At Large

Chronique

The Kingston Trio's first stereo album was also the first LP on which they adopted the more sophisticated recording techniques that would characterize their subsequent records, including multiple overdubs and separate recordings of the different players of vocals and instrumentation. It shows in the far more complex sound achieved by the trio throughout this album, with voices and instruments more closely interwoven than on their earlier studio recordings and achieving control over their volume that, even today, seems astonishing. The group also sounds very energized here, whether doing Calypso-style numbers like Bob Shane's "I Bawled," soaring bluegrass-style harmony numbers such as "Corey, Corey," or the gossamer-textured "All My Sorrows." The hits "M.T.A." and "Scarlet Ribbons" helped propel Kingston Trio at Large to the number one LP spot, but it was the rest of the album -- including "Early in the Mornin'" (a skillful adaptation of the song best known to most of us by its opening line, "What do you do with a drunken sailor") and "The Seine," which anticipates the later trio's classic "Take Her Out of Pity" -- that helped keep it at the top spot for 15 weeks, an amazing feat for a folk album. Dave Guard's banjo playing, in particular, shines throughout this album, and it was beginning here that Guard was to exert a separate influence on a whole generation of aspiring folk musicians and even one rock star (Lindsay Buckingham) with his banjo.

© Bruce Eder /TiVo