The Whiskeyhill Singers were formed in early 1961 by native San Franciscan Dave Guard after he left The Kingston Trio. Guard formed the Singers as an attempt to return to the Trio's earlier roots in folk music. The Singers lasted about six months before disbanding. During that short period the group released one album, Dave Guard & The Whiskeyhill Singers, and recorded a number of songs for the soundtrack of How the West Was Won, but only four of these were used in the movie.
Although The Kingston Trio had quickly risen in three short years from smoky gigs in the San Francisco peninsula's college town fraternity houses, bistros and bars to San Francisco's prestigious hungry i and Purple Onion, and then on to become nationally and internationally well known, accepted, and successful, Guard felt that by 1961 the Trio's musical style had become fixed and predictable, and its performances increasingly commercial. The Trio, Guard reportedly felt, had lost touch with the folk music roots that brought him to form The Calypsonians, which he had formed with Nick Reynolds and the group which had morphed into The Kingston Quartet and then finally with Bob Shane back from Hawaii into the Quartet's successor, The Kingston Trio. Guard also had concerns and conflicts with the way the Trio's publishing earnings were being handled. Those issues, combined with underlying, long simmering resentments and ego clashes between himself and his Trio colleague, former Punahou School classmate Shane over control and leadership of the now successful group that the three had formed, led Guard to finally leave the group. Shortly thereafter Guard formed the Whiskeyhill Singers with another Punahou high school friend, Cyrus Faryar, and the Trio's bassist and musicologist David "Buck" Wheat.
In line with Guard's intention to return to folk music, with its frequently uninhibited enthusiasm and vocal harmonies, Faryar suggested the group bring in an acquaintance of his, Judy Henske, to provide a female balance to the male harmonies, and in so doing, move definitively away from the Kingston Trio's male-only vocal format. Guard agreed, and the Whiskeyhill Singers, with Henske as female lead developed their own, often innovative, folk music mood, style, and sound.
Despite the group's intent to return to folk music along the lines of Pete Seeger's The Weavers, Guard's and Wheat's long association with the Trio and its musical style inevitably had an influence on the Singers' own musical style and arrangements. Complicating matters was the fact that the Trio's rollicking and successful performing style of uninhibited enthusiasm was also taken directly from Weavers-style folk music, leading to criticism that the musical style of the Singers was more "Trio-like" than being an original style of their own.
The producers of the MGM film How the West Was Won had approached the Kingston Trio to sing folk songs on the soundtrack for the movie. But learning Guard was beginning a new group, they felt the Whiskeyhill's sound, not as commercially slick, better suited their production. They performed several folk songs, "The Erie Canal", "900 miles", "The Ox Driver", "Raise A Ruckus Tonight" (along with The Ken Darby Singers, as the general chorus behind Debbie Reynolds). Judy Henske sang lead with the Singers on "Careless Love" and soloed as the unknown singer on "A Railroader's Bride I'll Be". Cyrus Faryar can be heard performing solo on the track "Wanderin'" and Dave Guard on "Poor Wayfarin' Stranger". The film received the Academy Award in 1962 for the best Motion Picture Soundtrack. Originally they recorded the main title tune. But once this small group of singers were placed on a soundstage, recording before the full MGM Studio Orchestra, the experience was somewhat overwhelming. The full choir finally performed the song over the opening credits.
Cyrus Faryar later summarized the career of the Whiskeyhill Singers:
"The Whiskeyhill Singers started off in a weird, sort of outrageous, slightly outlandish mode, and David was able to sell Capitol Records on the idea. It was really an ongoing, continual experiment. But the second album was either none of the same, or too much of the same for them to really be content with it. They simply couldn't figure out how to market it; there was no market for this strange, exploratory oddness."
This description hints at what was to come when the folk rock and psychedelic realms merged later in the decade; Henske's prominence in the group also foretold the position of Grace Slick in Jefferson Airplane and tangentially due to the strength of her vocals, Janis Joplin in Big Brother and the Holding Company. At the time that it disbanded, Guard said that The Whiskeyhill Singers had posted a loss of $10,000.
Discography
Dave Guard and the Whiskeyhill Singers 1962 (Capitol) Whiskeyhill Singers 2nd Album (unreleased) (1962) Ride on Railroad Bill (single)1962 (Capitol) Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (single)1962 (Capitol) Dave Guard and the Whiskeyhill Singers (2001) (Collectors Choice) How the West Was Won: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (MGM) Academy Award:Best Soundtrack 1963 References
Dave Guard & The Whiskeyhill Singers: Ritchie Unterberger's liner notes for Collector's Choice CD, Dave Guard & The Whiskeyhill Singers
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