String Along

Album review

String Along has the most unusual sound of any Kingston Trio album, mostly by virtue of the crisp mixing and voicing of the instruments -- guitars and banjo all appear in very high relief, matching the attention usually reserved for the voices on the Kingston Trio's records. The result is a somewhat quieter record, without much presence of the familiar unified group sound, as the individual members are relied upon more than the ensemble singing on many of the songs. One of the few exceptions is "Buddy Better Got On Down the Line," which has the sound that one associates with past trio recordings. But it's a true exception on an album that has other highlights such as oddities like the trio's surprisingly strong rendition of Ray Charles' "Leave My Woman Alone." Though no one could have realized it at the time, String Along was very close to the tail end of the original Kingston Trio's history -- Dave Guard was losing interest in arguing over the direction of the group; and although their albums were still selling well and steadily, String Along (which hit number one) would yield the original group's last two charting singles. "Bad Man's Blunder," which also opens this album, became the original Kingston Trio's final Top 40 single; it was cut by the trio and issued as a single as a favor to composer Cisco Houston who was in the hospital and terminally ill. Other songs were done for more mundane reasons -- according to Benjamin Blake, Jack Rubek, and Allan Shaw in their book The Kingston Trio on Record, the English folk-style "The Escape of Old John Webb" was featured on the album in the hope of helping to persuade EMI Records in England to promote the trio's albums more vigorously.

© Bruce Eder /TiVo