In the early 1960's American pop music underwent its first roots revival with the sudden upsurge in popularity for folk music. Young performers from all over the country came to realize what their idols, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and a handful of others had learned long ago; there wasn't anything quite as effective as a guitar and a song for communicating a message.
It was Joan Baez who brought a skinny guy from Minnesota named Bob Dylan to the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and national attention. But he was just the tip of the iceberg in the folk revival. Rambling Jack Elliot, Utah Phillips, Phil Ochs, Richard & Mimi Farina, and countless others brought guitars, voices and idealism to American popular culture.
Primarily they all were building on the traditions of the music that had come over with immigrants from the British Isles who modified songs from the old country to fit their new circumstances. "Pretty Saro, "Barbara Allen," "Two Sisters," and others all took on the distinctive sound of the Ozarks and Tennessee to form the backbone of Country and Folk music.
Even though 1963 was the time of the Freedom Riders, young white men and women heading down South in support of Black civil rights activities, there was far less interest expressed by the folk movement for the other major vein of music waiting to be tapped. The Blues, and most Black music, was still primarily uncharted territory for the majority of young white Americans. The primary reason being that there weren’t that many opportunities for the general public to listen to it.
Three young men who did get bitten by the Blues bug at the time were John Koerner, Tony Glover, and the late Dave Ray. Brought together through circumstance, location, and a love of the Blues the three formed a lose knit trio, released a couple of albums, toured a bit, and then pretty much went their separate ways for the rest of the sixties and most of the seventies.
It wasn't until the '80s that they started drifting back together again. Although they had kept in touch and worked on a number of projects together, in a variety of capacities, they hadn't really played together. But from the eighties to the time of Dave Ray's death from cancer in 2002, they played together either as duos or in full trio form. They even released their an album in 1996 for the first time in more then thirty years.
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