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George Grove
Of the Kingston Trio
By JR Hafer
I am proud to say George Grove is my best friend. George has known me from the year I became a part of my new family in November 1953 at the age of seven. George is almost a year younger than me, a point he never misses the opportunity to mention in the company of others. Or when he introduces me from the stage at the Kingston Trio concerts, when I am present, which is as often as possible. I like to call him “Georgie” because it irritates the hell out of him.
George Grove jr. was born into a wonderful family October 9, 1947. His father was a hosiery mill man as was my father. George senior was always a pillar of the community and one I always admired. Mrs. Retta Grove was always a mother who we kids would have liked to have as a mother, she was a sweet and thoughtful lady and we envied Georgie.
In the late 1950s, there was always music coming from the Grove house. George Grove and his friends were constantly practicing their musical talents. The attic was the place for serious practice, focused dedication and the love of music. It was evident to the kids and teachers alike at Viewmont Elementary School these guys were talented and would eventually become successful professional musicians.
While the other kids were on the baseball diamond, football field, basketball court or the bowling alley at the community center, George and “chums” played music in the attic of the Grove home in Hickory, North Carolina.
For all who really knew George Grove, there was absolutely no doubt about it, perhaps George was destined to be a part of the Kingston Trio. But he was born too late (October 9, 1947) and in the wrong part of the country, too far away from the entertainment world. George was determined to beat the odds and was certainly predestined to be with the Kingston Trio. He had a vision that would become his focal point in life. Though “time waits for no man” George understood the difference between a dream and a vision: A vision comes with path to achieve a dream. George Grove was nine years old when the Kingston Trio formed and just a few years older when he made the prophetic statement to his sister Joanie, mother Retta and father George Sr; “I’m going to be singing in that group one of these days”… By George, he was right!
In the late 1950s and early 60s the folk music group, the Kingston Trio became legendary and became the number one vocal group in the world. The highest record sales and worldwide fame would catapult this Ivy league calypsonian guitar and banjo pickin,’ joke tellin’ party group to amazing commercial success.
George had “appropriated” from his sister the newly recorded album “Live at the Hungry I” According to George, he was “immediately swept up in Trio mania” and learned all the instrumental and vocal parts of each song of the entire repertoire of the Kingston Trio. He loved the finger-picking and strumming of the acoustical guitar along with the three-part harmony and poignant lyrics and wit of the trio. He was “hooked”.
Folk music has always been around but in the 20th century it took on a different meaning and the words “folk music” was redefined. Folk music had always been traditionally the music that “folks” passed down from generation to generation by “word of mouth” and community involvement, often making up little ditties and modifying the songs the folks heard to suit the occasion. There were no organized groups performing that type of music; no commercial plausibility was envisioned and no one had taken the sound and style and capitalized or taken advantage of the sound and commercialized it.
From the outset of American history folk music has lifted the spirits of the down-trodden and when people needed hope. The earliest of these were slaves in the plantation fields working from sun up “till” sunset. Tunes like “Down by the riverside” and old working songs like “Tote that bail” and “We shall overcome”…
Then comes along a new style, played by a new breed. A young teenager named Donald David Guard was growing up listening to the melodies strummed on guitars and ukuleles when he attended junior high and high school in Hawaii at the oldest private school west of the Rocky Mountains. There was a Polynesian flavor within the music of the local “beach boys” who played the “finger-picked and slack-key” ukulele and guitar. This style and sound attracted Dave Guard and he noticed it attracted the girls too.
Dave Guard while in the 7th grade at Punahou School was required to take a music course at which time the Hawaiian culture and music captured the attention of young Guard and his school “chum” Bob Shane. Shane and Guard learned how to play the ever present ukulele in addition to the basics of playing other stringed instruments.
By the time Dave Guard left Punahou school at the end of his junior year and transferred to finish school at the Menlo Prep School in Menlo Park California, Bob Shane graduated and then came to Menlo College afterward. However, during their junior year the two of them (Guard & Shane) preformed at carnivals, parties and such. They mostly sung folk songs by the Weavers.
Dave Guard went to nearby Stanford University. Bob Shane, Dave Guard and their new friend Nick Reynolds formed a band called the Calypsonians, which eventually became the Kingston Quartet.
Palo Alto, California became the birthplace for the Kingston Trio in 1957. Three college guys just out of college had their ear to the ground and realized that America was primed and ready for something new. Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane as the Kingston Trio, preformed their Jamaican reggae/calypso/folk style of music and they added pop culture and a twist of comedy to their act. Their smooth three-part harmony created a musical legacy that no other folk group could equal.
Frank Werber the young and upcoming publicist from San Francisco who was making his splash in the California night club scene saw the new group playing at a small club called the Cracked Pot.
After months of refinement and rehearsals to smooth out their act, Frank got the Trio booked into the Purple Onion, where the Smothers Brothers, Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen appeared. The Onion was also where later Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, Richard Pryor, Doug Ferrari and many other musicians and comedians would get their start. The Purple Onion was a popular cellar club in the north beach area of San Francisco, which was known to attract and be frequented by agents, recording artists, recording scouts and a lot of weird, pre-hippy, free thinkers. That appearance led to a tour and a recording contract with Capital Records.
The Kingston Trio won their first Grammy award for the best Country & Western Performance category in 1959. There was no “Folk Music” category at that time. The song for which the Kingston Trio won that first Grammy was “Tom Dooley”, a ballad of a murder in the western North Carolina hills many years earlier.
Across the country a ten year old kid still in elementary school in North Carolina, in the next county from where Tom Dula (Dooley) was hanged, made the statement to his family and friends, “I’m going to play with that group someday”… No one doubted George Grove. Even then, he had the evidence of developing the ability and the innate musical genius to do just that.
George Grove fell in love with the music and the performance style of the Kingston Trio and started collecting everything the Trio recorded. He listened to “Three Jolly Coachmen,” and “Early morning rain”, “Blowin’ in the wind,” “A Worried man” “MTA” and surely he felt the connection of the old Ballad of “Tom Dooley”… George knew the story well.
In the summers during his high school years, while the Kingston Trio was playing at places like the Hungry I in San Francisco, George Grove would accompany his parents to their Mountain home in Blowing Rock, NC where he took various jobs at the local resorts and attractions. For example, he was a cowboy (Bad Guy) at Tweetsie Rail Road, where the regional singing cowboy of WBTV (Charlotte, NC) Fred Kirby would foil a half dozen train robberies on every weekend. George got tired of dying and started singing at the attraction’s Saloon (he found more enjoyment and he was better at singing than he was at getting shot by Fred Kirby).
Speaking of dying or actually singing about dying, during those times as a young man in the Appalachian resort towns of Blowing Rock and Boone, George would often see a blind guy sitting on a street corner, he had his guitar case open for the tips folks gladly gave as he played his guitar. This man, Doc Watson, would always have a crowd around listening when he played his Appalachian ballads. Often he would sing about the infamous Tom Dula and the conviction and subsequent hanging for murdering his lover Laura Foster. Later, the Kingston Trio made the song “Tom Dooley” famous. There was even a movie made about the gruesome murder and hanging of Dula. This movie was Michael Landon’s first starring role.
Tom Dula (Dooley) was tried in Statesville just a mere twenty miles from Hickory and George Grove’s home, but almost a hundred years earlier. But the interest and connection was undeniable for anyone who liked folk songs and lived in the area. Here are these famous guys from across the country singing and winning awards with a local event in our neck of the woods. But that was the bond the Kingston Trio made with most of their fans. Just like the “MTA” was for the Boston Massachusetts area. But that was their “Hook” wasn’t it?
The song “Hang Down your head Tom Dooley and Cry” was originally a mournful, sorrowful and dismal song which was sung shortly after the execution of Dula in Iredell County. The trial and execution was moved from Wilkes County where the slaying occurred. The song has generated controversy over the years (just like most great legends). It is unclear as to who was the first to record the song. It was selected as one of the songs of the century. But surely, no matter who first recorded it, Grayson and Witter or Frank Proffitt the fact is: the Kingston Trio developed their rendition from the wailing version sung by Proffitt.
Doc Watson, the blind man, once on the corner singing for tips, from Deep Gap, NC also recorded the song “Tom Dooley” for Vanguard records in 1964. There was a seed of commonality between, Doc Watson, Tom Dula, The Kingston Trio and George Grove. The time line was off but perhaps the dimensions of reality and time be bent a little? Maybe the duality of time and space could merge in some way? That question would later be answered by additional time in a resounding yes…
While The Kingston Trio became the number one vocal group in the world, touring and building a grand following and fan base, winning Grammies, George Grove never losing his site on becoming a professional entertainer. George attended Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina, just a mere seventy miles down the road from Hickory, his home town.
After College, George decided to answer the call of his conscience and country and joined the United States Army. In pursuit and direction of his chosen vocation, he became a member of the United States Army Band.
After leaving the Army, George spent the next few years in Nashville “learning the trade” and as he puts it “humility” from the masters at the Grand ole Opry. He worked as a studio musician and a stage performer, playing background music for the legendary talents of folks like Johnny Cash, Roy Acuff, Charlie Pride along with many others who graced the Opry stage.
A birthday that George Grove will never forget, which changed his life forever came in early October, 1976 when he received an invitation from Bob Shane to come to Atlanta and audition for the Kingston Trio. Bob Shane didn’t know it at the time but he had given George a birthday present. The audition date was to be on George’s birthday. George says “I didn’t have to prepare for that audition I had been preparing all my life!” Two weeks later around the end of October, George joined Bob Shane and Roger Gamble in Chicago and became a performing member of the Trio. Now, it has been going on thirty two years and they still continue to perform for sell-out crowds.
Visit: www.KingstonTrio.com
