The 1981 Reunion Concert: Nick Reynolds, Bob Shane, Dave Guard (Photo by John E. Lee; from Wikipedia)
Bill Keveney, USA Today | Bob Shane, the last original member of the the Grammy-winning Kingston Trio, died Sunday at the age of 85. The Phoenix resident, who retired in 2004 but performed occasionally until 2016, died of complications arising from pneumonia just days before his 86th birthday on Feb. 1, his wife, Bobbie Childress, tells USA TODAY.
Shane, Dave Guard and Nick Reynolds, who formed the musical group in the San Francisco Bay area in the 1950s, led a revival of the folk-music format with a series of chart-topping albums. At one point, the group had four albums simultaneously in the Top 10.
The Kingston Trio won a Grammy for its chart-topping hit “Tom Dooley” at the first ceremony for the music awards in 1959, but it was for Country & Western Performance, because there was no folk category. At the next Grammys ceremony, the group won in the newly created folk category.
Shane returned to the Grammys in 2011 when The Kingston Trio was honored with a lifetime achievement award. The other two original members, Guard and Reynolds, died in 1991 and 2008, respectively.
Childress says her husband, who played occasionally since his retirement with hand-picked members of a namesake group, loved the connection with his audiences.
“He always said he wasn’t a folk singer. He was a folks singer,” she says. “He really loved entertaining” and The Kingston Trio’s vibe was “just pure fun and entertainment. They made people feel good.”
Although The Kingston Trio called on a variety of international musical styles, Shane’s signature tune, “Scotch and Soda,” was “very much a Frank Sinatra kind of song,” says Childress, who was married to Shane for 19 years.
Shane was born Robert Schoen in Hilo, Hawaii, on Feb. 1, 1934. He later changed his last name to the phonetic spelling. He and Guard, his childhood friend from Hawaii, both went to college in the Bay area, Shane at Menlo College, where he met Reynolds, and Guard at Stanford.
Shane, who was previously married to Louise Shane, had five children and eight grandchildren.
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Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths…
January 2020
29: Natasha Stuart, 43, Australian rock singer (The Voice), breast cancer.
28: Toni Smith, American R&B singer (“Funkin’ for Jamaica (N.Y.)”).
27: Reed Mullin, 53, American rock drummer (Corrosion of Conformity, Teenage Time Killers);
Alberto Naranjo, 78, Venezuelan musician.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_Mullin
26: Bob Shane, 85, American singer and guitarist (The Kingston Trio), complications from pneumonia.
The 1981 Reunion Concert: Nick Reynolds, Bob Shane, Dave Guard
Photographer John A. Lee (from Wikipedia)
25: Antonia Apodaca, 96, American musician and songwriter; Bob Gullotti, 70–71, American jazz drummer (Surrender to the Air) and music professor (Berklee College of Music); Narciso Parigi, 92, Italian singer and actor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_to_the_Air
24: Nusrat Badr, Indian lyricist (“Dola Re Dola”); Margo Lion, 75, American theatre producer (Hairspray), brain aneurysm; Joe Payne, 35, American heavy metal bassist and guitarist (Divine Heresy, Nile); Sean Reinert, 48, American drummer (Cynic, Death, Æon Spoke).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margo_Lion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Payne
23: Franz Mazura, 95, Austrian operatic bass-baritone, Grammy winner (1981, 1986); Calder Prescott, 88, New Zealand jazz musician and broadcaster (Otago Access Radio).
21: Norman Amadio, 91, Canadian jazz pianist and bandleader; Meritxell Negre, 48, Spanish singer (Peaches & Herb), cancer.