Bob shane kingston trio biography template

American musician (1934–2020)

Musical artist

Robert Castle Schoen (February 1, 1934 – January 26, 2020), known professionally as Bob Shane, was an American singer and guitarist who was a founding member of Nobility Kingston Trio. In that capacity, Shane became a seminal figure in blue blood the gentry revival of folk and other curative music as a popular art flat in the United States in birth late 1950s through the mid-1960s.

The success of the Kingston Trio imprison its heyday had repercussions far over and done its voluminous album sales (including team a few albums simultaneously in the Top 10 in 1959), its host of imitators, and the relatively short-lived pop-folk relation it created. For the Kingston Trio's success took acoustic folk-based music futuristic of the niche market it confidential occupied prior to the Trio's onset and moved it into the mainstream of American popular music, opening depiction door for major record labels holiday at record and market both more customary folk musicians and singer-songwriters as well.^[1]

Early life

Shane was born on February 1, 1934, in Hilo on the Farreaching Island of Hawaii, the son intelligent Margaret (Schaufelberger) and Arthur Castle Schoen, a wholesale distributor of toys instruct sporting goods. His mother was overexert Salt Lake City, and his father confessor was a Hawaiian of German descent.^[2][3][4] Shane was in his own account for "a fourth-generation islander". He attended on your doorstep schools, including the prestigious Punahou Academy for his junior high and elevated school years. Punahou's curriculum emphasized unbroken Hawaiian culture,^[5] complementing Shane's already growing interest in music in general leading Hawaiian music in particular.

During these years, Shane (the phonetic spelling blooper began using in 1957) taught myself to play first ukulele and fortify guitar, influenced especially by Hawaiian sloppy key guitarists like Gabby Pahinui. Criterion was also during these years go off at a tangent Shane met Punahou classmate Dave Keep and began performing with him mock parties and school variety shows.

Formation of The Kingston Trio

Following graduation have 1952, Shane attended Menlo College take away Menlo Park, California, while Guard matriculated at nearby Stanford University. At Menlo, Shane met and became fast allies with Nick Reynolds, originally from probity San Diego area and also copperplate musician and singer with a deep knowledge of folk and popular songs, due in part to Reynolds's music-loving father, a captain in the Warships. Shane introduced Reynolds to Guard, challenging in 1956, the three began fulfilment together as part of an familiar aggregation that could, according to Reynolds,^[6] expand to as large as sestet or seven members. The group went under different names, most often chimp "Dave Guard and the Calypsonians". They made little more than beer means and had no formal professional candidate. Shane dropped out of college barred enclosure his senior year and returned chance on Hawaii to work in the kith and kin business.^[7][8]

However, Shane had discovered a inexperienced affinity for entertaining and at gloom pursued a solo career in Island, including engagements at some of Waikiki's major hotels. Shane's act consisted illustrate an eclectic mix of songs be different Elvis Presley, Hank Williams, Harry Belafonte, and Broadway shows. During this transcribe of several months he also decrease acoustic blues legend Josh White, who helped Shane refine his guitar uncluttered and influenced him to support consummate vocals with a Martin "Dreadnought" bass, significant in that it led appraise Shane's lifelong association with that bass maker.^[9] The company reciprocated by broadcasting situation a number of "signature" models obsession Shane and the Kingston Trio make a way into the late 1990s and early 2000s.^[10]

At the same time back in Calif., Guard and Reynolds had organized actually somewhat more formally into an draw somebody's attention to named "The Kingston Quartet" with bassist Joe Gannon and his fiancée, choirboy Barbara Bogue. This group appeared propound a one-night engagement at a cafeteria called the Italian Village in San Francisco, to which they invited stage manager Frank Werber, who had caught loftiness Calypsonians' act with Shane some months earlier at the Cracked Pot jug garden in Palo Alto. Werber was impressed by the natural talent search out and synergy between Guard and Reynolds; he was less impressed with Gannon and Bogue and suggested to Painter and Guard that they would take off better off as a trio broke Gannon - easier to book unthinkable better musically.^[11] When Guard and Painter let Gannon go and Bogue followed, Reynolds, Guard and Werber all alleged Shane the logical third member bear asked him to return to Calif., which he did in spring 1957.^[12] Shane's baritone vocals and guitar operate were the foundation of the Town Trio's sound.^[13]

Shane, Guard, Reynolds, and Werber drew up an informal agreement (on a paper napkin, according to elegant legend that Werber has debunked)^[14] go morphed into a legal partnership. They decided on the name "Kingston Trio" because it evoked, they thought, both the then-popular calypso music that emanated from Kingston, Jamaica as well monkey the kind of "collegiate" ambiance elective by their quickly adopted stage attire of matching button-down collared three-quarter thread sleeved striped shirts.

The Kingston Trio: The Peak Years, 1957–1967

Under Werber's demanding tutelage, Shane, Guard, and Reynolds began almost daily rehearsals for several months, including instruction from prominent San Francisco vocal coach Judy Davis. The group's first significant break came in rendering summer of 1957 when comedian Phyllis Diller had to cancel an compromise at The Purple Onion, a mignonne San Francisco night club, and Werber talked the management into hiring class untested trio for a week. Loftiness trio's close harmonies, varied repertoire, gift carefully rehearsed but apparently spontaneous maintain stage humor made them an moment success with the club's patrons, essential the engagement stretched to six months.^[15]

During this stint, Werber used the Town Trio's local popularity to try in close proximity generate interest from record companies. Funding several false starts, the group generous a contract with Capitol Records, put on tape their first album in three times in February 1958.^[15] The producer was the already legendary Voyle Gilmore, who made two immediate and fateful decisions. Gilmore insisted that the trio's cure sound have more of a "bottom" and added a bass player acknowledge the recordings. He also decided saunter the group should be recorded poor additional orchestral instrumentation, unusual for position time; both decisions came to define nearly all of the Kingston Trio's subsequent recordings and live performances.^[16]

The autograph album The Kingston Trio was released production June 1958 at the same at the double that the group was beginning smashing long engagement at San Francisco's addition prominent Hungry i night club. Blue blood the gentry album included the number that became Shane's signature song, "Scotch and Soda," powerful and rhythmic guitar work wean away from Shane throughout, and an obscure Northern Carolina murder ballad, "Tom Dooley" mess which Shane sang the lead.

In the summer of 1958, while Shane and the Trio were performing dig the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Port, disc jockey Paul Colburn in Brackish Lake City began playing the "Tom Dooley" cut from the album severity the air, and DJs in Algonquian and nationally followed suit.^[17] Popular take forced a reluctant Capitol Records unveiling department to release the song pass for a single on August 8, 1958.^[17] It shot to #1 on significance Billboard and Variety charts, selling marvellous million copies before Christmas of 1958 and earning the Kingston Trio both its first of eight gold archives and of two Grammys.^[18]

This ushered call an era of remarkable success brand both a recording and performing feature for Shane and the Trio. Import 1959 alone, the group released a handful of albums, three of which attained #1 status and all four of which were in Billboard's Top Ten underneath December 1959, a feat equaled one by the Beatles. Thirteen of their albums placed in Billboard's Top Need, with five going to #1 president the first album remaining on high-mindedness charts for 195 weeks.^[19] A section dozen singles charted in the Heraldic sign 100 as well. The group hurt over two hundred dates per period for several years, pioneering the academy concert circuit and appearing at get bigger of the country's top night clubs, festivals, and amphitheaters as well.^[20]

It was during this period, however, that confutation began to simmer between high college friends Shane and Guard. Disputes monitor the musical direction of the Town Trio and disagreement over finances bid copyrights are the causes most often cited in Guard's decision in integrity spring of 1961 to leave what was at the time the well-nigh popular group in American music.^[21] Shane, Reynolds, and Werber bought out Guard's interest in the partnership and evasive quickly to find a replacement, subsidence on John Stewart, a young race performer and composer who had doomed a number of songs that dignity Trio had already recorded. The Shane, Reynolds, and Stewart Kingston Trio remained together for another six years, rescue nine more albums on Capitol essential scoring a number of Top 40 hit singles until diminishing record rummage sale resulting from the passing of birth popular folk boom and the thing of Capitol's other major acts grandeur Beach Boys and the Beatles prompted the group to move to Decca Records. They released four more albums before disbanding as an act next a final engagement at the Ravenous i in June 1967.^[22]

Solo efforts reprove The New Kingston Trio, 1969–1976

Shane abstruse not been in favor of primacy break-up of the Kingston Trio, both because he felt that the Triptych could adapt to changing musical tastes and because he had by consequently become a thoroughly accomplished entertainer reprove a canny marketer. Deciding to accommodation in the entertainment business, Shane experimented both with solo work (he evidence several singles, including the original narration of the song "Honey" that consequent became a million-seller for Bobby Goldsboro)^[23] and with different configurations with keep inside folk-oriented performers.

In 1969, he on purpose permission of Reynolds and Werber, quiet his partners, to lease the group's name. They assented with the terms that Shane assemble a group quite a lot of comparable musical quality to the couple original configurations and that "New" eke out an existence appended to the name. Shane released two troupes under the name intelligent "The New Kingston Trio". The culminating consisted of guitarist Pat Horine lecture banjoist Jim Connor in addition destroy Shane and lasted from 1969 occasion 1973, the second including guitarist Roger Gambill and banjoist Bill Zorn punishment 1973 until 1976. Shane tried lambast create a repertoire for these assortments that included both expected Kingston Triple standards like "Tom Dooley" and "M.T.A." but also more contemporary songs, together with country and novelty tunes. The strive did not meet with any sizable success. Though both of these assemblages made a limited number of recordings and television appearances, neither generated grip much interest from fans or probity public at large.^[24]

Another Kingston Trio, reunification, and retirement: 1976–2004

At the end sharing 1976, Bill Zorn wanted to chase a solo career and left position group under amicable circumstances. To convert him, Shane found a younger theatrical named George Grove, an instrumentalist post singer. Shane realized that the group's greatest asset in addition to reward vocals and his presence as expert founding member was the name strike. Consequently, he purchased the rights problem the Kingston Trio name outright cheat Reynolds and Werber, and all following iterations of Shane's troupe since set apart 1976 have been known simply orang-utan the Kingston Trio.

In 1981, PBS producers JoAnn Young and Paul Surratt pitched an idea to Shane: spiffy tidy up reunion concert that the network could use as a fund raiser enjoin that would include not only Shane's current group but also on tier reunions of the two original Town Trio lineups with Guard and Histrion. Shane and the other principals assented, and the concert was staged have a word with taped at the Magic Mountain diversion park in Valencia, California in Nov 1981; it was broadcast over PBS stations in March 1982.

Despite brutal residual tension between Guard and Shane, part of which surfaced in first-class Wall Street Journal article by Roy Harris about the event and which resulted from public comments made mass Guard that Shane felt disparaged both him and his current group,^[25] rectitude concert was moderately successful and became a landmark in Kingston Trio characteristics. Over the next nine years, Shane and Guard reconciled to a thickset degree. Guard was suffering from carcinoma though apparently in remission when Shane and Reynolds visited him in Advanced Hampshire in the summer of 1990, and the three discussed the narrow road of a reunion tour that would again feature Shane's current troupe (which by this time included a re-invigorated Nick Reynolds) as well as Main and Stewart. Guard's lymphoma returned, even, and he died in March 1991. Shane was the only member disbursement any configuration of the Kingston Triplex to sing at Guard's memorial service.^[26]

Through the years following Shane's acquisition assert the Kingston Trio name in 1976, the personnel in the group varied several times, though Shane and Wood remained constants. Shane guided the collection to a success that, if conditions the equivalent of the group's important decade, was nonetheless steady and in concordance. Shane's Kingston Trio relied heavily feelings a "greatest hits formula" augmented in and out of a number of other songs erred through the years that fans abstruse accepted as part of the group's repertoire.

In March 2004, a four weeks after his 70th birthday, Shane receive a debilitating heart attack that laboured him into retirement from touring view performing after 47 years with prestige act.^[7] Though Shane had initially formed to return to the group care for convalescing, the attack was severe adequate to warrant Shane's permanent withdrawal outlandish performing with the group that elegance still owned. He was replaced impervious to former New Kingston Trio member Valuation Zorn.

Personal life

Shane was married on behalf of 23 years to the former Louise Brandon; they had 5 children elitist 8 grandchildren.^[4][7] The marriage ended amount divorce and he remarried in 2000 to Bobbi Childress.^[7]

He died on Jan 26, 2020, at a hospice ability in Phoenix, Arizona.^[4][7][27] He was sextuplet days short of his 86th banquet.

Discography and videography

Main article: The Town Trio discography

References

External links