Improbably, in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, three short-haired young white men in pinstripe shirts called The Kingston Trio were top 40 hitmakers before The Beatles landed on Ed Sullivan’s show in 1964, took the US by storm, and ended the era of popular folk groups. Even more improbable, by today’s standards, some radio stations refused to play this song (written by Hoyt Axton) when it was first released in 1962. Was it due to political content? Suspected communist ties of the performers? Glorifying of guitar-slinging ne’er-do-wells? No, it was because it contained the repeated word ‘damn’ which at that time was considered inappropriate by many radio stations, back in the days when it was thought mighty racy if TV sitcom married couples were shown together in the same bed.
“In the history of popular music, there are a relative handful of performers who have redefined the content of the music at critical points in history—people whose music left the landscape, and definition of popular music, altered completely. The Kingston Trio were one such group, transforming folk music into a hot commodity and creating a demand—where none had existed before—for young men (sometimes with women) strumming acoustic guitars and banjos and singing folk songs and folk-like novelty songs in harmony. On a purely commercial level, from 1957 until 1963, the Kingston Trio were the most vital and popular folk group in the world, and folk music was sufficiently popular as to make that a significant statement. Equally important, the original trio—Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds, and Bob Shane—in tandem with other, similar early acts such as the Limeliters, spearheaded a boom in the popularity of folk music that suddenly made the latter important to millions of listeners who previously had ignored it.”
— Bruce Eder, music critic of Allmusic.com, by way of Wikipedia.
For a laugh, here’s the clumsily-edited version shipped out to radio stations when the song became an unexpected hit in 1963:
And my favorite Kingston Trio tune, the jazzy “Scotch and Soda”:
