Bob Shane, the last original member of The Kingston Trio, died on January 26 – just a few days shy of his 86h birthday. Along with his bandmates, Shane, a singer and guitarist, helped to spur the folk revival of the late 1950s -1960s.
A native of Hilo, Hawaii, Shane (born Robert Castle Schoen) teamed up with Dave Guard and Nick Reynolds in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1957 to form The Kingston Trio. With their close vocal harmonies, solid guitar playing and humorous banter between songs, the trio impressed audiences at San Francisco’s Purple Onion and Hungry I nightclubs and soon landed a recording contract with Capitol Records.
The most commercially successful and influential American folk group of the late 1950s and 1960s, The Kingston Trio released more than 30 albums — 23 of which made Billboard Magazine’s Hot 100 charts. The trio’s first five releases each reached the #1 spot, while four of them were in the top 10 simultaneously in 1959. The Kingston Trio’s self-titled debut album (recorded in just a few days in February 1958) included its recording of the southern murder ballad “Tom Dooley,” which featured Shane on lead vocals. It garnered extensive radio airplay nationally and rocketed to the top of the charts in 1958.
Three years later, in the spring of 1961, Guard left the group and was replaced by John Stewart, a singer-songwriter who had penned a few songs that the trio had previously recorded. The Kingston Trio featuring Shane, Reynolds and Stewart released more than a dozen more albums for Capital and, later, Decca Records over the next six years.
Among The Kingston Trio’s many hit songs – In addition to “Tom Dooley” were “A Worried Man,” “Greenback Dollar,” “M.T.A.” and “Scotch and Soda,” which is considered Shane’s signature number.
The trio disbanded in mid-1967 – prompting Shane to pursue a brief solo career before forming the New Kingston Trio in 1969. Although that group went through a number of personnel changes, Shane remained with it until he suffered a heart attack in 2004 that forced him to retire from performing. He, Reynolds and Guard also briefly reunited in 1981 for a concert in California that was recorded and aired on PBS television stations in early 1982. Although the three original members of The Kingston Trio spoke in the summer of 1990 about a possible reunion tour, Guard’s death in early 1991 precluded that. Shane was a recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2010.
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