Here again was the fragment of a song…What the Liner Notes Taught Me
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Table of Contents
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A Random Album Pick – The Kingston Trio – Nick-Bob-John
This morning I randomly picked out an album from a crate of vinyl that was near me. The album was The Kingston Trio‘s album Nick-Bob-John. Released in 1964, the album was their first recording on the Decca label. The trio was extremely popular from 1958 through 1963. Their first 5 albums peaked at No. 1 on the charts and were certified Gold Records. That explains why their albums are so numerous at Goodwills.
When I first realized that good albums could be found at Goodwills, I started to search out folk music from the 1950s and 1960s, and The Kingston Trio albums were the easiest to find. I found this album interesting because by this time John Stewart had joined the trio.
The First Spin
I put the album on and started to write a blog post. The first song was “Midnight Special,” a song I have heard countless times over the years. My ears really perked up when I heard the third song, “Someday Soon”—an Ian Tyson song that has been covered by many of my favorite artists. My favorite cover though is by Judy Collins!
Down the Folk Music Rabbit Hole
Then came “Gotta Travel On” and this is when the ground started to split and a rabbit hole emerged! When I first went to Google to find out more about the song, I saw a result that said “Gotta Travel On” words and lyrics by Bob Dylan. I thought, “That’s not right.” When I looked back at the back of the album, I saw that the songwriter was Paul Clayton.
Now that makes sense. Clayton was very active in the early folk scene in Greenwich Village, and I knew Dave Van Ronk had written about him in Van Ronk’s The Mayor of MacDougal Street.
So I searched Google for info on the relationship between Van Ronk, Clayton, and Dylan. Here’s what I found out…
Further Down the Folk Music Rabbit Hole
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Next, I discovered that the song went back a long way and that while some say The Kingston Trio introduced the song, The Weavers had actually recorded it several years earlier. This sent me down the rabbit hole to find my Weavers albums to see if I had one with “Gotta Travel On.” Bingo! And it’s even referenced in the album title: Travelin’ On with the Weavers. The song ends the album! Here’s what they wrote about it in the liner notes:
“Here again was the fragment of a song with an appealing rhythm we wanted to preserve. We wrote new lyrics to tell a lonesome tale: who has not felt [it].”
What the Liner Notes Taught Me
Finally, when I pulled out the Weavers album, I also pulled out The Weavers Greatest Hits. When I looked at the tracklist, I recognized the majority of them, including the likes of “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine,” “Wimoweh,” and “Rock Island Line.” Hey, is that the Johnny Cash song? Yep.
Anyway, I saw that many of these songs were written by Paul Campbell, and “Kisses Sweeter than Wine” and “Rock Island Line” were written by Paul Campbell and Joel Newman. Who were these songwriters??? Off again to Google!
Paul Campbell is a pseudonym used by The Weavers (Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Ronnie Gilbert) between 1948 and 1953 to copyright their arrangements of traditional folk songs. It allowed the group to claim songwriting credit for adapted material, such as “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine.”
Now the question is: who is Joel Newman? The answer: Huddie Ledbetter, aka Lead Belly.
Another one of the things I learned from the liner notes on Travelin’ On with the Weavers involved “Kumbaya.” When they first encountered it, all they had was the word “Kumbaya,” brought back from Africa, and a rhythm that sounded like a lullaby. So they wrote it as a lullaby.
All of this from pulling one random album off a shelf.
