More than a decade before "Dueling Banjos," he had distinguished himself as a member of two popular folk groups, the Greenbriar Boys and the Tarriers, and as an in-demand session musician in New York.
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The Tarriers were an American vocal group, specializing in folk music and folk-flavored popular music. Named after the folk song "Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill", the group had two hit songs during 1956-57: "Cindy, Oh Cindy" (with Vince Martin) and "The Banana Boat Song." The two singles became US Top Ten hits and peaked at No. 26 and No. 15 respectively in the UK Singles Chart.
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The best-known version was released by American singer Harry Belafonte in 1956 (originally titled "Banana Boat (Day-O)") and later became one of his signature songs. That same year The Tarriers released an alternative version that incorporated the chorus of another Jamaican folk song, "Hill and Gully Rider". The Tarriers version was recorded by Shirley Bassey in 1957 for her 1959 album The Bewitching Miss Bassey.
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Darling was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Inspired by the folk music group The Weavers, in the 1950s, he formed The Tunetellers, which evolved into The Tarriers with actor/singer Alan Arkin. Their version of the "Banana Boat Song" reached #4 on the Billboard charts. In April 1958 Darling replaced Pete Seeger in The Weavers, and he continued working club dates with The Tarriers until November 1959.
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Because The Weavers only performed sporadic concert dates and recording sessions, Darling continued working with The Tarriers until a November 1959 scheduling conflict forced his departure. His replacement was banjoist/singer Eric Weissberg, later of "Dueling Banjos" fame. Because of Carey's growing unreliability, Weissberg recruited his college friend Marshall Brickman to join the group. The Tarriers briefly worked as a quartet until late 1963, when Brickman, Cooper and Weissberg reluctantly dismissed Carey for missing shows.
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Brickman was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to American parents Pauline (née Wolin) and Abram Brickman. His family was Jewish. After attending the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he became a member of Folk act The Tarriers in 1962, recruited by former classmate Eric Weissberg. Following the disbanding of The Tarriers in 1965, Brickman joined The New Journeymen with John Phillips and Michelle Phillips, who later had success with The Mamas & the Papas.
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This release became their biggest hit, reaching number four on the pop charts, where it outperformed Belafonte's version. The Tarriers' version was recorded by Shirley Bassey in 1957 and it became a hit in the United Kingdom. The Tarriers, or some subset of the three members of the group (Erik Darling, Bob Carey and Alan Arkin, later better known as an actor) are sometimes credited as the writers of the song; their version combined elements of another song and was thus newly created.
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Caribbean Guitar is the eighteenth studio album recorded by American guitarist Chet Atkins, released in 1962. Atkins' treatment of "Banana Boat Song" is based on The Tarriers' version, not Harry Belafonte's more famous rendition.
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The group formed from a collection of folk singers who performed regularly at Washington Square in New York City during the mid-1950s, including Erik Darling and Bob Carey. "Eventually it became the Tarriers, with Bob, me, Karl Karlton and Alan Arkin," Darling told Wayne Jancik in The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders. According to Darling, "Karl didn't really mesh" and left the group before the remaining trio secured a contract with Glory Records in 1956, where the Tarriers scored two hits.Wayne Jancik, The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders, expanded first edition (Billboard Books, 1998) , p. 28.
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During their career, the group in its various configurations recorded six albums. One for Glory Records, one for United Artists Records, one for Atlantic Records and three for Decca Records including The Tarriers at the Bitter End - Decca, and another on which they backed folksinger Oscar Brand - Folk Songs for Fun, Decca, 1962.
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The group went into hiatus in 1964 while Cooper recovered from heart surgery and Weissberg honored his National Guard commitments. Brickman joined John Phillips and Michelle Phillips in The New Journeymen. When Cooper and Weissberg reformed the trio, Al Dana was Brickman's replacement. With the decline in popularity of folk music in the wake of the British Invasion, The Tarriers disbanded in 1964.
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The Tarriers appeared in a 1957 low-budget musical Calypso Heat Wave, in which they lip-synched to "The Banana Boat Song" and "Choucoune." After completing a European tour in early 1958, Arkin left the group to pursue acting. His replacement was Clarence Cooper, a singer rooted in blues and gospel. In March 1958, Darling was recruited to replace Pete Seeger in The Weavers.
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For a thorough discussion of the subject, see Peter J. Curry, "Tom Dooley": The Ballad That Started The Folk Boom. Carey and Darling later joined Alan Arkin, who would go on to achieve fame as an actor, to form the highly successful folk group The Tarriers. Sprung was also a familiar face in the mid-1950s Washington Square gatherings of folk musicians in Greenwich Village.
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Seeger, opposed to the dangers of tobacco and discouraged by the group's apparent sell-out to commercial interests, decided to resign. Honoring his commitment to record the jingle, he left the group on March 3, 1958. Seeger recommended Erik Darling of The Tarriers as his replacement. Darling remained with the group until June 1962, leaving to pursue a solo career and eventually to form the folk-jazz trio The Rooftop Singers.
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Arkin attended Los Angeles City College from 1951 to 1953. He also attended Bennington College. With two friends, he formed the folk music group The Tarriers, in which Arkin sang and played guitar. The band members co-composed the group's 1956 hit "The Banana Boat Song", a reworking, with some new lyrics, of a traditional, Jamaican calypso folk song of the same name, combined with another titled "Hill and Gully Rider".
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Choucoune was recorded by "Katherine Dunham and her Ensemble" for the Decca album Afro- Caribbean Songs and Rhythms released in 1946 (with the title spelled as Choucounne), and was first recorded in Haiti by Emerante (Emy) de Pradines for her Voodoo - Authentic Music of Haiti album (Remington R-199-151) released in the US in 1953. The song also appeared in the 1957 Calypso-exploitation film Calypso Heat Wave, performed by The Tarriers, sung by the group's lead singer, Alan Arkin.
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Side two of Belafonte's 1956 Calypso album opens with "Star O", a song referring to the day shift ending when the first star is seen in the sky. During recording, when asked for its title, Harry spells, "Day Done Light". Also in 1956, folk singer Bob Gibson, who had traveled to Jamaica and heard the song, taught his version to the folk band The Tarriers. They recorded a version of that song that incorporated the chorus of "Hill and Gully Rider", another Jamaican folk song.
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He also recorded such luminaries as Sam Cooke and the Pilgrim Travelers, Ivory Joe Hunter, Sarah Kernochan, Vince Martin and the Tarriers, the Nashville Street Singers, Ted Neeley, Wayne Newton, Jack Nitzche, Shorty Rogers, Bonnie Murray Tamblyn, Harriet Schock, Gene Vincent, Waddy Wachtel, Clara Ward, Sarah Kim Wilde, Bobby Womack, and Frank Zappa. He also produced the original cast albums for the Broadway musical Salvation and the off-Broadway hit The Last Session by Steve Schalchlin - ironically, Venet's last session. Venet's name is listed in the music credits for the 1965 skateboard film, Skaterdater.
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Vince Martin (born Vincent Marcellino; March 17, 1937 – July 6, 2018) was an American folk singer and songwriter. He first recorded with the Tarriers (Erik Darling, Alan Arkin and Bob Carey) in 1956, on the hit single "Cindy, Oh Cindy". He became more widely known with his duo recordings with Fred Neil in the early 1960s. The album Tear Down The Walls (1964) contained mainly Neil's songs, recorded with musicians including John Sebastian and Felix Pappalardi, and became popular and influential on the burgeoning folk (and later folk rock) scene.
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"Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill" is an American folk song first published in 1888 and attributed to Thomas Casey (words) and later Charles Connolly (music). The song is a work song, and makes references to the construction of the American railroads in the mid-19th century. The title refers to Irish workers, drilling holes in rock to blast out railroad tunnels. It may mean either to tarry as in delay, or to terrier dogs which dig their quarry out of the ground,Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong (1980, 2000) by Norm Cohen, University of Illinois Press, p.
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It was further popularized by The Kingston Trio on tour starting in 1957. Capitalizing on the Weavers' folk success with the song, Robert Nemiroff and Burt D'Lugoff appropriated the melody unchanged for their pop song Cindy, Oh Cindy, originally recorded in 1956 by Vince Martin and The Tarriers, and quickly covered by Eddie Fisher. Dan Zanes performed a children's version done calypso-style on his popular 2002 album Night Time. "Pay Me My Money Down" was the first single and video released from Bruce Springsteen's 2006 big band folk album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions.
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Eric Weissberg (August 16, 1939 – March 22, 2020) was an American singer, banjo player, and multi-instrumentalist, whose most commercially successful recording was his banjo solo in "Dueling Banjos," featured as the theme of the film Deliverance (1972) and released as a single that reached number 2 in the United States and Canada in 1973. A member of the folk group the Tarriers for years, Weissberg later developed a career as a session musician. He played and recorded with leading folk, bluegrass, rock, and popular musicians and groups from the middle of the 20th century to its end.
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He recorded prolifically in the 1890s, for the United States Phonograph Company, Columbia Phonograph Company, and Berliner Gramophone. Except for one US Everlasting cylinder in 1910 and a single side for the American Pathé company in 1916, Gaskin's recording career ended in 1904 for reasons unknown. He died in New York on December 14, 1920. His repertoire included "Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill" (1891), "Oh Promise Me" (1893), "After the Ball" (1893), "The Sidewalks of New York", (1895), "A Hot Time in the Old Town" (1896), "On the Banks of the Wabash" (1897), and "When You Were Sweet Sixteen" (1900).
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"Cindy, Oh Cindy" is a song, written by Robert Nemiroff and Burt D'Lugoff and credited to their pseudonyms, Robert Barron and Burt Long. It used as its melody a stevedore song, "Pay Me My Money Down", collected by Lydia Parrish in her 1942 book Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands,Parrish, Lydia; Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, New York: Creative Age (1942). which was performed by The Weavers during their influential 1955 Carnegie Hall concerts and further popularized by the Kingston Trio on tour starting in 1957. The song was originally recorded in 1956 by Vince Martin and the Tarriers, and quickly covered by Eddie Fisher.
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In addition to the popular, mainstream ballads and other clean-cut songs, some Tin Pan Alley publishers focused on rough songs such as "Drill Ye Tarriers" in 1888, believed to have been written by an unskilled laborer turned stage performer named Thomas F. Casey. Coon songs were another important part of Tin Pan Alley, derived from the watered-down songs of the minstrel show with the "verve and electricity" brought by the "assimilation of the ragtime rhythm." The first popular coon song was "New Coon in Town," introduced in 1883, and was followed by a wave of coon shouters such as Ernest Hogan and May Irwin.Ewen, pg.
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Hootenanny was an American musical variety television show broadcast on ABC from April 1963 to September 1964. The program was hosted by Jack Linkletter. It primarily featured pop-oriented folk music acts, including The Journeymen, The Limeliters, the Chad Mitchell Trio, The New Christy Minstrels, The Brothers Four, Ian & Sylvia, The Big 3, Hoyt Axton, Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, The Carter Family, Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, The Tarriers, Bud & Travis, and the Smothers Brothers. Although both popular and influential, the program is primarily remembered today for the controversy created when the producers blacklisted certain folk music acts, which then led to a boycott by others.
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He was followed by a movement of folk musicians, such as Dave Guard of the Kingston Trio and Erik Darling of the Weavers and Tarriers. Earl Scruggs was seen both as a legend and a "contemporary musical innovator" who gave his name to his style of playing, the Scruggs Style. Scruggs played the banjo "with heretofore unheard of speed and dexterity," using a picking technique for the 5-string banjo that he perfected from 2-finger and 3-finger picking techniques in rural North Carolina. His playing reached Americans through the Grand Ole Opry and into the living rooms of Americans who didn't listen to country or bluegrass music, through the theme music of the Beverley Hillbillies.
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Over the years, "This Train" has been covered by artists specializing in numerous genres, including blues, folk, bluegrass, gospel, rock, post-punk, jazz, reggae, and zydeco. Among the solo artists and groups who have recorded it are Louis Armstrong, Big Bill Broonzy, Brothers Four, Hylo Brown, Alice Coltrane, Delmore Brothers, Sandy Denny, D.O.A., Lonnie Donegan, Jimmy Durante, Snooks Eaglin, Bob Gibson, Joe Glazer, John Hammond, Jr., Cisco Houston, Janis Ian, Johnny Cash, Mahalia Jackson, Ella Jenkins, Sleepy LaBeef, The Limeliters, Trini Lopez, Bob Marley & The Wailers, Ziggy Marley, The Alarm, Ricky Nelson, Peter, Paul & Mary, Utah Phillips, Pete Seeger, The Seekers, Roberta Sherwood, Hank Snow, David Soul, Staples Singers, Billy Strange, the Tarriers, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Hank Thompson, Bradley Nowell of Sublime, Randy Travis, The Verlaines, Bunny Wailer, Nina Hagen, Girls at Our Best!, Buckwheat Zydeco, The Paul Mirfin Band, Jools Holland, and University of Exeter Contemporary Choir.
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In June 1956, Goodman created his first record, "The Flying Saucer Parts 1 & II", which he co-wrote with his partner Bill Buchanan, and which was a four-minute rewrite of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio show. This recording was the subject of a copyright infringement case against Goodman. The court eventually ruled his sampled mix was considered a parody and thus an entirely new work. The song "The Flying Saucer" was officially released under the artist name "Buchanan and Goodman" and was Goodman's highest-charting single on Billboard, peaking at No. 3. Buchanan and Goodman followed up with five other records: "Buchanan and Goodman on Trial" (#80 in 1956), "Banana Boat Story" (in which the duo used a single song, the Tarriers' "Banana Boat Song", as a break-in spoof of broadcast commercials), "Flying Saucer the 2nd" (#18 in 1957), "The Creature (From a Science Fiction Movie)" (by Buchanan and Ancell) (#85 in 1957), and "Santa and the Satellite (Parts I & II)" (#32 in 1957).
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