Co-founder of influential folk act sang lead on hits “Tom Dooley” and “Scotch and Soda”
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Bob Shane, co-founder and last surviving original member of the influential folk group the Kingston Trio, died Sunday at the age of 85.
Shane died at a hospice facility in Phoenix, Arizona, where he lived the past few decades, his agent confirmed to The New York Times. Shane’s wife, Bobbie Childress, told The Washington Post that her husband had been suffering from pneumonia and other ailments prior to this death.
The members of the Kingston Trio — Shane, Nick Reynolds, and Dave Guard — formed the singing group as college students in the Bay Area in the first half of the Fifties; by the end of the decade, the Kingston Trio would become one of the nation’s most popular bands, releasing five Number One albums, including a span in 1959 when four of the albums in the Top 10 belonged to the Kingston Trio.
Shane served as vocalist and guitarist on their biggest hits, including “Scotch and Soda,” “M.T.A.,” a rendition of the murder ballad “Tom Dooley,” and the traditional song “The Wreck of the John B.,” the latter of which directly inspired the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B.” The trio also helped popularize Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and recorded “It Was a Very Good Year” before that song became a Frank Sinatra staple.
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