Rick Dougherty
It's a long and a dusty road
There was always music going at our house when I was growing up. My mother played beautiful classical piano and my father and sister sang, so on trips in the car we would pass the time harmonizing, always listening for whatever part was open.
​
I played piano by ear at home and had learned to read a little, but in high school I began playing guitar with a particular interest in finger-styles, and within a year I was appearing in local coffee-houses in Pasadena. By the time I left the City College I was playing ragtime guitar and had been given a citation by the music department as one of its most promising students.
But LA is a tough place to learn the ropes, and after going through a bad record contract and having all the production money stolen by our crooked manager, I moved north to San Francisco. After only a short stay there I was invited by a friend to come join the booming folk music scene in Denver. So I packed my guitar and suitcase in my car, picked up a couple of travelers from the Berkeley students bulletin board and took off for Denver, which began an almost ten-year span of wandering.
I supported myself by playing in the steak-and-lobster house restaurants which were popular at the time, and lots and lots of hotel lounges (the H-clubs: Hyatt’s, Hiltons, Holiday and Hampshire Inns). The highlight of all this was being the opening act at Marvelous Marv’s for Odetta.​​ But at the end of ten years on the road, I was burnt out and decided to come home to the Bay Area, complete my degree in math and computers and just play music for myself.
​It was 1983 when I signed up as a computing major at Sonoma State, but by the end of the first semester I had changed over to the music department where I had been awarded vocal and guitar scholarships, sung the title role in "Candide" and become an assistant to the director of the opera program.
All this while I had continued to write songs and vocal arrangements and sing in school ensembles and also in a trio with Sylvia Herold and Chuck Aaronson called "Cafe Society" that performed swing music from the 30's and 40's using many of my arrangements.
I graduated with honors in 1987 and began working with several of the opera companies in the Bay Area as a technical and stage director. Then in 1991 I was invited to be the stage director for the Bear Valley Music Festival where I had the pleasure of working with Gwendolyn Jones, John Garrison and Evelyn de la Rosa in productions of "Carmen," "La Traviata," and "The Abduction from the Seraglio" among others. By 1999 I had directed 36 operas in the Bay area.
Now, all through school I had been working at the Luther Burbank Center and had been introduced to the Limeliters when they played there. They had been looking for a tenor to replace Red Grammer who would be leaving the group soon to pursue his career in children’s music. When Red left in 1990 they called me and I joined the group, singing the high tenor lines originally sung by Glenn Yarbrough.
I also sang in several of the operas, including "Die Fledermaus" and "Madama Butterfly." I gave workshops on singing at Camp Harmony (SF Folk Music Club) and the Sonoma County Folk Festival and was a staff artist and workshop leader at the California Traditional Music Society New Year's Camp in 1991. In 1993 I joined the a cappella jazz quintet Meritage.​
The Limeliters held together for 13 years, long enough to do the “This is Your Land” PBS Special hosted by the Smothers Brothers and Judy Collins, sharing the stage with Glenn Yarbrough, The Kingston Trio and many other artists of the 60s. But soon after that Bill, I and our manager, Jerry Lon, were tired of dealing with Alex and all three of us left the group. For what, no one knew, but we all believed this wouldn’t be the end for us.​​
In 1996 Lou Gottlieb passed away quite suddenly, and the Limeliters needed someone to fill his slot in the group. Fortunately, Bill Zorn had just come home to Phoenix from England and stepped in to continue the group.
​​As it turned out the next phase came very quickly. The PBS Special had been such a hit that an agent out of Florida wanted to put together a touring show with the Kingston Trio, The Brothers Four and the Limeliters. The problem was that the Limeliters had just disbanded. So, Jerry Lon asked Bill and me if we would like to form a group with Glenn called the Folk Reunion and we both jumped at the chance. But just at this point, Bob Shane of The Kingston Trio had a heart attack and asked Bill to step in for him. (Bill had sung with the group for several years in the early 70s.) But fortunately for us, Dick Foley, one of the original members of The Brothers Four stepped in to fill the slot for a baritone.
The first season of the tour was wonderful, and bookings were already pouring in for the following year. But Glenn, who never wanted to do the same thing for long, quit the group, and the tour ended after a single season. Jerry Lon, who had also been Glenn's manager, told me Glenn had never ridden a winning horse he didn't manage to shoot. This one was no exception.
​
"But fortune is a blind god," go the lyrics of an old song, and after the very last show of the tour George Grove, the banjo player and de facto leader of The Kingston Trio, asked if I would like to join them and take Bobby Haworth’s place in the group. Thank you, fate.​
The Limeliters had acquired some level of fame in their heyday, especially because of the vocals of Glenn Yarbrough, but The Kingston Trio had been the biggest group in the world from 1958 wtih “Tom Dooley” up until 1962 with “Greenback Dollar,” which put them on an entirely different level. The Limeliters had played only once or twice a month, whereas the KT had fifty bookings a year. ​
​​
Even for the old faithful fans, this formation of the KT was considered the best one ever, with powerful vocals, great instruments and a show that pulled people in. We enjoyed the good times and rode out the bad times and stayed together until 2017, when Bob Shane, the last original member and owner of the group, pulled the rug out from under us and leased the KT name to three other guys in a secret deal that we didn’t find out about until the last minute. George had been with the group for 41 years. I had been with them for 12 and Bill for 14 as well as having been in the group for several years in the 70s. Worst of all, Shane had stiffed us for several months of gigs for which we were never paid. So much for loyalty being rewarded.
Once again floating free, George called up and said he was not ready for someone else to tell him when he was retiring, so would I like to join him in a new group, and I immediately said yes. We realized we needed a third person and the question was who would that be? After looking around for a while and several interviews we found Jerry Siggins. He had been singing with The Diamonds for 27 years and had done a dozen years with The Dapper Dans, the barbershop group from Disneyland before that. After seeing him in a doo-wop review show we asked him to come sing through some songs with us to see how he would fit in. I thought “Road to Freedom” was a good test of how well we could really ring those harmonies and it was the very first song Jerry picked to try out. When we hit the last chord and it rang like a bell, I reached out my hand and said, “How would you like to join the group?” Jerry gave a big grin and said yes, but we were so thrilled with the sound we kept on singing through the rest of the songs for another hour.
The best part of this was that since we weren’t a "name" group we weren't stuck with just one group’s songs; we could sing songs covering the entire folk spectrum, which really opened things up for us. We started getting some excellent bookings and things have just kept rolling from there.
​​
Now we’ll just have to see where life leads, but somehow I know there will always be music in it.