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I decided that to treat this post well, I needed to tackle the whole album, I will feature 4 cuts from “String Along With The Kingston Trio” and comment on them. My Dad was a major influence on my musical tastes growing up, the country music of the 50s and early 60s, and the folk music of the times as well. He owned a copy of Capitol Records ST-1407 that I loved to play, over and over and over.My first favorite was composed by songwriter Harland Howard, who also wrote “Heartaches By The Number” and “I Fall To Pieces” among others. The Trio changed the final verse of “Everglades” – “running through the leaves from The Everly’s” as a playful jab at one of their rival singing groups.

 

The second cut I’d like to comment on is the opening song on the LP – “Bad Man’s Blunder”, written by the Weaver’s Lee Hayes and Cisco Houston, who appeared regularly with Woody Guthrie. I loved the delivery and the light hearted approach to a serious subject – “bang, you’re dead”:



The second cut on side 1 is “The Escape Of Old John Webb”, a highly spirited number telling the story of a jailbreak attributed to Tom Drake, originally an old English folk song. This one features the banjo mastery of Dave Guard:




The entire list of the songs with writer’s credits on the LP are here;

 

Side one
“Bad Man’s Blunder” (Lee Hays, Cisco Houston)
“The Escape of Old John Webb” (Tom Drake)
“When I Was Young” (Jane Bowers, Dave Guard)
“Leave My Woman Alone” (Ray Charles)
“This Mornin’, This Evenin’, So Soon” (Carl Sandburg)
“Everglades” (Harlan Howard)

 

Side two
“Buddy Better Get on Down the Line” (Bowers, Guard)
“South Wind” (Travis Edmonson)
“Who’s Gonna Hold Her Hand” (Tom Drake, Bob Shane)
“To Morrow” (Bob Gibson)
“Colorado Trail” (Lee Hays, Carl Sandburg)
“The Tattooed Lady” (Traditional, Guard, Reynolds, Shane)

 

“The Tattooed Lady”, “Buddy Better Get On Down The Line” and Carl Sandburg”s “This Mornin’, This Evenin’, So Soon” deserve a listen or two as well.

 

And that brings me to the last “favorite” on this album – “To Morrow” is a wonderful tongue-in-cheek story of a traveler trying to reach Morrow, a town in Ohio. Back then I had no idea who Bob Gibson, the songwriter was, but I suspected that he wasn’t the St. Louis Cardinal pitcher I was a big fan of. Bob was a folk songwriter who worked with Hamilton Camp (see my post on “Here’s To You”). He also wrote the country classic “Abilene”, among many other songs. Gibson & Camp combined to write “You Can Tell The Wild” a gospel song recorded by both Simon & Garfunkel and Peter, Paul, & Mary.