ONCE UPON A TIME...
A record reissue company is poised to release a prized, scarce KINGSTON TRIO album originally recorded during a 1966 stint at the Sahara-Tahoe in Stateline, Nevada. Originally titled, "Once Upon A Time" the re-release will actually be two discs and be titled, "Once Upon A Time" and "Twice Upon A Time". Really. Anyway, since I once traveled with the Trio, I was asked to contribute to the liner notes. Hope you find them entertaining...

My Kingston Trio/Sahara Tahoe experiences were of a type that normally require about $3 million in therapy sessions to unlock in order (please God) to understand finally and deal with. Only then could one separate the demons from what was truly a transcendent three weeks...or was it three years we stayed in that grisly hotel on the edge of that painfully beautiful lake?

The first memory I'm able to dredge of that once-and-twice-upon-a-time in question was Frank Werber calling me one day in my little round office at Columbus Tower (which used to be his) and summoning me up two floors to his penthouse suite/headquarters for all things 'TRIO' and the only bunker I've ever seen with a view of both the Golden Gate and Bay bridges.

"We're flying up to Tahoe to check out the showroom at the Sahara," he announced through smoke clouds of the substance Frank employed to fuel his managerial style. The Trio's opening at the Sahara was imminent and tonight was Henry Mancini's closing. It took about 20-30 minutes in those days to get from North Beach to the San Francisco airport, so naturally we sped off from the Kearny St. garage in Frank's enormous blue Caddy convertible about eleven minutes before our flight. Which we missed. Undaunted, Frank got on a pay phone to make alternative arrangements. No cell phones in those days and yes, smart ass -- the planes WERE jets. Except the one Frank chartered. I learned to fly a little years later and I seem to remember the plane Frank arranged was probably a Cessna 172. About two steps up from a kite and only slightly faster than driving. It held a pilot, Frank, me, and our two ditty bags. We were staying overnight in a high-roller suite so mine held extra socks and shorts and a toothbrush and Frank's was jam full of management 'style.' If we'd crashed and burned on the way to Tahoe, we would have brought a rich new dimension to the concept of HIGH Sierras.

In our suite before heading down to the show Frank decided to take a quick shower. On his way to the bathroom he handed me one of his famous hand-rolled numbers (sometimes known as "the assassin's tool") and said, "Light this. I'll be right back." When he emerged a couple of minutes later I'd smoked half of it. Frank was aghast. "That was ONE TOKE stuff!" NOW he tells me...

If I tell you now that Mancini was great that night, you'll be polite enough to believe I had any awareness of it. As it happened we were seated ringside at a VIP table. I may have eaten a steak (or maybe that was a real live cow...!) but beyond that I can't tell you anything other than I saw things during the show that I never saw again until I caught that movie with Johnny Depp where he played Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. At one point, somewhere between "Moon River" and "Elephant Walk" I was seized with a need to flee. The altitude and the colored lights and the crowded showroom had put me in serious danger of hurling. I managed to stumble to my feet and careen up the aisle toward the 'gents', bouncing off banquettes all the way and hoping desperately that people would think I was only drunk instead of in the first stages of what I was convinced was a permanent psychotic breakdown. It's amazing, the recuperative powers of curling up on a tile floor, resting one's head against a commode...

Anyway, I did not mean this to be some kind of weird, 1960's hippie 'memoir d' opium'. Since those days I've never been a fan of the stuff if for no other reason than I never found any of it to come even close to the quality curated by Mr. Werber. In any case, we were who we were then and none of us still is. I mention it only to frame the Sahara Tahoe shows in the context of ...well, 'once or twice upon a time'.

I always thought the Kingston Trio in a huge Vegas-style showroom was kind of bizarre. Sort of like going to see Pete Seeger and he dresses and acts like Wayne Newton. ("This land is...ho-ho, hey-hey" - -RIMSHOT)

Not that the Trio changed anything or copped out in a casino setting. Exactly the opposite. They were just as honest and authentic in a big showroom with sophisticated sound equipment and lighting and a big house band as they were in some college 'all-purpose' room with two mikes and one spot. I am an unabashed and constant fan of the Trio and have been ever since I saw them in a college concert at my school, the University of Santa Clara. It was 1957 and they played the bill with Turk Murphy's jazz band and a singer named Barbara Dane. This was just before Tom Dooley, during their Purple Onion days. Nobody knew who they were. I remember seeing posters advertising the concert and getting them confused with "The Nairobi Trio" which was an Ernie Kovacs comic skit with three guys in ape masks. (This was also before they were seen by a certain Mr. J. Stewart who, a year younger than I, was still back at our high school doing Elvis.)

They tore it up that night, blowing Turk and everyone else off the stage of our big old drafty, rickety wreck of a theater on campus. They were great that evening and they were great every time I ever saw them, from the night they recorded "College Concert" at UCLA (I drove John Phillips) to the first night I went on the road with them at a concert in a college gym in the round somewhere in Oklahoma. The NEVER did a bad show EVER. They were hip, they were funny, and they swung. That's the extent of my musical acumen. I'm a drummer, after all.

A couple of things about the Sahara Tahoe gig:

- To our immense glee, Don Rickles was playing the Crocodile Lounge in the Sahara and we were constantly in attendance. The first night he spotted us, he went into his standard riffs about how Nick was a dwarf and Bobby was from Hawaii ("Since the war they're ALL Hawaiians) and accusing John of having somehow done away with Dave Guard. When he spotted me, he said, "Who's that?" The guys told him, "Our new road manager." Rickles snorted derisively. "Road manger. A hundred a week, gets to say 'I'm with them'. 'Don't hum when we sing.' " It was totally false, of course. I was making tens of dollars more than a hundred a week.

-These were the days when John and Frank were almost constantly at odds over one thing or another. They had great battles and each gave as good as they got and, bloodied but unbowed, lived to eagerly fight again as soon as possible. The Sahara Tahoe conflict grew out of housing arrangements for the gig. The hotel had come through with some cottages of some kind that would accommodate families. Nick got one. Bobby got one. Even Dean Reilly, our bass player, got one. They were bringing their families. At the last minute, Frank arranged one for himself. And there were no more.

John was assigned a room in the hotel - a single not unlike mine but with a better view of Lake Tahoe. And he fumed. The fact that he wasn't bringing his family made no difference. John perceived the slight. And I was put right in the middle. Because I knew about the arrangements and was sworn to secrecy by Frank. He knew I was John's best friend from high school, a fact he'd carefully considered before offering me my job, but he demanded I maintain what he characterized as 'dispassionate professionalism'. The only reason to mention this is to reiterate what I said above and to make the point that NONE of this nonsense got on stage. The shows were great. Talk about 'passionate professionalism.'

- Tahoe was a great place for a 'sit down' gig. We could ride horses around Emerald Cove in the daytime and go hear Count Basie at Harrah's down the road on the way from a great dinner up at the (now snowless) Christiana Ski lodge and then segue over to a cruddy roadhouse that had a killer bar band. We could also go a little stir crazy, even in that majestic setting. I remember destroying a telephone in my room over some idiotic dispute with room service.

-I remember walking through the casino with two thousand dollars in my pocket to distribute to the stage crew ("toke the locals" Frank called it, but smokeless in this case) and seriously considering putting it all on red at the roulette table. I stood there imagining I'd done it...as the croupier announced, "Eleven...black!" Frank would have TRULY assassinated me.

My favorite musical recordings are almost without exception live performance albums. I think it goes back to my early teens when I taught myself to play drums listening to "Benny Goodman at Carnegie Hall" which was recorded about a month before I was born but to me was as 'live' and current and exciting as being there. Live performance adds something to the mix that makes for great music. And what it adds, obviously, is not only an audience reacting to what they're hearing but musicians reacting to what they're getting from the audience. The Trio was no exception -- they were an act designed to be experienced and enjoyed in person. (It doesn't always work. When I saw the Beatles at Candlestick Park with John and John Denver, all I remember is half a chorus of their opener, "Roll Over, Beethoven" and the rest was audience screaming. )

An added advantage to having a live performance recording of the Trio is the inclusion of the 'bits' between the tunes -- the intros and banter and comedy material. John remains, to this day, a terrific stand up comic. Bobby can play 'straight man' as well as get a laugh. And Nick is in the very small company of comedians who say things funny as opposed to those who just say funny things. Groucho Marx is a prime example. At the other end of the spectrum was the great country comedian, Grandpa Jones, who could get a bigger laugh on a set up line than whoever had the punch line. Nick has that talent along with his considerable list of others. His wit, I am happy to note, remains sharp as ever. He can still put John on the floor as anyone who's been to Fantasy Camp can attest.

One more historic cosmic upheaval must be mentioned in relation to the Sahara Tahoe record. It was at times an orphan. I'm trying to remember how it happened that I spent hours in the tiny Columbus Tower studios 'mixing' the "Once Upon a Time" album. It had something to do with one of Frank and John's protracted battles. Frank, I believe, expected John to volunteer his time out of the goodness of his heart and out of some sense of responsibility to the material to supervise the mix. This, of course, was after the group broke up in 1967, and John was busy with his solo career. But no payment of any sort was to come his way, much less gratitude. Or maybe Frank and John argued over how to put the album together. It seemed Bob and Nick cared only that the record come out with a hole in the center -- a joke for those old enough to remember vinyl.

There were other people around and others were credited along with me on the original album jacket -- Hank McGill, the engineer and maybe Jon Sagen or Randy Sterling who worked for Frank. Lost in the mists of the past...all I remember is that it became my responsibility. I'd never done anything like it before. I had no idea how.

I ended up bringing a copy of "College Concert" to the editing room and constantly playing it for comparison. The big auditorium sound of that album was at least close to the sound of a showroom seating about a thousand people and I just tried to make the stuff from Tahoe sound like that. For all I know, somebody mixed it after I did.

I understand that for this release the Sahara Tahoe tapes been totally tweaked with all the expertise and equipment that didn't exist forty years ago. What wouldn't I give if they could tweak the whole bunch of us into some enhanced version of what we were all those years ago? Except I wouldn't smoke any of that stuff this time. No way. Uh uh, buster.