The Kingston Trio

Formed in the late 1950s, the Kingston Trio were one of the key groups in America's first folk revival. Playing traditional folk songs with an ear for the pop charts, the Trio broke through to the mainstream in part by avoiding the more overt political aspects of folk music embraced by artists that came before them such as the Almanac Singers and the Weavers. Despite their clean-cut image, the Kingston Trio still had a profound influence on the Greenwich Village folkies that dominated the scene in the early-to-mid '60s. The group went through several line-up shifts in the decades to come, but continued to perform well into the '90s.