Hello again, my dearest Henkie !!!!! I am home from church !!!! We sang some beautiful psalms !!!!!! Thank you for this great song !!! It is a very sad song !!!! I have it in my playlist both in English, Dutch and Danish !!!!! The words are very sad, but the rhythm is not sad !!! I love it !!!!!! My sweetie, you are forever in my heart and soul !!!!! Yours Jytte
Hellooooo !!!!! welcome home my dearest Jytte !!!! I have done a great nap in my chair !!!!! And now overhere the Sun is shining and it is 5 degrees !!!! I'm glad that you had such a nice time in the church and have sang psalms !!!! And I thank you that you like The Kingston Trio !!!!! Make something beautiful of this Sunday afternoon Jytte !!!! I keep thinking on you ! Yours forever, Henk !!!!
1958 - _Tom Dooley_ - Traditional - Arno Grillo (music) - Dave Guard (arrangement) - The Kingston Trio: Dave Guard, Bob Shane & Nick Reynolds *"Tom Dooley"* is a traditional North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina by Tom Dula (whose name in the local dialect was pronounced "Dooley"). One of the more famous murder ballads, a popular hit version recorded in 1958 by The Kingston Trio reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, was in the top 10 on the Billboard R&B chart, and appeared in the Cashbox Country Music Top 20. The song was selected as one of the American Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scholastic Inc. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time. "Tom Dooley" fits within the wider genre of Appalachian "sweetheart murder ballads". A local poet named Thomas Land wrote a song about the tragedy, titled "Tom Dooley", shortly after Dula was hanged. In the documentary _Appalachian Journey_ (1991), folklorist Alan Lomax describes Frank Proffitt as the "original source" for the song, which was misleading in that he did not write it. There are several earlier known recordings, notably one that G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter made in 1929, approximately 10 years before Proffitt cut his own recording. The Kingston Trio took their version from Frank Warner's singing. Warner had learned the song from Proffitt, who learned it from his aunt, Nancy Prather, whose parents had known both Laura Foster and Tom Dula. In a 1967 interview, Nick Reynolds of the Kingston Trio recounted first hearing the song from another performer and then being criticized and sued for taking credit for the song. Supported by the testimony of Anne and Frank Warner, Frank Proffitt was eventually acknowledged by the courts as the preserver of the original version of the song, and the Kingston Trio were ordered to pay royalties to him for their uncredited use of it. History In 1866, Laura Foster was murdered. Confederate veteran Tom Dula, Foster's lover and the father of her unborn child, was convicted of her murder and hanged May 1, 1868. Foster had been stabbed to death with a large knife, and the brutality of the attack partly accounted for the widespread publicity the murder and subsequent trial received. Anne Foster Melton, Laura's cousin, had been Dula's lover from the time he was twelve and until he left for the Civil War - even after Anne married an older man named James Melton. When Dula returned, he became a lover again to Anne, then Laura, then their cousin Pauline Foster. Pauline's comments led to the discovery of Laura's body and accusations against both Tom and Anne. Anne was subsequently acquitted in a separate trial, based on Dula's word that she had nothing to do with the killing. Dula's enigmatic statement on the gallows that he had not harmed Foster but still deserved his punishment led to press speculation that Melton was the actual killer and that Dula simply covered for her. Melton, who had once expressed jealousy of Dula's purported plans to marry Foster, died either in a carting accident or by going insane a few years after the homicide, depending on the version. Thanks to the efforts of newspapers such as The New York Times and to the fact that former North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance represented Dula pro bono, Dula's murder trial and hanging were given widespread national publicity. A local poet, Thomas C. Land, wrote a song titled "Tom Dooley" about Dula's tragedy soon after the hanging. Combined with the widespread publicity the trial received, Land's song further cemented Dula's place in North Carolina legend and is still sung today throughout North Carolina. A man named "Grayson", mentioned in the song as pivotal in Dula's downfall, has sometimes been characterized as a romantic rival of Dula's or a vengeful sheriff who captured him and presided over his hanging. Some variant lyrics of the song portray Grayson in that light, and the spoken introduction to the Kingston Trio version did the same. Col. James Grayson was actually a Tennessee politician who had hired Dula on his farm when the young man fled North Carolina under suspicion and was using a false name. Grayson did help North Carolinians capture Dula and was involved in returning him to North Carolina but otherwise played no role in the case. Dula was tried in Statesville, North Carolina because it was believed he could not get a fair trial in Wilkes County. He was given a new trial on appeal, but he was again convicted and hanged on May 1, 1868. On the gallows, Dula reportedly stated, "Gentlemen, do you see this hand? I didn't harm a hair on the girl's head." Dula's last name was pronounced "Dooley", leading to some confusion in spelling over the years. The pronunciation of a final "a" like "y" (or "ee") is an old feature in Appalachian speech, as in the term "Grand Ole Opry". The confusion was compounded by the fact that Dr. Tom Dooley, an American physician known for international humanitarian work, was at the height of his fame in 1958 when the Kingston Trio version became a major hit. Recordings Many renditions of the song have been recorded, most notably: In 1929, G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter made the first recorded version of Land's song by a group well known at the time, for Victor. Frank Warner, Elektra, 1952. Warner, a folklorist, unaware of the 1929 recording, in 1940 took down the song from Frank Proffitt and passed it to Alan Lomax who published it in _Folk Song: USA._ On March 30, 1953, the CBS radio series Suspense broadcast a half-hour "Tom Dooley" drama loosely based on the song, which was sung during the program by actor Harry Dean Stanton. While not issued as a commercial recording, transcription discs of the broadcast eventually were digitized and circulated by old time radio collectors. The Folksay Trio, which featured Erik Darling, Bob Carey and Roger Sprung, issued the first post-1950 version of the song for _American Folksay-Ballads and Dances, Vol. 2_ on the Stinson label in 1953. Their version was noteworthy for including a pause in the line "Hang down your head Tom...Dooley". The group reformed in 1956 as The Tarriers, featuring Darling, Carey and Alan Arkin, and released another version of "Tom Dooley" for The Tarriers on the Glory label in 1957. The Kingston Trio recorded the most popular version of the song in 1958 for Capitol. This recording sold in excess of six million copies, topping the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and is often credited with starting the "folk music boom" of the late 1950s and 1960s. It only had three verses (and the chorus four times). This recording of the song was inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress and honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. The Grammy Foundation named it one of the Songs of the Century. Neil Young and Crazy Horse recorded an eight-minute version on their 2012 album _Americana,_ on which they retitled the song to the proper spelling "Tom Dula" and pronounced it in such a way as to make it a political statement against former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. The French group Les Compagnons de la Chanson recorded a French version titled "Tom Dooley (Fais ta priere)", which reached No. 1 on the Belgian chart and No. 4 on the French chart in 1959. Other artists that have recorded versions of the song include Paul Clayton, Line Renaud, Bing Crosby, Jack Narz, Steve Earle the Grateful Dead, Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, and Doc Watson. Lonnie Donegan also recorded the song in the UK. It spent 14 weeks in the British charts from November 1958, reaching its highest ranking at number 3 for 5 weeks. References in other songs The third and final verse of country music singer Stonewall Jackson's 1958 crossover hit "Waterloo" referenced Tom Dooley with the lyrics, "Now he swings where the little birdie sings, and that's where Tom Dooley met his Waterloo." Ella Fitzgerald drops an altered line from the song into a recording of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on her 1967 album, Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas. Parodies "Tom Dooley" prompted a number of parodies, either as part of other songs or as entire songs. For example: The Smothers Brothers did a version of the song on their 1961 debut album, _The Smothers Brothers at the Purple Onion,_ which referenced the lawsuit against The Kingston Trio by claiming that Dickie Smothers had written it and The Kingston Trio had stolen it. The Four Preps used this song and "Worried Man Blues" to make fun of The Kingston Trio in their song "More Money for You and Me". The Incredible Bongo Band recorded the song "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley, Your Tie's Caught In Your Zipper" (1972). The Capitol Steps used this song to make fun of South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle on their 2003 album Between Iraq and a Hard Place.
In popular culture The Kingston Trio's hit song was the inspiration for the 1959 film _The Legend of Tom Dooley,_ starring Michael Landon as Dooley, and co-starring Richard Rust. A Western set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, it was not about traditional Tom Dula legends or the facts of the case, but a fictional treatment tailored to fit the lyrics of the song. "Tom Dooley" is the name of a season 5 episode of _Ally McBeal,_ in which John Cage sings a version of the song with his Mexican band. The song was parodied in _episode No. 702 of Mystery Science Theater 3000._ Crow T. Robot, motivated by one actor's resemblance to Thomas Dewey, sang a version beginning "Hang down your head, Tom Dewey." Glada Barn's version of Land's song closes _Rectify season 2 episode "Mazel Tov"._ In the 1980 film _Friday the 13th,_ the campers in the opening scene start to sing the song. The opening scene is set in 1958, the year the Kingston Trio version of the song debuted. _Episode 10 of Santo, Sam and Ed's Total Football Podcast_ is titled "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dula". This naming was in reference to a sample of the song generated by Santo Cilauro whereby he jokingly claimed Tiziano Crudeli had performed a version of Tom Dooley with "The Kingstown Trio". Crudeli's bombastic commentary style on Diretta Stadio afforded him celebrity status in Italy, and audio of Crudeli's pronunciation of various footballers' names was a constant running gag throughout the Total Football Podcast. The Irish comedian Dave Allen did a sketch in which two cowboys with guitars sit by a hangman's gallows, trying to compose a ballad. They try to think of a name to incorporate into their song but have no success. Then Tom Dooley walks past, and they sing, "Hand down your head, Tom Dooley" and think that sounds great, so they hang him. RECORDINGS *Tom Dula (Dooley)* - English Grayson and Whitter First release May 2, 1930 First recording on Sep 30, 1929 Frank Warner Nov 1952 Roger Sprung, Erik Darling, Bob Carey 1954 Paul Clayton 1956 The Tarriers Apr 1957 The Kingston Trio June 2, 1958 Hit song Definitive version Sampled by Buchanan & Goodman with Count Dracula Johnny Worth Nov 1958 Reg Lindsay and His Colt Breakers Nov 1958 Lonnie Donegan and His Skiffle Group Dec 1958 Hit song Pinky and Perky Dec 1958 Jan & Kjeld met rytme 1958 Rikki Price 1958 The Four Dreams 1958 William Clauson Mar 1959 TAllegrettes May 23, 1959 Eddy Arnold Sep 1959 The Allegrettes 1959 Four Jacks 1959 Sverre and His Skiffle Group 1959 Mac Wiseman Jul 1960 The New Lost City Ramblers 1960 The Great Hank Hill and The Tennessee Folk Trio 1960 Kenny Arnott and His Men 1961 The Four Freshmen with Orchestra conducted by Dick Reynolds Apr 1962 Glen Neaves & Band 1962 Jim Glaser and The American Folk Trio 1962 Frank Proffitt 1962 Johnny Mann Singers 1962 Mickie Most 1962 Tammy Grimes 1962 The Four Lads 1963 Doc Watson May 1964 Johnny Rivers Sep 1965 1965 Scotch Plains-Fanwood Junior High School 1965 Chas McDevitt & Shirley Douglas 1965 The Charleston Trio 1965 The Hiltonaires [JM] 1966 Mel Tillis Aug 1967 Jim Ed Brown May 1968 Sweeney's Men 1968 The Chico's 1970 The Down Homers 1970 Bill Wellings 1971 The Country Gentlemen Mar 1973 Live Chor und Orchester Thomas Berger 1973 Cotton Mill Boys 1975 Country Stones 1976 The Brothers Four 1977 Murry Kellum 1978 Peter, Sue & Marc 1978 Tex Williams [AU] 1978 Rakish Paddy 1981 Dave Vernon and The Dixie Rebels 1982 Palomaz 1982 The Spinners [GB] 1984 The Piccadilly Six 1986 97th Regimental String Band 1986 Big Jack Johnson 1987 Freddy Quinn 1987 Frank Zander 1988 Medley Lucky Star [HR] 1988 Kenneth Swanström 1990 Frantic Flintstones 1991 Bill Morrissey & Greg Brown 1993 Lesley Schatz 1993 Paul & Margie 1994 The Statler Brothers 1995 Nystogs 1996 Rob Ickes 1997 The Great Western Squares 1997 Laura Boosinger 1998 Jerry Yester, Cass Elliot, Jim Hendricks & Henry Diltz Mar 9, 1999 Tom Dula Doc Watson and David Holt 1999 Live Tom Dooley Snakefarm 1999 Tom Dooley Black Knights 2001 Macabre Minstrels 2002 The Pine Valley Cosmonauts feat. Steve Earle 2002 The Pine Valley Cosmonauts feat. The Sundowners Jun 17, 2003 Live Ramblin' Jack Elliott Oct 26, 2004 Live Grateful Dead Oct 26, 2004 Live Acoustic Andrew Heller 2004 The Sundowners [US2] 2004 Live Carolina Chocolate Drops Sep 12, 2006 River City Ramblers Sep 12, 2007 Harvey Reid & Joyce Andersen 2007 Paul's Big Radio 2007 Jesper Lohmann - Stig Rossen - Jesper Asholt - Keld Heick Nov 2008 Medley TSten & Stanley 2009 Bing Crosby 2010 Medley Rod E. Musselman Jun 25, 2011 The Bing Brothers Band featuring Jake Krack Mar 10, 2012 Live Neil Young & Crazy Horse Jun 5, 2012 Bobby Bare Nov 13, 2012 Krüger Brothers Apr 24, 2013 Six String Yada 2015 Laura Boosinger with The Kruger Brothers Sep 2017 Tom Roush 2017 Curtis Hobeck
*Instrumental* Adalbert Lutter und Sein Tanzorchester 1958 Roger Williams with Orchestra directed by Marty Gold and Hal Kanner Apr 1959 Arturo Diaz 1959 Émile Prud'homme et son ensemble 1959 Hans-Arno Simon und sein Cocktail-Piano 1959 Medley Jack Ledru et sa grande formation 1959 Jerry Mengo et son orchestre 1959 Onésime Grosbois et son piano d'occasion 1959 Pierre Spiers - Jerry Mengo 1959 Yvette Horner et son ensemble musette 1959 Les Baxter 1960 Billy Strange Sep 1963 The Harold Land Quintet 1963 Henry Jerome and His Orchestra 1963 Terry Gibbs 1963 Chris Barber and His Jazz Band 1965 Raymond Fairchild and The Maggie Valley Boys Aug 1967 Bryan Smith 1978 Medley Steppin Stompers 1979 Christopher John & His Orchestra (MFP Studio Artists) 1982 Phil Kelsall 1988 Medley Jim Gibson 1996 Medley Charles Blackwell and His Orchestra 2006 Jim Hendricks [US1] 2015 Medley *Tom Dooley* written by Jan Vyčítal, Vít Hrubín *Czech* Honza Vyčítal 1995 First release *Tom Dooley* written by Eduard Krečmar *Czech* Ladislav Vodička a jeho modrej vlak 1996 First recording in 1996 Scarabeus 1996 *Tom Dooley* written by Torsten Tanning *Danish* Preben Uglebjerg med Four Pals - Johannes Rasmussen og hans orkester 1958 First release Four Jacks med Jørn Grauengårds orkester Jan 1959 Jacks [DK] 1996 Helge Leonhardt og Klaus Birck 2002 Jesper Lohmann - Stig Rossen - Jesper Asholt - Keld Heick Nov 2008 Medley *Tom Doely* written by Bobbejaan Schoepen, Johnny Steggerda *Dutch* Bobbejaan Schoepen 1959 First release *More Money for You and Me* written by Bruce Belland, Glen Larson *English* The Four Preps May 1961 First release Hit song Live Medley *Ballad of Syd Levy* written by unknown author(s) *English* Allan Lieberman 2005 First release *Laulu Tom Dooleysta* written by Sauvo Puhtila *Finnish* Kauko Käyhkö ja Ossi Malisen yhtye 1958 First release Tom Dooley written by Reino Helismaa Finnish Olavi Virta First release 1959 First recording on Feb 13, 1959 Matti Heinivaho 1971 Henrik & Mosaic December 1981 Kari Tapio 1984 Topi Sorsakoski 1999 *Tom Dooley* written by Jacques Plante *French* Henri Decker et ses Quatre Voix alias Unico Multi avec André Popp et son orchestre 1959 First release *Fais ta prière* written by Max François *French* Les compagnons de la chanson Feb 24, 1959 Jack Irsa et ses Cow-Boys Apr 1959 Philippe Clay avec Jean-Paul Mengeon et son orchestre Apr 1959 Line Renaud - Orchestre dir. : Peter Brown 1959 Lucien Lupi - Orchestre dir. : Christian Chevallier avec "Les Angels" 1959 Robert Piquet avec Claude Vasori et son ensemble 1959 Serge Lenormand 1959 Trumpet Cha Cha et ses chœurs - Ray Tchicoray et son orchestre (Georges Jouvin) 1959 Jacqueline Danno - Orchestre sous la direction de Léo Chauliac 1960
*Tom Dooley* written by Arno Gillo *German* Die Nilsen Brothers November 1958 First release Das Tom Dooley-Trio Feb 1959 Bruce Low 1961 Heino 1973 Medium Terzett 1974 Ralf Paulsen 1998 *Tom Dooley* written by Christian Bruhn, Günter Loose *German* Jonny Hill Jan 1974 First release *Tom Dooley* written by Theo Rausch *German* Ralf Bendix 1975 First release *Die Wahrheit über Tom Dooley* written by Peter Held *German* Freddy Quinn 1992 First release *Útlaginn* written by Jón Sigurðsson [IS1] *Icelandic* Óðinn Valdimarsson og Atlantic kvartettinn 1959 First release Ragnar Bjarnason 1965 Sólheimakórinn 2015
*Upp undir Laugarásnum* written by Haraldur Sigurðsson, Þórhallur Sigurðsson *Icelandic* Halli og Laddi 1977 First release *Tom Dooley* written by Gian Carlo Testoni *Italian* Guido Guarnera - Poker di Voci - William Galassini e la sua orchestra First release 1959
*Tom Dooley* written by Ilio Benvenuti *Italian* The Gaylords Apr 1961 First release obby Solo 1966 *Who Stole My Provolone?* written by Ray Allen, Wandra Merrell, Marie Scaglione *Multiple languages* Lou Monte Oct 1963 First release *Tom Dooley* written by Lennart Hellsing *Swedish* Papegojorna - Karl-Olof Finnbergs orkester 1959
*Tom Dooley* written by Rafael de Penagos *Spanish* Torquato y Los 4 1960
*Thomas C. Dula* (June 23‚ 1844 - May 1, 1868) was a former Confederate soldier who was convicted of murdering Laura Foster. National publicity from newspapers such as The New York Times turned Dula's story into a folk legend. Although Laura was murdered in Wilkes County, North Carolina, Dula was tried, convicted, and hanged in Statesville. Considerable controversy surrounded the case. In subsequent years, a folk song was written (entitled "Tom Dooley", based on the pronunciation in the local dialect), and many oral traditions were passed down, regarding the sensational occurrences surrounding Laura Foster's murder and Dula's subsequent execution. The Kingston Trio recorded a hit version of the murder ballad in 1958. The Trio had taken the song, without acknowledgement, from the singing of singer and folklorist Frank Warner, who had learned it from Frank Proffitt, a preserver of traditional culture, during one of the many singing and song-sharing sessions he and his folklorist spouse Ann had enjoyed at the Proffitt and Hicks homes in North Carolina. Frank Proffitt had learned the song, among many others, from his aunt Nancy Prather, whose parents had known Tom, Laura Foster, and Ann Foster. A court case, brought by Frank Warner on Frank Proffitt's behalf, settled the matter of "ownership" of the song in the latter's favor, and he received royalties from the Trio's and other performances of the song. Early life Tom Dula was born to a poor Appalachian hill-country family in Wilkes County, North Carolina, most likely the youngest of three brothers, with one younger sister, Eliza. Dula grew up, attended school, and "probably played with the female Fosters" - Anne and her cousins Laura and Pauline. As the children grew up, Tom and Anne apparently became intimate. Anne Foster's mother found Anne and Tom in bed together when Anne was 14 years old and Tom was just 12. Three months before his 18th birthday, on March 15, 1862, Tom enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private in Company K, 42nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment. He was captured, but he was released in April 1865. Dula wrote a 15-page account of his life, as well as a note that exonerated Anne Foster (then using the married name Melton). His literacy is highly unusual, considering the harsh poverty of his upbringing. Dula played the fiddle and was considered by those who knew him well to be a "ladies' man". Military service Contrary to newspaper accounts at the time, Dula did not serve in Colonel Zebulon Vance's 26th North Carolina Infantry regiment, he had instead served in the 42nd North Carolina Infantry regiment, under Company K. Also, rumors that he "played the banjo" in the army band for Vance's benefit and entertained the colonel with his antics were false. These have often been cited as the reason that Vance was so quick to lead the defense during Dula's trial. Dula did not come through the war completely unscathed, as folklore, oral tradition, and some modern writers have claimed. He was wounded several times in battle. His brothers died in the war, leaving Tom as his mother's "sole remaining boy". Dula did sometimes use his musical talents in the army, and on one surviving muster roll he is listed as a "musician" and a "drummer". Murder of Laura Foster Anne Foster had married an older man, James Melton, who was a farmer, cobbler, and neighbor of both the Fosters and the Dulas. Melton also served in the war, taking part in the Battle of Gettysburg. Both Melton and Dula were captured and sent to a northern prison camp. They were released after the war ended and returned home. Shortly after his return, Dula resumed his relationship with Anne. With a reputation as a libertine, it was not long before he began an intimate relationship with Laura Foster, Anne's cousin. Folklore has it that Laura became pregnant, and that she and Dula had decided to elope. On the morning, she was to meet Dula, May 25, 1866, Laura quietly left her home and rode off on her father's horse. She was never seen alive again. It is not truly known what happened that day, but many stories have grown that implicate Anne Melton. Some tales claim that Anne murdered Laura Foster because she was jealous that Dula was marrying her. These stories say that Dula suspected Anne had killed her, but he still loved Anne enough to take the blame himself. It was Anne's word that led to the discovery of Laura's body, leading to further suspicion of Anne's guilt. Anne's cousin, Pauline Foster, testified that Anne had taken her to the grave one night to make sure it was still well hidden. Witnesses at the trial testified that Dula made the incriminating statement he was going to "do in" the one who gave him "the pock" (syphilis). Their testimony suggested that Dula believed Laura had given him syphilis, which he had passed on to Anne. However, the local doctor testified he had treated both Dula and Anne for syphilis (using blue mass), as he also had Pauline Foster, who in fact was the first to be treated. Many believe that Dula caught the disease from Pauline Foster, then passed it on to both Anne and Laura. Once the grave had been located, Laura Foster's decomposed body was found with her legs drawn up to fit in the shallow grave. She had been stabbed once in the chest. The gruesome murder and the lovers' triangle, combined with the rumors that circulated in the small backwoods town, captured the public's attention and led to the lasting notoriety of the crime. Dula's role in the murder is still debated. After the murder he stopped at the home of his relative Thomas Dula, a site that became Dula Springs Hotel. He had fled the area before Laura's body was found, after locals accused him of murdering Laura. Calling himself Tom Hall, he worked for about a week for Colonel James Grayson, just across the state line in Trade, Tennessee. Grayson was later mentioned in the song about Dula, and from that came the myth that he had been Dula's rival for the love of Laura Foster, but Grayson actually had no prior connection to either Dula or Foster. Once Dula's identity was known, Grayson did help the Wilkes County posse bring him in, but that was his only part in the affair. Trial Following Dula's arrest, former North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance represented him pro bono, and to the end of his life maintained that Dula was innocent. He succeeded in having the trial moved from Wilkesboro to Statesville, since it was believed Dula could not receive a fair trial in Wilkes County. Nevertheless, Dula was convicted, and although he was given a new trial on appeal, he was convicted again. His supposed accomplice, Jack Keaton, was set free, and on Dula's word, Anne Melton was acquitted. As he stood on the gallows facing death, Dula reportedly said, "Gentlemen, I did not harm a single hair on that fair lady's head." He was executed on May 1, 1868, nearly two years after Laura Foster's murder. Dula's younger sister and her husband retrieved his body for burial. Petitions In 2001, the citizens of North Wilkesboro presented a petition to North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, asking that Tom Dula be posthumously pardoned. No action was taken. Tom Dula was acquitted of all charges after a petition was sent around Wilkes County and to the county seat. However, this action was unofficial and had no legal standing. Myths Much legend and folklore has grown around the tragedy and the life of Tom Dula. Not least of these is that Dula came through the war without a scratch, with Governor Vance making use of Dula's supposed talents with a banjo for his own entertainment. Both Dula's and Vance's accounts, as well as Dula's own military record, show this to be untrue. Nonetheless, the myth has persisted to the present day. Another myth holds that while Dula was fighting in Virginia, Anne - apparently despairing of ever seeing Tom again - met and married an older farmer, James Melton. In fact, she had married Melton in 1859, three years before Tom left for the war, though that may not have changed the nature of her relationship with Dula. A final tale is that Anne Melton confessed to the murder on her deathbed. She allegedly confessed to having killed Laura in a fit of jealousy and begged Tom to help her conceal the body. People in the area still say that, on her deathbed, Anne saw black cats on the walls and could hear and smell bacon frying. In popular culture Music Thomas Land is believed to have written a song about the tragedy titled "Tom Dooley" (which was how Dula's name was pronounced) shortly after Dula was hanged. This, combined with the widespread publicity the trial received, further cemented Dula's place in North Carolina legend. Stonewall Jackson's U.S. country music and Billboard hit song "Waterloo" (1959) makes reference to Tom Dooley in the final verse. The music project Windows to Sky featuring SJ Tucker released a version of "Tom Dooley" titled "Tom Dula: Madness Made Us Wild; a Play in Five Verses and a Hanging" (2012), which combines elements of several versions of the story and song and adapts quotes from the original court transcripts as lyrics. They describe it as "our original reinvention of the 'Tom Dula' story for the Neil Young Americana Contest, June 2012". Bob Dylan's song "Murder Most Foul" (2020) makes reference to Tom Dooley.
*The Kingston Trio* is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to the late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds. It rose to international popularity fueled by unprecedented sales of LP records and helped alter the direction of popular music in the U.S. The Kingston Trio was one of the most prominent groups of the era's folk-pop boom, which they kick-started in 1958 with the release of the Trio's eponymous first album and its hit recording of "Tom Dooley", which became a number one hit and sold over three million copies as a single. The Trio released nineteen albums that made Billboard's Top 100, fourteen of which ranked in the top 10, and five of which hit the number 1 spot. Four of the group's LPs charted among the 10 top-selling albums for five weeks in November and December 1959, a record unmatched for more than 50 years, and the group still ranks in the all-time lists of many of Billboard's cumulative charts, including those for most weeks with a number 1 album, most total weeks charting an album, most number 1 albums, most consecutive number 1 albums, and most top ten albums. In 1961, the Trio was described as "the most envied, the most imitated, and the most successful singing group, folk or otherwise, in all show business" and "the undisputed kings of the folksinging rage by every yardstick". The Trio's massive record sales in its early days made acoustic folk music commercially viable, paving the way for singer-songwriter, folk rock, and Americana artists who followed in their wake. The Kingston Trio continues to tour as of 2024 with musicians who licensed the name and trademark in 2017. Formation, 1954-1957 Dave Guard and Bob Shane had been friends since junior high school at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, where both had learned to play ukulele in required music classes. They had developed an interest in and admiration for native Hawaiian slack key guitarists like Gabby Pahinui. While in Punahou's secondary school, Shane taught first himself and then Guard the rudiments of the six-string guitar, and the two began performing at parties and in school shows doing an eclectic mix of Tahitian, Hawaiian, and calypso songs. After graduating from high school in 1952, Guard enrolled at Stanford University while Shane matriculated at nearby Menlo College. At Menlo, Shane became friends with Nick Reynolds, a native San Diegan with an extensive knowledge of folk and calypso songs-in part from his guitar-playing father, a career officer in the U.S. Navy. Reynolds was also able to create and sing tenor harmonies, a skill derived in part from family singalongs and could play both guitar and bongo and conga drums. Shane and Reynolds performed at fraternity parties and luaus for a time, and eventually Shane introduced Reynolds to Guard. The three began performing at campus and neighbourhood hangouts, sometimes as a trio but with an aggregation of friends that could swell its ranks to as many as six or seven, according to Reynolds. They usually billed themselves under the name of "Dave Guard and the Calypsonians". None of the three at that time had any serious aspirations to enter professional show business, however, and Shane returned to Hawaii following his graduation in late 1956 to work in the family sporting goods business. Still in the Bay Area, Guard and Reynolds had organized themselves somewhat more formally into an entity named "The Kingston Quartet" with friends; bassist Joe Gannon and vocalist Barbara Bogue, though as before the members were often joined in their performances by other friends. At one engagement at Redwood City's Cracked Pot beer garden, they met a young San Francisco publicist named Frank Werber, who had heard of them from a local entertainment reporter. Werber liked the group's raw energy but did not consider them refined enough to want to represent them as an agent or manager at that point, though he left his telephone number with Guard. Some weeks later (and following a brief period in which Reynolds was temporarily replaced in the quartet by Don MacArthur), Guard and Reynolds invited Werber to a performance of the group at the Italian Village Restaurant in San Francisco, where Werber was so impressed by the group's progress that he agreed to manage them provided they replace Gannon, in whose professional potential Werber had no faith. Bogue left with Gannon, and Guard, Reynolds, and Werber invited Shane to rejoin the now more formally organized band. Shane, who had been performing part-time as a solo act at night in Honolulu, readily assented and returned to the mainland in early March 1957. The four drew up a contract as equal partners in Werber's office in San Francisco, deciding on the name "Kingston Trio" because it evoked, through its association with Kingston, Jamaica, the calypso music popular at the time, and also on the uniform of three-quarter-length sleeved vertically striped shirts that the group hoped would help its target audience of college students to identify with them. Era of peak success, 1957-61 Werber imposed a stern training regimen on Guard, Shane, and Reynolds, rehearsing them for six to eight hours a day for several months, sending them to prominent San Francisco vocal coach Judy Davis to help them learn to preserve their voices, and working on the group's carefully prepared but apparently spontaneous banter between songs. At the same time, the group was developing a varied and eclectic repertoire of calypso, folk, and foreign language songs, suggested by all three of the musicians though usually arranged by Guard with some harmonies created by Reynolds. The first major break for the Kingston Trio came in late June 1957 when comedian Phyllis Diller cancelled a week-long engagement at The Purple Onion club in San Francisco. When Werber persuaded the club's owner to give the untested Trio a chance, Guard sent out five hundred postcards to everyone that the three musicians knew in the Bay Area and Werber plastered the city with handbills announcing the engagement. When the crowds came, the Trio had been well prepared by months of work, and they achieved such local popularity that the initial week's engagement stretched to six months. Werber built upon this initial success, booking a national club tour in early 1958 for the Trio that included engagements at such prominent night spots as Mister Kelly's in Chicago, the Village Vanguard in New York, Storyville in Boston, and finally a return to San Francisco and its showcase nightclub, the hungry i, in June of that year. At the same time, Werber was attempting to leverage the Trio's popularity as a club act into a recording contract. Both Dot Records and Liberty Records expressed some interest, but each proposed to record the Trio on 45 rpm (revolutions per minute) singles only, whereas Werber and the Trio members both felt that 33+1⁄3 rpm albums had more potential for the group's music. Through Jimmy Saphier, agent for Bob Hope who had seen and liked the group at The Purple Onion, Werber contacted Capitol Records, which dispatched prominent producer Voyle Gilmore to San Francisco to evaluate the Trio's commercial potential. On Gilmore's strong recommendation, Capitol signed the Kingston Trio to an exclusive seven-year deal. The group's first album, Capitol T996 The Kingston Trio, was recorded over a three-day period in February 1958 and released in June that year, just as the Trio was beginning its engagement at the hungry i. Gilmore had made two important supervisory decisions as producer - first, to add the same kind of "bottom" to the Trio's sound that he had heard in live performance and consequently recruiting Purple Onion house bassist Buzz Wheeler to play on the album, and second to record the group's songs without the supporting orchestral accompaniment that was nearly universal (even for folk-styled records) at the time. The song selections on the first album reflected the repertoire that the musicians had been working on for two years-re-imagined traditional songs inspired by The Weavers like "Santy Anno" and "Bay of Mexico", calypso-flavored tunes such as "Banua" and "Sloop John B" that were reminiscent of the popular Harry Belafonte recordings of the time, and a mix of both foreign language and contemporary songwriter numbers, including Terry Gilkyson's "Fast Freight" and "Scotch and Soda", whose authorship remains unknown as of 2023. The album sold moderately well-including on-site sales at the hungry i during the Kingston Trio's engagement there through the summer-but it was DJs Paul Colburn and Bill Terry at station KLUB in Salt Lake City whose enthusiasm for a single cut on the record spurred the next development in the group's history. Colburn began playing "Tom Dooley" extensively on his show, prompting a rush of album sales in the Salt Lake area by fans who wanted to listen to the song, as yet unavailable as a single record. Colburn called other DJs around the country urging them to do the same, and national response to the song was so strong that a reluctant Capitol Records finally released the tune as a 45rpm single on August 8, 1958; it reached the number 1 spot on the Billboard chart by late November, sold a million copies by Christmas, and was awarded a gold record on January 21, 1959. "Tom Dooley" also spurred the debut album to a number 1 position on the charts and helped the band earn a second gold record for the LP, which remained charted on Billboard's weekly reports for 195 weeks.
The success of the album and the single earned the Kingston Trio a Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Performance for "Tom Dooley" at the awards' inaugural ceremony in 1959. At the time, no folk music category existed. The next year, largely as a result of The Kingston Trio and "Tom Dooley", the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences instituted a folk category, and the Trio won the first Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording for its second studio album At Large. This was the beginning of a remarkable three-year run for the Trio in which its first five studio albums achieved number 1 chart status and were awarded gold records. By 1961, the group had sold more than eight million records, earning in excess of US$25 million for Capitol, roughly US$260 million in 2023 dollars. The Kingston Trio was responsible for 15 percent of Capitol's total sales when Capitol recorded many other popular artists, including Frank Sinatra and Nat "King" Cole. For five consecutive weeks in November and December 1959, four Kingston Trio albums ranked in the top ten of Billboard's Top LPs chart, an accomplishment unmatched by any artist before or since. The Trio also charted several single records during this time, made numerous television appearances, and played upwards of 200 engagements per year. Change and a second phase, 1961-67 By early 1961 a rift developed and deepened between Guard on one side and Shane and Reynolds on the other. Guard had been referred to in the press and on the albums' liner notes as the "acknowledged leader" of the group, a description never wholly endorsed by Shane and Reynolds, who felt themselves equal contributors to the group's repertoire and success. Guard wanted Shane and Reynolds to follow his lead and learn more of the technical aspects of music and to redirect the group's song selections, in part because of the withering criticism that the group had been getting from more traditional folk performers for the Trio's smoother and more commercial versions of folk songs and for the money-making copyrights that the Kingston group had secured for its arrangements of public domain songs. Shane and Reynolds felt that the formula for song selection and performance that they had painstakingly developed still served them well. Furthermore, over $100,000 appeared to be missing from the Trio's publishing royalties, an accounting error eventually rectified, which created an additional irritant to both sides. Guard regarded it as inexcusable carelessness while to Shane and Reynolds it highlighted what they perceived as Guard's propensity to claim individual copyright for some of the group's songs, including "Tom Dooley" (though Guard eventually lost a suit over copyright for that number to Alan Lomax, Frank Warner, and Frank Proffitt) and "Scotch and Soda". Following a meeting with attorneys on May 10, 1961, intended to resolve the dispute, Dave Guard resigned from the Kingston Trio, though pledging to fulfill group commitments through November of that year. Shane, Reynolds, and Werber bought out Guard's interest in the partnership for $300,000 to be paid over a number of years and moved to replace him immediately. The remaining Trio partners settled quickly on John Stewart, a 21-year-old member of the Cumberland Three, one of the many groups that sprang up hoping to imitate the Kingston Trio's success. Stewart was well-acquainted with Reynolds and Shane, having sold two songs to the Trio, and he was a proficient guitarist, banjoist, and singer. Stewart began rehearsing and recording with the group nearly immediately, commencing public appearances with the Trio in September 1961. According to Shane, "We did nearly as well with John as we did with Dave."[46] Six of the group's next seven albums between 1961 and 1963 continued to place in Billboard's Top Ten and several of the group's most successful singles, including "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "Greenback Dollar", charted as well. Beginning in 1964, however, the Kingston Trio's dominance in record sales and concert bookings began to wane, due partly to imitators in the pop-folk world and also to the rise of other commercial folk groups like Peter, Paul and Mary whose music had a decidedly more political bent than the Trio's. The British Invasion spearheaded by The Beatles, who were signed by EMI/Capitol just as the Trio's seven-year contract was running out, depressed sales of acoustic folk albums significantly, and Capitol did not make a serious effort to re-sign the group.[48] According to critic Ken Barnes, the British Invasion played a significant role in curtailing the sales of the Trio's recordings. Werber secured a generous signing bonus from Decca Records, and the last four albums of the Kingston Trio's first decade were released by that label. Without the production facilities of Capitol, however, and the expertise of Voyle Gilmore and engineer Pete Abbott, the Decca releases lacked the aural brilliance of the Capitol albums, and none of the four sold especially well. By 1966, Reynolds had grown weary of touring and Stewart wanted to strike out on his own as a singer-songwriter, so the three musicians and Werber developed an exit strategy of playing as many dates as possible for a year with an endpoint determined to be a final two-week engagement at the hungry i in June 1967. The group followed this strategy successfully, and on June 17, 1967, the Kingston Trio ceased to be an actively performing band. Hiatus and the New Kingston Trio, 1967-1976 Following the hungry i engagement, Reynolds moved to Port Orford, Oregon and pursued interests in ranching, business, and race cars for the next twenty years. Stewart commenced a long and distinguished career as a singer-songwriter, composing hit songs like "Daydream Believer" for The Monkees and "Runaway Train" for Rosanne Cash. He recorded more than 40 albums of his own, most notably the landmark California Bloodlines, and found chart success in the top forty with "Midnight Wind", "Lost Her in the Sun", and "Gold", the latter reaching number 5 in 1979. Bob Shane decided to stay in entertainment, and he experimented with solo work. He recorded several singles, including a well-received but under-marketed version of the song "Honey" that later became a million-seller for Bobby Goldsboro, and with different configurations with other folk-oriented performers. Though finances were not an immediate concern-the Kingston Trio partners Werber, Shane and Reynolds still owned an office building, a restaurant, other commercial real estate, and a variety of other lucrative investments-Shane wanted to return to a group environment and in 1969 secured permission from his partners to use the mutually owned group name for another band, with Reynolds and Werber insisting only that Shane's group be musically as accomplished as its predecessors and that Shane prefix "new" to the band's title. Shane agreed and organized two troupes under the name of "The New Kingston Trio". The first consisted of guitarist Pat Horine and banjoist Jim Connor in addition to Shane and lasted from 1969 to 1973, the second including guitarist Roger Gambill and banjoist Bill Zorn from 1973 until 1976. Shane tried to create a repertoire for these groups that included both the older and expected Kingston Trio standards like "Tom Dooley" and "M.T.A." but that would also feature more contemporary songs as well, including country and novelty tunes. The attempt did not meet with any significant success. The only full-length album released by either group was The World Needs a Melody in 1973 (though 25 years later FolkEra Records issued The Lost Masters 1969-1972, a compilation of previously unreleased tracks from the Shane-Horine-Connor years), and its sales were negligible. Though both troupes of the New Kingston Trio made a limited number of other recordings and several television appearances, neither generated very much interest from fans or the public at large. The third phase, 1976-2017 In 1976, Bill Zorn left the New Kingston Trio to work as a solo performer and record producer in London. Shane and Gambill replaced him with George Grove, a professionally trained singer and instrumentalist from North Carolina who had been working in Nashville as a studio musician. The same year, Shane secured from Werber and Reynolds the unencumbered rights to use the band's original name of the Kingston Trio without the appended "new" in exchange for relinquishing his interest in the still-profitable corporation, whose holdings included copyrights and licensing rights to many of the original Trio's songs. Since 1976, the various troupes owned by Shane have performed and recorded simply as the Kingston Trio. The Shane-Gambill-Grove Kingston Trio existed from 1976 through 1985, when Gambill died unexpectedly from a heart attack on March 2 at the age of 42. The nine years of this configuration was to that point the longest period of time that any three musicians had worked together as the Kingston Trio, and the group released two albums of largely original material. It was during this period as well that PBS producers JoAnne Young and Paul Surratt approached Shane and the other principals of the original group with the idea of arranging a reunion concert that would be taped and used as a fundraiser for the network. Agreement was reached, and on November 7, 1981, Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds, and John Stewart joined the Shane-Gambill-Grove Trio and guest performers Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, Tom Smothers of the Smothers Brothers, and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac at the Magic Mountain amusement park north of Los Angeles for a show billed as "The Kingston Trio and Friends Reunion." The different configurations of the Trio took turns performing sets of the group's best-known songs with all the artists joining onstage for a finale.
More than twenty years had passed since Dave Guard had left the group, but residual tension surfaced between Guard and Shane in a preview article in The Wall Street Journal that appeared in March 1982 in advance of the national broadcast of the taped show. Guard implicitly disparaged Shane's current group, and Shane asserted a distaste for performing again with Guard, who had spent the intervening decades living and performing in Australia, touring sporadically as a soloist, and writing about and teaching music. Despite the unpleasantness, Shane and Guard reconciled to a large degree (even to the point of planning a possible reunion tour)[63] prior to Guard's death at age 56 from lymphoma nine years later in March 1991. Following the 1985 death of Roger Gambill, Kingston Trio personnel changed several times, though Shane and Grove remained constants. Bob Haworth, a veteran folk performer who had worked as a member of The Brothers Four for many years, initially replaced Gambill from 1985 through 1988 and again from 1999 through 2005. In 1988, original member Nick Reynolds rejoined the band until his final retirement in 1999. When heart disease forced Bob Shane's retirement from touring in March 2004, he was replaced by former New Kingston Trio member Bill Zorn. A year later, following Haworth's departure, Grove and Zorn were joined by Rick Dougherty, who had performed for a time with Zorn as second-generation members of another popular folk group from the 1960s, The Limeliters. Both the Grove-Zorn-Haworth and Grove-Zorn-Dougherty troupes of the Kingston Trio released original CDs and DVDs, and the latter configuration toured extensively for 12 years under the direction of original member Bob Shane. Capitol Records, Decca Records, Collector's Choice Music,[67] and Folk Era Records have released and continue to release compilations of older albums as well as previously unreleased tapes of both studio and live recordings from the Kingston Trio's first ten years. Trademark and roster changes, 2017 to the present In October 2017, Grove, Zorn, and Dougherty were replaced as the Trio by new licensees Josh Reynolds (son of original Kingston Trio founder Nick Reynolds), Mike Marvin, a close childhood friend of the Reynolds family, and Tim Gorelangton. In 2018, Josh Reynolds left the group and was replaced by Bob Haworth, who became a member of the band for the third time.[70] At the end of 2018, Haworth left the group and was replaced by another former Limeliter, Don Marovich. Marovich resigned from the group in early 2022 and was replaced by Americana artist Buddy Woodward. Bob Shane, the last original member of the trio, died on January 20, 2020. George Grove and Rick Dougherty continue to perform folk music by joining veteran entertainer Jerry Siggins as the Folk Legacy Trio. Folk music label Initial criticism Almost from its inception, the Kingston Trio found itself at odds with the traditional music community. Urban folk musicians of the time (to whom Bob Dylan referred in Rolling Stone as "the left-wing puritans that seemed to have a hold on the folk-music community") frequently associated folk music with leftist politics and were contemptuous of the Trio's deliberate political neutrality. Peter Dreier of Occidental College observed that "Purists often derided the Kingston Trio for watering down folk songs in order to make them commercially popular and for remaining on the political sidelines during the protest movements of the 1960s." A series of scathing articles appeared over several years in Sing Out! magazine, a publication that combined articles on traditional folk music with political activism. Its editor Irwin Silber referred to "the sallow slickness of the Kingston Trio" and in an article in the spring 1959 issue Ron Radosh said that the Trio brought "good folk music to the level of the worst in Tin Pan Alley music" and referred to its members as "prostitutes of the art who gain their status as folk artists because they use guitars and banjos". Following the Trio's performance at the premier Newport Folk Festival in 1959, folk music critic Mark Morris wrote: "What connection these frenetic tinselly showmen have with a folk festival eludes me... except that it is mainly folk songs that they choose to vulgarize." Frank Proffitt, the Appalachian musician whose version of "Tom Dooley" the Trio rearranged, watched their performance of his song on a television show and wrote in reaction, "They clowned and hipswung. Then they came out with 'This time tomorrow, reckon where I'll be/If it hadn't a' been for Grayson/I'd a been in Tennessee.' I began to feel sorty sick. Like I'd lost a loved one. Tears came to my eyes. I went out and bawled on the ridge." Proffitt had learned the song from his father and his grandmother, who had known Tom Dula and Laura Foster, the killer and the victim in the actual 1866 murder related in the song. Both Proffitt and fellow North Carolina musician Doc Watson sang the older version of the tune, which had "a lively mocking tempo... that retained some of the ghastliness and moral squalor of an actual murder", according to folk historian Robert Cantwell, who also notes that the Kingston Trio's version of the song omitted several verses from the traditional lyric. The slower, harmonized Trio version of the Dooley song and other traditional numbers struck Proffitt as a betrayal of "the strange mysterious workings which has made Tom Dooly [sic] live..." In 2006, folk traditionalist and influential banjo master Billy Faier remarked: "I hear and see very little respect for the folk genre" in their music and described the Trio's repertoire as "a mishmash of twisted arrangements that not only obscure the true beauty of the folk songs from which they derive but give them a meaning they never had." However, Trio members never claimed to be folksingers and were never comfortable with the label. The liner notes for the group's first album featured a quotation from Dave Guard asserting that "We don't really consider ourselves folksingers in the accepted sense of the word..." Guard later told journalist Richard Hadlock in Down Beat magazine: "We are not students of folk music; the basic thing for us is honest and worthwhile songs that people can pick up and become involved in." Nick Reynolds added in the same article: "We don't collect old songs in the sense that the academic cats do... We get new tunes to look over every day. Each one of us has his ears open constantly to new material or old stuff that's good." Bob Shane remarked years later: "To call the Kingston Trio folksingers was kind of stupid in the first place. We never called ourselves folksingers... We did folk-oriented material, but we did it amid all kinds of other stuff. But they didn't know what to call us with our instruments, so Capitol Records called us folksingers and gave us credit for starting this whole boom." 21st-century perspectives Over the years, the Kingston Trio expanded its song selection beyond the rearranged traditional numbers, calypso songs, and Broadway show tunes that had appeared on its first several albums. In an obituary for Nick Reynolds (d. October 1, 2008), Spencer Leigh wrote in Britain's Independent on Sunday: Looking at their repertoire now, it is apparent that the Kingston Trio was far more adventurous than is generally supposed. They introduced "It Was A Very Good Year" in 1961, later a standard for Frank Sinatra, and they were one of the first to spot the potential of English language versions of Jacques Brel's songs by recording "Seasons in the Sun" in 1963. They encouraged young songwriters including Hoyt Axton ("Greenback Dollar"), Rod McKuen ("Ally Ally Oxen Free", "The World I Used to Know") and Billy Edd Wheeler ("Reverend Mr Black"). Best of all, in 1962 they introduced listeners to one of the most poignant songs ever written, the anti-war ballad "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" by Pete Seeger, formerly with the Weavers.[86] Further, Peter Dreier points out that "the group deserves credit for helping to launch the folk boom that brought recognition to older folkies and radicals like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and for paving the way for newcomers like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs, who were well known for their progressive political views and topical songs. By the time these younger folk singers arrived on the scene, the political climate had changed enough to provide a wide audience for protest music." Additionally, writing in the British daily The Guardian, also in an obituary for Reynolds, Ken Hunt asserted that "[the Kingston Trio] helped to turn untold numbers of people on to folk music... [T]hey put the boom in folk boom... They were the greatest of the bands to emerge after the McCarthy-era blacklisting of folk musicians and breathed new air into the genre."
Hello again, my dearest Henkie !!!!! I am home from church !!!! We sang some beautiful psalms !!!!!! Thank you for this great song !!! It is a very sad song !!!! I have it in my playlist both in English, Dutch and Danish !!!!! The words are very sad, but the rhythm is not sad !!! I love it !!!!!! My sweetie, you are forever in my heart and soul !!!!! Yours Jytte
Hellooooo !!!!! welcome home my dearest Jytte !!!! I have done a great nap in my chair !!!!! And now overhere the Sun is shining and it is 5 degrees !!!! I'm glad that you had such a nice time in the church and have sang psalms !!!! And I thank you that you like The Kingston Trio !!!!! Make something beautiful of this Sunday afternoon Jytte !!!! I keep thinking on you ! Yours forever, Henk !!!!
1958 - _Tom Dooley_ - Traditional - Arno Grillo (music) - Dave Guard (arrangement) - The Kingston Trio: Dave Guard, Bob Shane & Nick Reynolds
*"Tom Dooley"* is a traditional North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina by Tom Dula (whose name in the local dialect was pronounced "Dooley"). One of the more famous murder ballads, a popular hit version recorded in 1958 by The Kingston Trio reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, was in the top 10 on the Billboard R&B chart, and appeared in the Cashbox Country Music Top 20.
The song was selected as one of the American Songs of the Century by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the National Endowment for the Arts, and Scholastic Inc. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
"Tom Dooley" fits within the wider genre of Appalachian "sweetheart murder ballads". A local poet named Thomas Land wrote a song about the tragedy, titled "Tom Dooley", shortly after Dula was hanged. In the documentary _Appalachian Journey_ (1991), folklorist Alan Lomax describes Frank Proffitt as the "original source" for the song, which was misleading in that he did not write it. There are several earlier known recordings, notably one that G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter made in 1929, approximately 10 years before Proffitt cut his own recording.
The Kingston Trio took their version from Frank Warner's singing. Warner had learned the song from Proffitt, who learned it from his aunt, Nancy Prather, whose parents had known both Laura Foster and Tom Dula. In a 1967 interview, Nick Reynolds of the Kingston Trio recounted first hearing the song from another performer and then being criticized and sued for taking credit for the song. Supported by the testimony of Anne and Frank Warner, Frank Proffitt was eventually acknowledged by the courts as the preserver of the original version of the song, and the Kingston Trio were ordered to pay royalties to him for their uncredited use of it.
History
In 1866, Laura Foster was murdered. Confederate veteran Tom Dula, Foster's lover and the father of her unborn child, was convicted of her murder and hanged May 1, 1868. Foster had been stabbed to death with a large knife, and the brutality of the attack partly accounted for the widespread publicity the murder and subsequent trial received.
Anne Foster Melton, Laura's cousin, had been Dula's lover from the time he was twelve and until he left for the Civil War - even after Anne married an older man named James Melton. When Dula returned, he became a lover again to Anne, then Laura, then their cousin Pauline Foster. Pauline's comments led to the discovery of Laura's body and accusations against both Tom and Anne. Anne was subsequently acquitted in a separate trial, based on Dula's word that she had nothing to do with the killing. Dula's enigmatic statement on the gallows that he had not harmed Foster but still deserved his punishment led to press speculation that Melton was the actual killer and that Dula simply covered for her. Melton, who had once expressed jealousy of Dula's purported plans to marry Foster, died either in a carting accident or by going insane a few years after the homicide, depending on the version.
Thanks to the efforts of newspapers such as The New York Times and to the fact that former North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance represented Dula pro bono, Dula's murder trial and hanging were given widespread national publicity. A local poet, Thomas C. Land, wrote a song titled "Tom Dooley" about Dula's tragedy soon after the hanging. Combined with the widespread publicity the trial received, Land's song further cemented Dula's place in North Carolina legend and is still sung today throughout North Carolina.
A man named "Grayson", mentioned in the song as pivotal in Dula's downfall, has sometimes been characterized as a romantic rival of Dula's or a vengeful sheriff who captured him and presided over his hanging. Some variant lyrics of the song portray Grayson in that light, and the spoken introduction to the Kingston Trio version did the same. Col. James Grayson was actually a Tennessee politician who had hired Dula on his farm when the young man fled North Carolina under suspicion and was using a false name. Grayson did help North Carolinians capture Dula and was involved in returning him to North Carolina but otherwise played no role in the case.
Dula was tried in Statesville, North Carolina because it was believed he could not get a fair trial in Wilkes County. He was given a new trial on appeal, but he was again convicted and hanged on May 1, 1868. On the gallows, Dula reportedly stated, "Gentlemen, do you see this hand? I didn't harm a hair on the girl's head."
Dula's last name was pronounced "Dooley", leading to some confusion in spelling over the years. The pronunciation of a final "a" like "y" (or "ee") is an old feature in Appalachian speech, as in the term "Grand Ole Opry". The confusion was compounded by the fact that Dr. Tom Dooley, an American physician known for international humanitarian work, was at the height of his fame in 1958 when the Kingston Trio version became a major hit.
Recordings
Many renditions of the song have been recorded, most notably:
In 1929, G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter made the first recorded version of Land's song by a group well known at the time, for Victor.
Frank Warner, Elektra, 1952. Warner, a folklorist, unaware of the 1929 recording, in 1940 took down the song from Frank Proffitt and passed it to Alan Lomax who published it in _Folk Song: USA._
On March 30, 1953, the CBS radio series Suspense broadcast a half-hour "Tom Dooley" drama loosely based on the song, which was sung during the program by actor Harry Dean Stanton. While not issued as a commercial recording, transcription discs of the broadcast eventually were digitized and circulated by old time radio collectors.
The Folksay Trio, which featured Erik Darling, Bob Carey and Roger Sprung, issued the first post-1950 version of the song for _American Folksay-Ballads and Dances, Vol. 2_ on the Stinson label in 1953. Their version was noteworthy for including a pause in the line "Hang down your head Tom...Dooley". The group reformed in 1956 as The Tarriers, featuring Darling, Carey and Alan Arkin, and released another version of "Tom Dooley" for The Tarriers on the Glory label in 1957.
The Kingston Trio recorded the most popular version of the song in 1958 for Capitol. This recording sold in excess of six million copies, topping the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and is often credited with starting the "folk music boom" of the late 1950s and 1960s. It only had three verses (and the chorus four times). This recording of the song was inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress and honored with a Grammy Hall of Fame Award. The Grammy Foundation named it one of the Songs of the Century.
Neil Young and Crazy Horse recorded an eight-minute version on their 2012 album _Americana,_ on which they retitled the song to the proper spelling "Tom Dula" and pronounced it in such a way as to make it a political statement against former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
The French group Les Compagnons de la Chanson recorded a French version titled "Tom Dooley (Fais ta priere)", which reached No. 1 on the Belgian chart and No. 4 on the French chart in 1959.
Other artists that have recorded versions of the song include Paul Clayton, Line Renaud, Bing Crosby, Jack Narz, Steve Earle the Grateful Dead, Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith, and Doc Watson. Lonnie Donegan also recorded the song in the UK. It spent 14 weeks in the British charts from November 1958, reaching its highest ranking at number 3 for 5 weeks.
References in other songs
The third and final verse of country music singer Stonewall Jackson's 1958 crossover hit "Waterloo" referenced Tom Dooley with the lyrics, "Now he swings where the little birdie sings, and that's where Tom Dooley met his Waterloo."
Ella Fitzgerald drops an altered line from the song into a recording of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on her 1967 album, Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas.
Parodies
"Tom Dooley" prompted a number of parodies, either as part of other songs or as entire songs. For example:
The Smothers Brothers did a version of the song on their 1961 debut album, _The Smothers Brothers at the Purple Onion,_ which referenced the lawsuit against The Kingston Trio by claiming that Dickie Smothers had written it and The Kingston Trio had stolen it.
The Four Preps used this song and "Worried Man Blues" to make fun of The Kingston Trio in their song "More Money for You and Me".
The Incredible Bongo Band recorded the song "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley, Your Tie's Caught In Your Zipper" (1972).
The Capitol Steps used this song to make fun of South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle on their 2003 album Between Iraq and a Hard Place.
In popular culture
The Kingston Trio's hit song was the inspiration for the 1959 film _The Legend of Tom Dooley,_ starring Michael Landon as Dooley, and co-starring Richard Rust. A Western set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, it was not about traditional Tom Dula legends or the facts of the case, but a fictional treatment tailored to fit the lyrics of the song.
"Tom Dooley" is the name of a season 5 episode of _Ally McBeal,_ in which John Cage sings a version of the song with his Mexican band.
The song was parodied in _episode No. 702 of Mystery Science Theater 3000._ Crow T. Robot, motivated by one actor's resemblance to Thomas Dewey, sang a version beginning "Hang down your head, Tom Dewey."
Glada Barn's version of Land's song closes _Rectify season 2 episode "Mazel Tov"._
In the 1980 film _Friday the 13th,_ the campers in the opening scene start to sing the song. The opening scene is set in 1958, the year the Kingston Trio version of the song debuted.
_Episode 10 of Santo, Sam and Ed's Total Football Podcast_ is titled "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dula". This naming was in reference to a sample of the song generated by Santo Cilauro whereby he jokingly claimed Tiziano Crudeli had performed a version of Tom Dooley with "The Kingstown Trio". Crudeli's bombastic commentary style on Diretta Stadio afforded him celebrity status in Italy, and audio of Crudeli's pronunciation of various footballers' names was a constant running gag throughout the Total Football Podcast.
The Irish comedian Dave Allen did a sketch in which two cowboys with guitars sit by a hangman's gallows, trying to compose a ballad. They try to think of a name to incorporate into their song but have no success. Then Tom Dooley walks past, and they sing, "Hand down your head, Tom Dooley" and think that sounds great, so they hang him.
RECORDINGS
*Tom Dula (Dooley)* - English
Grayson and Whitter First release May 2, 1930 First recording on Sep 30, 1929
Frank Warner Nov 1952
Roger Sprung, Erik Darling, Bob Carey 1954
Paul Clayton 1956
The Tarriers Apr 1957
The Kingston Trio June 2, 1958 Hit song Definitive version Sampled by Buchanan & Goodman with Count Dracula
Johnny Worth Nov 1958
Reg Lindsay and His Colt Breakers Nov 1958
Lonnie Donegan and His Skiffle Group Dec 1958 Hit song
Pinky and Perky Dec 1958
Jan & Kjeld met rytme 1958
Rikki Price 1958
The Four Dreams 1958
William Clauson Mar 1959
TAllegrettes May 23, 1959
Eddy Arnold Sep 1959
The Allegrettes 1959
Four Jacks 1959
Sverre and His Skiffle Group 1959
Mac Wiseman Jul 1960
The New Lost City Ramblers 1960
The Great Hank Hill and The Tennessee Folk Trio 1960
Kenny Arnott and His Men 1961
The Four Freshmen with Orchestra conducted by Dick Reynolds Apr 1962
Glen Neaves & Band 1962
Jim Glaser and The American Folk Trio 1962
Frank Proffitt 1962
Johnny Mann Singers 1962
Mickie Most 1962
Tammy Grimes 1962
The Four Lads 1963
Doc Watson May 1964
Johnny Rivers Sep 1965
1965 Scotch Plains-Fanwood Junior High School 1965
Chas McDevitt & Shirley Douglas 1965
The Charleston Trio 1965
The Hiltonaires [JM] 1966
Mel Tillis Aug 1967
Jim Ed Brown May 1968
Sweeney's Men 1968
The Chico's 1970
The Down Homers 1970
Bill Wellings 1971
The Country Gentlemen Mar 1973 Live
Chor und Orchester Thomas Berger 1973
Cotton Mill Boys 1975
Country Stones 1976
The Brothers Four 1977
Murry Kellum 1978
Peter, Sue & Marc 1978
Tex Williams [AU] 1978
Rakish Paddy 1981
Dave Vernon and The Dixie Rebels 1982
Palomaz 1982
The Spinners [GB] 1984
The Piccadilly Six 1986
97th Regimental String Band 1986
Big Jack Johnson 1987
Freddy Quinn 1987
Frank Zander 1988 Medley
Lucky Star [HR] 1988
Kenneth Swanström 1990
Frantic Flintstones 1991
Bill Morrissey & Greg Brown 1993
Lesley Schatz 1993
Paul & Margie 1994
The Statler Brothers 1995
Nystogs 1996
Rob Ickes 1997
The Great Western Squares 1997
Laura Boosinger 1998
Jerry Yester, Cass Elliot, Jim Hendricks & Henry Diltz Mar 9, 1999
Tom Dula Doc Watson and David Holt 1999 Live
Tom Dooley Snakefarm 1999
Tom Dooley Black Knights 2001
Macabre Minstrels 2002
The Pine Valley Cosmonauts feat. Steve Earle 2002
The Pine Valley Cosmonauts feat. The Sundowners Jun 17, 2003 Live
Ramblin' Jack Elliott Oct 26, 2004 Live
Grateful Dead Oct 26, 2004 Live Acoustic
Andrew Heller 2004
The Sundowners [US2] 2004 Live
Carolina Chocolate Drops Sep 12, 2006
River City Ramblers Sep 12, 2007
Harvey Reid & Joyce Andersen 2007
Paul's Big Radio 2007
Jesper Lohmann - Stig Rossen - Jesper Asholt - Keld Heick Nov 2008 Medley
TSten & Stanley 2009
Bing Crosby 2010 Medley
Rod E. Musselman Jun 25, 2011
The Bing Brothers Band featuring Jake Krack Mar 10, 2012 Live
Neil Young & Crazy Horse Jun 5, 2012
Bobby Bare Nov 13, 2012
Krüger Brothers Apr 24, 2013
Six String Yada 2015
Laura Boosinger with The Kruger Brothers Sep 2017
Tom Roush 2017
Curtis Hobeck
*Instrumental*
Adalbert Lutter und Sein Tanzorchester 1958
Roger Williams with Orchestra directed by Marty Gold and Hal Kanner Apr 1959
Arturo Diaz 1959
Émile Prud'homme et son ensemble 1959
Hans-Arno Simon und sein Cocktail-Piano 1959 Medley
Jack Ledru et sa grande formation 1959
Jerry Mengo et son orchestre 1959
Onésime Grosbois et son piano d'occasion 1959
Pierre Spiers - Jerry Mengo 1959
Yvette Horner et son ensemble musette 1959
Les Baxter 1960
Billy Strange Sep 1963
The Harold Land Quintet 1963
Henry Jerome and His Orchestra 1963
Terry Gibbs 1963
Chris Barber and His Jazz Band 1965
Raymond Fairchild and The Maggie Valley Boys Aug 1967
Bryan Smith 1978 Medley
Steppin Stompers 1979
Christopher John & His Orchestra (MFP Studio Artists) 1982
Phil Kelsall 1988 Medley
Jim Gibson 1996 Medley
Charles Blackwell and His Orchestra 2006
Jim Hendricks [US1] 2015 Medley
*Tom Dooley* written by Jan Vyčítal, Vít Hrubín *Czech*
Honza Vyčítal 1995 First release
*Tom Dooley* written by Eduard Krečmar *Czech*
Ladislav Vodička a jeho modrej vlak 1996 First recording in 1996
Scarabeus 1996
*Tom Dooley* written by Torsten Tanning *Danish*
Preben Uglebjerg med Four Pals - Johannes Rasmussen og hans orkester 1958 First release
Four Jacks med Jørn Grauengårds orkester Jan 1959
Jacks [DK] 1996
Helge Leonhardt og Klaus Birck 2002
Jesper Lohmann - Stig Rossen - Jesper Asholt - Keld Heick Nov 2008 Medley
*Tom Doely* written by Bobbejaan Schoepen, Johnny Steggerda *Dutch*
Bobbejaan Schoepen 1959 First release
*More Money for You and Me* written by Bruce Belland, Glen Larson *English*
The Four Preps May 1961 First release Hit song Live Medley
*Ballad of Syd Levy* written by unknown author(s) *English*
Allan Lieberman 2005 First release
*Laulu Tom Dooleysta* written by Sauvo Puhtila *Finnish*
Kauko Käyhkö ja Ossi Malisen yhtye 1958 First release
Tom Dooley written by Reino Helismaa Finnish
Olavi Virta First release 1959 First recording on Feb 13, 1959
Matti Heinivaho 1971
Henrik & Mosaic December 1981
Kari Tapio 1984
Topi Sorsakoski 1999
*Tom Dooley* written by Jacques Plante *French*
Henri Decker et ses Quatre Voix alias Unico Multi avec André Popp et son orchestre 1959 First release
*Fais ta prière* written by Max François *French*
Les compagnons de la chanson Feb 24, 1959
Jack Irsa et ses Cow-Boys Apr 1959
Philippe Clay avec Jean-Paul Mengeon et son orchestre Apr 1959
Line Renaud - Orchestre dir. : Peter Brown 1959
Lucien Lupi - Orchestre dir. : Christian Chevallier avec "Les Angels" 1959
Robert Piquet avec Claude Vasori et son ensemble 1959
Serge Lenormand 1959
Trumpet Cha Cha et ses chœurs - Ray Tchicoray et son orchestre (Georges Jouvin) 1959
Jacqueline Danno - Orchestre sous la direction de Léo Chauliac 1960
*Tom Dooley* written by Arno Gillo *German*
Die Nilsen Brothers November 1958 First release
Das Tom Dooley-Trio Feb 1959
Bruce Low 1961
Heino 1973
Medium Terzett 1974
Ralf Paulsen 1998
*Tom Dooley* written by Christian Bruhn, Günter Loose *German*
Jonny Hill Jan 1974 First release
*Tom Dooley* written by Theo Rausch *German*
Ralf Bendix 1975 First release
*Die Wahrheit über Tom Dooley* written by Peter Held *German*
Freddy Quinn 1992 First release
*Útlaginn* written by Jón Sigurðsson [IS1] *Icelandic*
Óðinn Valdimarsson og Atlantic kvartettinn 1959 First release
Ragnar Bjarnason 1965
Sólheimakórinn 2015
*Upp undir Laugarásnum* written by Haraldur Sigurðsson, Þórhallur Sigurðsson *Icelandic*
Halli og Laddi 1977 First release
*Tom Dooley* written by Gian Carlo Testoni *Italian*
Guido Guarnera - Poker di Voci - William Galassini e la sua orchestra First release 1959
*Tom Dooley* written by Ilio Benvenuti *Italian*
The Gaylords Apr 1961 First release
obby Solo 1966
*Who Stole My Provolone?* written by Ray Allen, Wandra Merrell, Marie Scaglione *Multiple languages*
Lou Monte Oct 1963 First release
*Tom Dooley* written by Lennart Hellsing *Swedish*
Papegojorna - Karl-Olof Finnbergs orkester 1959
*Tom Dooley* written by Rafael de Penagos *Spanish*
Torquato y Los 4 1960
*Thomas C. Dula* (June 23‚ 1844 - May 1, 1868) was a former Confederate soldier who was convicted of murdering Laura Foster. National publicity from newspapers such as The New York Times turned Dula's story into a folk legend. Although Laura was murdered in Wilkes County, North Carolina, Dula was tried, convicted, and hanged in Statesville. Considerable controversy surrounded the case. In subsequent years, a folk song was written (entitled "Tom Dooley", based on the pronunciation in the local dialect), and many oral traditions were passed down, regarding the sensational occurrences surrounding Laura Foster's murder and Dula's subsequent execution. The Kingston Trio recorded a hit version of the murder ballad in 1958.
The Trio had taken the song, without acknowledgement, from the singing of singer and folklorist Frank Warner, who had learned it from Frank Proffitt, a preserver of traditional culture, during one of the many singing and song-sharing sessions he and his folklorist spouse Ann had enjoyed at the Proffitt and Hicks homes in North Carolina. Frank Proffitt had learned the song, among many others, from his aunt Nancy Prather, whose parents had known Tom, Laura Foster, and Ann Foster. A court case, brought by Frank Warner on Frank Proffitt's behalf, settled the matter of "ownership" of the song in the latter's favor, and he received royalties from the Trio's and other performances of the song.
Early life
Tom Dula was born to a poor Appalachian hill-country family in Wilkes County, North Carolina, most likely the youngest of three brothers, with one younger sister, Eliza. Dula grew up, attended school, and "probably played with the female Fosters" - Anne and her cousins Laura and Pauline.
As the children grew up, Tom and Anne apparently became intimate. Anne Foster's mother found Anne and Tom in bed together when Anne was 14 years old and Tom was just 12.
Three months before his 18th birthday, on March 15, 1862, Tom enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private in Company K, 42nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment. He was captured, but he was released in April 1865.
Dula wrote a 15-page account of his life, as well as a note that exonerated Anne Foster (then using the married name Melton). His literacy is highly unusual, considering the harsh poverty of his upbringing. Dula played the fiddle and was considered by those who knew him well to be a "ladies' man".
Military service
Contrary to newspaper accounts at the time, Dula did not serve in Colonel Zebulon Vance's 26th North Carolina Infantry regiment, he had instead served in the 42nd North Carolina Infantry regiment, under Company K. Also, rumors that he "played the banjo" in the army band for Vance's benefit and entertained the colonel with his antics were false. These have often been cited as the reason that Vance was so quick to lead the defense during Dula's trial.
Dula did not come through the war completely unscathed, as folklore, oral tradition, and some modern writers have claimed. He was wounded several times in battle. His brothers died in the war, leaving Tom as his mother's "sole remaining boy".
Dula did sometimes use his musical talents in the army, and on one surviving muster roll he is listed as a "musician" and a "drummer".
Murder of Laura Foster
Anne Foster had married an older man, James Melton, who was a farmer, cobbler, and neighbor of both the Fosters and the Dulas. Melton also served in the war, taking part in the Battle of Gettysburg. Both Melton and Dula were captured and sent to a northern prison camp. They were released after the war ended and returned home. Shortly after his return, Dula resumed his relationship with Anne. With a reputation as a libertine, it was not long before he began an intimate relationship with Laura Foster, Anne's cousin. Folklore has it that Laura became pregnant, and that she and Dula had decided to elope. On the morning, she was to meet Dula, May 25, 1866, Laura quietly left her home and rode off on her father's horse. She was never seen alive again.
It is not truly known what happened that day, but many stories have grown that implicate Anne Melton. Some tales claim that Anne murdered Laura Foster because she was jealous that Dula was marrying her. These stories say that Dula suspected Anne had killed her, but he still loved Anne enough to take the blame himself. It was Anne's word that led to the discovery of Laura's body, leading to further suspicion of Anne's guilt. Anne's cousin, Pauline Foster, testified that Anne had taken her to the grave one night to make sure it was still well hidden.
Witnesses at the trial testified that Dula made the incriminating statement he was going to "do in" the one who gave him "the pock" (syphilis). Their testimony suggested that Dula believed Laura had given him syphilis, which he had passed on to Anne. However, the local doctor testified he had treated both Dula and Anne for syphilis (using blue mass), as he also had Pauline Foster, who in fact was the first to be treated. Many believe that Dula caught the disease from Pauline Foster, then passed it on to both Anne and Laura.
Once the grave had been located, Laura Foster's decomposed body was found with her legs drawn up to fit in the shallow grave. She had been stabbed once in the chest. The gruesome murder and the lovers' triangle, combined with the rumors that circulated in the small backwoods town, captured the public's attention and led to the lasting notoriety of the crime.
Dula's role in the murder is still debated. After the murder he stopped at the home of his relative Thomas Dula, a site that became Dula Springs Hotel. He had fled the area before Laura's body was found, after locals accused him of murdering Laura. Calling himself Tom Hall, he worked for about a week for Colonel James Grayson, just across the state line in Trade, Tennessee. Grayson was later mentioned in the song about Dula, and from that came the myth that he had been Dula's rival for the love of Laura Foster, but Grayson actually had no prior connection to either Dula or Foster. Once Dula's identity was known, Grayson did help the Wilkes County posse bring him in, but that was his only part in the affair.
Trial
Following Dula's arrest, former North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance represented him pro bono, and to the end of his life maintained that Dula was innocent. He succeeded in having the trial moved from Wilkesboro to Statesville, since it was believed Dula could not receive a fair trial in Wilkes County. Nevertheless, Dula was convicted, and although he was given a new trial on appeal, he was convicted again. His supposed accomplice, Jack Keaton, was set free, and on Dula's word, Anne Melton was acquitted. As he stood on the gallows facing death, Dula reportedly said, "Gentlemen, I did not harm a single hair on that fair lady's head." He was executed on May 1, 1868, nearly two years after Laura Foster's murder. Dula's younger sister and her husband retrieved his body for burial.
Petitions
In 2001, the citizens of North Wilkesboro presented a petition to North Carolina Governor Mike Easley, asking that Tom Dula be posthumously pardoned. No action was taken.
Tom Dula was acquitted of all charges after a petition was sent around Wilkes County and to the county seat. However, this action was unofficial and had no legal standing.
Myths
Much legend and folklore has grown around the tragedy and the life of Tom Dula. Not least of these is that Dula came through the war without a scratch, with Governor Vance making use of Dula's supposed talents with a banjo for his own entertainment. Both Dula's and Vance's accounts, as well as Dula's own military record, show this to be untrue. Nonetheless, the myth has persisted to the present day.
Another myth holds that while Dula was fighting in Virginia, Anne - apparently despairing of ever seeing Tom again - met and married an older farmer, James Melton. In fact, she had married Melton in 1859, three years before Tom left for the war, though that may not have changed the nature of her relationship with Dula.
A final tale is that Anne Melton confessed to the murder on her deathbed. She allegedly confessed to having killed Laura in a fit of jealousy and begged Tom to help her conceal the body. People in the area still say that, on her deathbed, Anne saw black cats on the walls and could hear and smell bacon frying.
In popular culture
Music
Thomas Land is believed to have written a song about the tragedy titled "Tom Dooley" (which was how Dula's name was pronounced) shortly after Dula was hanged. This, combined with the widespread publicity the trial received, further cemented Dula's place in North Carolina legend.
Stonewall Jackson's U.S. country music and Billboard hit song "Waterloo" (1959) makes reference to Tom Dooley in the final verse.
The music project Windows to Sky featuring SJ Tucker released a version of "Tom Dooley" titled "Tom Dula: Madness Made Us Wild; a Play in Five Verses and a Hanging" (2012), which combines elements of several versions of the story and song and adapts quotes from the original court transcripts as lyrics. They describe it as "our original reinvention of the 'Tom Dula' story for the Neil Young Americana Contest, June 2012".
Bob Dylan's song "Murder Most Foul" (2020) makes reference to Tom Dooley.
*The Kingston Trio* is an American folk and pop music group that helped launch the folk revival of the late 1950s to the late 1960s. The group started as a San Francisco Bay Area nightclub act with an original lineup of Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds. It rose to international popularity fueled by unprecedented sales of LP records and helped alter the direction of popular music in the U.S.
The Kingston Trio was one of the most prominent groups of the era's folk-pop boom, which they kick-started in 1958 with the release of the Trio's eponymous first album and its hit recording of "Tom Dooley", which became a number one hit and sold over three million copies as a single. The Trio released nineteen albums that made Billboard's Top 100, fourteen of which ranked in the top 10, and five of which hit the number 1 spot. Four of the group's LPs charted among the 10 top-selling albums for five weeks in November and December 1959, a record unmatched for more than 50 years, and the group still ranks in the all-time lists of many of Billboard's cumulative charts, including those for most weeks with a number 1 album, most total weeks charting an album, most number 1 albums, most consecutive number 1 albums, and most top ten albums.
In 1961, the Trio was described as "the most envied, the most imitated, and the most successful singing group, folk or otherwise, in all show business" and "the undisputed kings of the folksinging rage by every yardstick". The Trio's massive record sales in its early days made acoustic folk music commercially viable, paving the way for singer-songwriter, folk rock, and Americana artists who followed in their wake.
The Kingston Trio continues to tour as of 2024 with musicians who licensed the name and trademark in 2017.
Formation, 1954-1957
Dave Guard and Bob Shane had been friends since junior high school at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, where both had learned to play ukulele in required music classes. They had developed an interest in and admiration for native Hawaiian slack key guitarists like Gabby Pahinui. While in Punahou's secondary school, Shane taught first himself and then Guard the rudiments of the six-string guitar, and the two began performing at parties and in school shows doing an eclectic mix of Tahitian, Hawaiian, and calypso songs.
After graduating from high school in 1952, Guard enrolled at Stanford University while Shane matriculated at nearby Menlo College. At Menlo, Shane became friends with Nick Reynolds, a native San Diegan with an extensive knowledge of folk and calypso songs-in part from his guitar-playing father, a career officer in the U.S. Navy. Reynolds was also able to create and sing tenor harmonies, a skill derived in part from family singalongs and could play both guitar and bongo and conga drums. Shane and Reynolds performed at fraternity parties and luaus for a time, and eventually Shane introduced Reynolds to Guard. The three began performing at campus and neighbourhood hangouts, sometimes as a trio but with an aggregation of friends that could swell its ranks to as many as six or seven, according to Reynolds. They usually billed themselves under the name of "Dave Guard and the Calypsonians". None of the three at that time had any serious aspirations to enter professional show business, however, and Shane returned to Hawaii following his graduation in late 1956 to work in the family sporting goods business.
Still in the Bay Area, Guard and Reynolds had organized themselves somewhat more formally into an entity named "The Kingston Quartet" with friends; bassist Joe Gannon and vocalist Barbara Bogue, though as before the members were often joined in their performances by other friends. At one engagement at Redwood City's Cracked Pot beer garden, they met a young San Francisco publicist named Frank Werber, who had heard of them from a local entertainment reporter. Werber liked the group's raw energy but did not consider them refined enough to want to represent them as an agent or manager at that point, though he left his telephone number with Guard.
Some weeks later (and following a brief period in which Reynolds was temporarily replaced in the quartet by Don MacArthur), Guard and Reynolds invited Werber to a performance of the group at the Italian Village Restaurant in San Francisco, where Werber was so impressed by the group's progress that he agreed to manage them provided they replace Gannon, in whose professional potential Werber had no faith. Bogue left with Gannon, and Guard, Reynolds, and Werber invited Shane to rejoin the now more formally organized band. Shane, who had been performing part-time as a solo act at night in Honolulu, readily assented and returned to the mainland in early March 1957.
The four drew up a contract as equal partners in Werber's office in San Francisco, deciding on the name "Kingston Trio" because it evoked, through its association with Kingston, Jamaica, the calypso music popular at the time, and also on the uniform of three-quarter-length sleeved vertically striped shirts that the group hoped would help its target audience of college students to identify with them.
Era of peak success, 1957-61
Werber imposed a stern training regimen on Guard, Shane, and Reynolds, rehearsing them for six to eight hours a day for several months, sending them to prominent San Francisco vocal coach Judy Davis to help them learn to preserve their voices, and working on the group's carefully prepared but apparently spontaneous banter between songs. At the same time, the group was developing a varied and eclectic repertoire of calypso, folk, and foreign language songs, suggested by all three of the musicians though usually arranged by Guard with some harmonies created by Reynolds.
The first major break for the Kingston Trio came in late June 1957 when comedian Phyllis Diller cancelled a week-long engagement at The Purple Onion club in San Francisco. When Werber persuaded the club's owner to give the untested Trio a chance, Guard sent out five hundred postcards to everyone that the three musicians knew in the Bay Area and Werber plastered the city with handbills announcing the engagement. When the crowds came, the Trio had been well prepared by months of work, and they achieved such local popularity that the initial week's engagement stretched to six months. Werber built upon this initial success, booking a national club tour in early 1958 for the Trio that included engagements at such prominent night spots as Mister Kelly's in Chicago, the Village Vanguard in New York, Storyville in Boston, and finally a return to San Francisco and its showcase nightclub, the hungry i, in June of that year.
At the same time, Werber was attempting to leverage the Trio's popularity as a club act into a recording contract. Both Dot Records and Liberty Records expressed some interest, but each proposed to record the Trio on 45 rpm (revolutions per minute) singles only, whereas Werber and the Trio members both felt that 33+1⁄3 rpm albums had more potential for the group's music. Through Jimmy Saphier, agent for Bob Hope who had seen and liked the group at The Purple Onion, Werber contacted Capitol Records, which dispatched prominent producer Voyle Gilmore to San Francisco to evaluate the Trio's commercial potential. On Gilmore's strong recommendation, Capitol signed the Kingston Trio to an exclusive seven-year deal.
The group's first album, Capitol T996 The Kingston Trio, was recorded over a three-day period in February 1958 and released in June that year, just as the Trio was beginning its engagement at the hungry i. Gilmore had made two important supervisory decisions as producer - first, to add the same kind of "bottom" to the Trio's sound that he had heard in live performance and consequently recruiting Purple Onion house bassist Buzz Wheeler to play on the album, and second to record the group's songs without the supporting orchestral accompaniment that was nearly universal (even for folk-styled records) at the time. The song selections on the first album reflected the repertoire that the musicians had been working on for two years-re-imagined traditional songs inspired by The Weavers like "Santy Anno" and "Bay of Mexico", calypso-flavored tunes such as "Banua" and "Sloop John B" that were reminiscent of the popular Harry Belafonte recordings of the time, and a mix of both foreign language and contemporary songwriter numbers, including Terry Gilkyson's "Fast Freight" and "Scotch and Soda", whose authorship remains unknown as of 2023.
The album sold moderately well-including on-site sales at the hungry i during the Kingston Trio's engagement there through the summer-but it was DJs Paul Colburn and Bill Terry at station KLUB in Salt Lake City whose enthusiasm for a single cut on the record spurred the next development in the group's history. Colburn began playing "Tom Dooley" extensively on his show, prompting a rush of album sales in the Salt Lake area by fans who wanted to listen to the song, as yet unavailable as a single record. Colburn called other DJs around the country urging them to do the same, and national response to the song was so strong that a reluctant Capitol Records finally released the tune as a 45rpm single on August 8, 1958; it reached the number 1 spot on the Billboard chart by late November, sold a million copies by Christmas, and was awarded a gold record on January 21, 1959. "Tom Dooley" also spurred the debut album to a number 1 position on the charts and helped the band earn a second gold record for the LP, which remained charted on Billboard's weekly reports for 195 weeks.
The success of the album and the single earned the Kingston Trio a Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Performance for "Tom Dooley" at the awards' inaugural ceremony in 1959. At the time, no folk music category existed. The next year, largely as a result of The Kingston Trio and "Tom Dooley", the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences instituted a folk category, and the Trio won the first Grammy Award for Best Ethnic or Traditional Folk Recording for its second studio album At Large.
This was the beginning of a remarkable three-year run for the Trio in which its first five studio albums achieved number 1 chart status and were awarded gold records. By 1961, the group had sold more than eight million records, earning in excess of US$25 million for Capitol, roughly US$260 million in 2023 dollars. The Kingston Trio was responsible for 15 percent of Capitol's total sales when Capitol recorded many other popular artists, including Frank Sinatra and Nat "King" Cole. For five consecutive weeks in November and December 1959, four Kingston Trio albums ranked in the top ten of Billboard's Top LPs chart, an accomplishment unmatched by any artist before or since. The Trio also charted several single records during this time, made numerous television appearances, and played upwards of 200 engagements per year.
Change and a second phase, 1961-67
By early 1961 a rift developed and deepened between Guard on one side and Shane and Reynolds on the other. Guard had been referred to in the press and on the albums' liner notes as the "acknowledged leader" of the group, a description never wholly endorsed by Shane and Reynolds, who felt themselves equal contributors to the group's repertoire and success. Guard wanted Shane and Reynolds to follow his lead and learn more of the technical aspects of music and to redirect the group's song selections, in part because of the withering criticism that the group had been getting from more traditional folk performers for the Trio's smoother and more commercial versions of folk songs and for the money-making copyrights that the Kingston group had secured for its arrangements of public domain songs. Shane and Reynolds felt that the formula for song selection and performance that they had painstakingly developed still served them well.
Furthermore, over $100,000 appeared to be missing from the Trio's publishing royalties, an accounting error eventually rectified, which created an additional irritant to both sides. Guard regarded it as inexcusable carelessness while to Shane and Reynolds it highlighted what they perceived as Guard's propensity to claim individual copyright for some of the group's songs, including "Tom Dooley" (though Guard eventually lost a suit over copyright for that number to Alan Lomax, Frank Warner, and Frank Proffitt) and "Scotch and Soda".
Following a meeting with attorneys on May 10, 1961, intended to resolve the dispute, Dave Guard resigned from the Kingston Trio, though pledging to fulfill group commitments through November of that year. Shane, Reynolds, and Werber bought out Guard's interest in the partnership for $300,000 to be paid over a number of years and moved to replace him immediately. The remaining Trio partners settled quickly on John Stewart, a 21-year-old member of the Cumberland Three, one of the many groups that sprang up hoping to imitate the Kingston Trio's success. Stewart was well-acquainted with Reynolds and Shane, having sold two songs to the Trio, and he was a proficient guitarist, banjoist, and singer. Stewart began rehearsing and recording with the group nearly immediately, commencing public appearances with the Trio in September 1961.
According to Shane, "We did nearly as well with John as we did with Dave."[46] Six of the group's next seven albums between 1961 and 1963 continued to place in Billboard's Top Ten and several of the group's most successful singles, including "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "Greenback Dollar", charted as well.
Beginning in 1964, however, the Kingston Trio's dominance in record sales and concert bookings began to wane, due partly to imitators in the pop-folk world and also to the rise of other commercial folk groups like Peter, Paul and Mary whose music had a decidedly more political bent than the Trio's. The British Invasion spearheaded by The Beatles, who were signed by EMI/Capitol just as the Trio's seven-year contract was running out, depressed sales of acoustic folk albums significantly, and Capitol did not make a serious effort to re-sign the group.[48] According to critic Ken Barnes, the British Invasion played a significant role in curtailing the sales of the Trio's recordings.
Werber secured a generous signing bonus from Decca Records, and the last four albums of the Kingston Trio's first decade were released by that label. Without the production facilities of Capitol, however, and the expertise of Voyle Gilmore and engineer Pete Abbott, the Decca releases lacked the aural brilliance of the Capitol albums, and none of the four sold especially well.
By 1966, Reynolds had grown weary of touring and Stewart wanted to strike out on his own as a singer-songwriter, so the three musicians and Werber developed an exit strategy of playing as many dates as possible for a year with an endpoint determined to be a final two-week engagement at the hungry i in June 1967. The group followed this strategy successfully, and on June 17, 1967, the Kingston Trio ceased to be an actively performing band.
Hiatus and the New Kingston Trio, 1967-1976
Following the hungry i engagement, Reynolds moved to Port Orford, Oregon and pursued interests in ranching, business, and race cars for the next twenty years. Stewart commenced a long and distinguished career as a singer-songwriter, composing hit songs like "Daydream Believer" for The Monkees and "Runaway Train" for Rosanne Cash. He recorded more than 40 albums of his own, most notably the landmark California Bloodlines, and found chart success in the top forty with "Midnight Wind", "Lost Her in the Sun", and "Gold", the latter reaching number 5 in 1979.
Bob Shane decided to stay in entertainment, and he experimented with solo work. He recorded several singles, including a well-received but under-marketed version of the song "Honey" that later became a million-seller for Bobby Goldsboro, and with different configurations with other folk-oriented performers. Though finances were not an immediate concern-the Kingston Trio partners Werber, Shane and Reynolds still owned an office building, a restaurant, other commercial real estate, and a variety of other lucrative investments-Shane wanted to return to a group environment and in 1969 secured permission from his partners to use the mutually owned group name for another band, with Reynolds and Werber insisting only that Shane's group be musically as accomplished as its predecessors and that Shane prefix "new" to the band's title.
Shane agreed and organized two troupes under the name of "The New Kingston Trio". The first consisted of guitarist Pat Horine and banjoist Jim Connor in addition to Shane and lasted from 1969 to 1973, the second including guitarist Roger Gambill and banjoist Bill Zorn from 1973 until 1976. Shane tried to create a repertoire for these groups that included both the older and expected Kingston Trio standards like "Tom Dooley" and "M.T.A." but that would also feature more contemporary songs as well, including country and novelty tunes. The attempt did not meet with any significant success. The only full-length album released by either group was The World Needs a Melody in 1973 (though 25 years later FolkEra Records issued The Lost Masters 1969-1972, a compilation of previously unreleased tracks from the Shane-Horine-Connor years), and its sales were negligible. Though both troupes of the New Kingston Trio made a limited number of other recordings and several television appearances, neither generated very much interest from fans or the public at large.
The third phase, 1976-2017
In 1976, Bill Zorn left the New Kingston Trio to work as a solo performer and record producer in London. Shane and Gambill replaced him with George Grove, a professionally trained singer and instrumentalist from North Carolina who had been working in Nashville as a studio musician.
The same year, Shane secured from Werber and Reynolds the unencumbered rights to use the band's original name of the Kingston Trio without the appended "new" in exchange for relinquishing his interest in the still-profitable corporation, whose holdings included copyrights and licensing rights to many of the original Trio's songs. Since 1976, the various troupes owned by Shane have performed and recorded simply as the Kingston Trio.
The Shane-Gambill-Grove Kingston Trio existed from 1976 through 1985, when Gambill died unexpectedly from a heart attack on March 2 at the age of 42. The nine years of this configuration was to that point the longest period of time that any three musicians had worked together as the Kingston Trio, and the group released two albums of largely original material.
It was during this period as well that PBS producers JoAnne Young and Paul Surratt approached Shane and the other principals of the original group with the idea of arranging a reunion concert that would be taped and used as a fundraiser for the network. Agreement was reached, and on November 7, 1981, Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds, and John Stewart joined the Shane-Gambill-Grove Trio and guest performers Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, Tom Smothers of the Smothers Brothers, and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac at the Magic Mountain amusement park north of Los Angeles for a show billed as "The Kingston Trio and Friends Reunion." The different configurations of the Trio took turns performing sets of the group's best-known songs with all the artists joining onstage for a finale.
More than twenty years had passed since Dave Guard had left the group, but residual tension surfaced between Guard and Shane in a preview article in The Wall Street Journal that appeared in March 1982 in advance of the national broadcast of the taped show. Guard implicitly disparaged Shane's current group, and Shane asserted a distaste for performing again with Guard, who had spent the intervening decades living and performing in Australia, touring sporadically as a soloist, and writing about and teaching music. Despite the unpleasantness, Shane and Guard reconciled to a large degree (even to the point of planning a possible reunion tour)[63] prior to Guard's death at age 56 from lymphoma nine years later in March 1991.
Following the 1985 death of Roger Gambill, Kingston Trio personnel changed several times, though Shane and Grove remained constants. Bob Haworth, a veteran folk performer who had worked as a member of The Brothers Four for many years, initially replaced Gambill from 1985 through 1988 and again from 1999 through 2005. In 1988, original member Nick Reynolds rejoined the band until his final retirement in 1999. When heart disease forced Bob Shane's retirement from touring in March 2004, he was replaced by former New Kingston Trio member Bill Zorn. A year later, following Haworth's departure, Grove and Zorn were joined by Rick Dougherty, who had performed for a time with Zorn as second-generation members of another popular folk group from the 1960s, The Limeliters.
Both the Grove-Zorn-Haworth and Grove-Zorn-Dougherty troupes of the Kingston Trio released original CDs and DVDs, and the latter configuration toured extensively for 12 years under the direction of original member Bob Shane. Capitol Records, Decca Records, Collector's Choice Music,[67] and Folk Era Records have released and continue to release compilations of older albums as well as previously unreleased tapes of both studio and live recordings from the Kingston Trio's first ten years.
Trademark and roster changes, 2017 to the present
In October 2017, Grove, Zorn, and Dougherty were replaced as the Trio by new licensees Josh Reynolds (son of original Kingston Trio founder Nick Reynolds), Mike Marvin, a close childhood friend of the Reynolds family, and Tim Gorelangton. In 2018, Josh Reynolds left the group and was replaced by Bob Haworth, who became a member of the band for the third time.[70] At the end of 2018, Haworth left the group and was replaced by another former Limeliter, Don Marovich. Marovich resigned from the group in early 2022 and was replaced by Americana artist Buddy Woodward.
Bob Shane, the last original member of the trio, died on January 20, 2020. George Grove and Rick Dougherty continue to perform folk music by joining veteran entertainer Jerry Siggins as the Folk Legacy Trio.
Folk music label
Initial criticism
Almost from its inception, the Kingston Trio found itself at odds with the traditional music community. Urban folk musicians of the time (to whom Bob Dylan referred in Rolling Stone as "the left-wing puritans that seemed to have a hold on the folk-music community") frequently associated folk music with leftist politics and were contemptuous of the Trio's deliberate political neutrality. Peter Dreier of Occidental College observed that "Purists often derided the Kingston Trio for watering down folk songs in order to make them commercially popular and for remaining on the political sidelines during the protest movements of the 1960s." A series of scathing articles appeared over several years in Sing Out! magazine, a publication that combined articles on traditional folk music with political activism. Its editor Irwin Silber referred to "the sallow slickness of the Kingston Trio" and in an article in the spring 1959 issue Ron Radosh said that the Trio brought "good folk music to the level of the worst in Tin Pan Alley music" and referred to its members as "prostitutes of the art who gain their status as folk artists because they use guitars and banjos". Following the Trio's performance at the premier Newport Folk Festival in 1959, folk music critic Mark Morris wrote: "What connection these frenetic tinselly showmen have with a folk festival eludes me... except that it is mainly folk songs that they choose to vulgarize."
Frank Proffitt, the Appalachian musician whose version of "Tom Dooley" the Trio rearranged, watched their performance of his song on a television show and wrote in reaction, "They clowned and hipswung. Then they came out with 'This time tomorrow, reckon where I'll be/If it hadn't a' been for Grayson/I'd a been in Tennessee.' I began to feel sorty sick. Like I'd lost a loved one. Tears came to my eyes. I went out and bawled on the ridge." Proffitt had learned the song from his father and his grandmother, who had known Tom Dula and Laura Foster, the killer and the victim in the actual 1866 murder related in the song. Both Proffitt and fellow North Carolina musician Doc Watson sang the older version of the tune, which had "a lively mocking tempo... that retained some of the ghastliness and moral squalor of an actual murder", according to folk historian Robert Cantwell, who also notes that the Kingston Trio's version of the song omitted several verses from the traditional lyric. The slower, harmonized Trio version of the Dooley song and other traditional numbers struck Proffitt as a betrayal of "the strange mysterious workings which has made Tom Dooly [sic] live..." In 2006, folk traditionalist and influential banjo master Billy Faier remarked: "I hear and see very little respect for the folk genre" in their music and described the Trio's repertoire as "a mishmash of twisted arrangements that not only obscure the true beauty of the folk songs from which they derive but give them a meaning they never had."
However, Trio members never claimed to be folksingers and were never comfortable with the label. The liner notes for the group's first album featured a quotation from Dave Guard asserting that "We don't really consider ourselves folksingers in the accepted sense of the word..." Guard later told journalist Richard Hadlock in Down Beat magazine: "We are not students of folk music; the basic thing for us is honest and worthwhile songs that people can pick up and become involved in." Nick Reynolds added in the same article: "We don't collect old songs in the sense that the academic cats do... We get new tunes to look over every day. Each one of us has his ears open constantly to new material or old stuff that's good." Bob Shane remarked years later: "To call the Kingston Trio folksingers was kind of stupid in the first place. We never called ourselves folksingers... We did folk-oriented material, but we did it amid all kinds of other stuff. But they didn't know what to call us with our instruments, so Capitol Records called us folksingers and gave us credit for starting this whole boom."
21st-century perspectives
Over the years, the Kingston Trio expanded its song selection beyond the rearranged traditional numbers, calypso songs, and Broadway show tunes that had appeared on its first several albums. In an obituary for Nick Reynolds (d. October 1, 2008), Spencer Leigh wrote in Britain's Independent on Sunday:
Looking at their repertoire now, it is apparent that the Kingston Trio was far more adventurous than is generally supposed. They introduced "It Was A Very Good Year" in 1961, later a standard for Frank Sinatra, and they were one of the first to spot the potential of English language versions of Jacques Brel's songs by recording "Seasons in the Sun" in 1963. They encouraged young songwriters including Hoyt Axton ("Greenback Dollar"), Rod McKuen ("Ally Ally Oxen Free", "The World I Used to Know") and Billy Edd Wheeler ("Reverend Mr Black"). Best of all, in 1962 they introduced listeners to one of the most poignant songs ever written, the anti-war ballad "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" by Pete Seeger, formerly with the Weavers.[86]
Further, Peter Dreier points out that "the group deserves credit for helping to launch the folk boom that brought recognition to older folkies and radicals like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and for paving the way for newcomers like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs, who were well known for their progressive political views and topical songs. By the time these younger folk singers arrived on the scene, the political climate had changed enough to provide a wide audience for protest music." Additionally, writing in the British daily The Guardian, also in an obituary for Reynolds, Ken Hunt asserted that "[the Kingston Trio] helped to turn untold numbers of people on to folk music... [T]hey put the boom in folk boom... They were the greatest of the bands to emerge after the McCarthy-era blacklisting of folk musicians and breathed new air into the genre."