50s and 60s and turned it in to commercial success,” Noble told AcousticMusicScene.com. “Most studies of the ‘Folk Revival Period’ have tended to marginalize most of these artists and their commercial success, while focusing on the traditional and protest elements of the period,” he maintains, citing the Weavers and PP&M as about the only ones mentioned with any regularity. “Other highly successful college groups (the Brandywine Singers, the Cumberland Trio) are also often ignored or treated as incidental,” he continues. “But those are the artists and the songs the average person remembers, so I thought they deserved celebration.”