Alan Wolf Arkin was an American actor and filmmaker. In a career spanning seven decades, he received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for six Emmy Awards.
The Dream Weavers was an American popular music, vocal group, famous in the 1950s, formed at the University of Florida by Gene Adkinson and Wade Buff.
"The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is a song originally written and first recorded in 1939 by Solomon Linda under the title "Mbube", through South African Gallo Record Company. Lyrics of Linda's original version were written in Zulu, while those of the English one were later written by George David Weiss.
The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City originally consisting of Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman. Founded in 1948, the group sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children's songs, labor songs, and American ballads. The group sold millions of records at the height of their popularity, including the first folk song to reach No. 1 on popular music charts, their recording of Lead Belly's "Goodnight, Irene." Despite their popularity, the Weavers were blacklisted during much of the 1950s.
Erik Darling was an American singer-songwriter and a folk music artist. He was an important influence on the folk scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
"Day-O " is a traditional Jamaican folk song. The song has mento influences, but it is commonly classified as an example of the better known calypso music.
"Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" is a popular song, with lyrics written and music adapted in 1950 by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays of The Weavers, and recorded by Jimmie Rodgers. The tune was adapted from Lead Belly's "If It Wasn't for Dicky" (1937), which in turn was adapted from the traditional Irish folk tune "Drimindown / Drumion Dubh". The Weavers first released the song in 1951 as a Decca single, which reached number 19 on the Billboard chart and number 20 on the Cashbox chart in 1951.
Eric Weissberg 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.
Vince Martin was an American folk singer and songwriter.
"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, 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 Rooftop Singers were an American country folk-singing trio in the early 1960s, best known for the hit "Walk Right In". The group was composed of Erik Darling and Bill Svanoe with former jazz singer Lynne Taylor (vocals).
"Rock Island Line" is an American folk song. Ostensibly about the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, it appeared as a folk song as early as 1929. The first recorded performance of "Rock Island Line" was by inmates of the Arkansas Cummins State Farm prison in 1934.
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had in earlier times contributed to the development of country and western, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.
"Choucoune" is a 19th-century Haitian song composed by Michel Mauléart Monton with lyrics from a poem by Oswald Durand. It was rewritten with English lyrics in the 20th century as "Yellow Bird". Exotica musician Arthur Lyman made the song a hit in 1961.
Larry Santos is an American pop music singer-songwriter. Santos wrote songs for several American pop bands in the 1960s, including the 1963 hit "Candy Girl" for The Four Seasons which reached number 3 on Billboard Hot 100 chart. In the mid-Sixties, he recorded singles as part of a group called The Madisons, and then under his own name. He released three albums in the 1970s and scored one pop hit single, produced by Don Davis, "We Can't Hide it Anymore", which peaked on April 10, 1976, at number 36 on the Billboard Hot 100.
"Just One Look" is a song co-written by American R&B singers Doris Troy and Gregory Carroll. The recording by Doris Troy was a hit in 1963. The Hollies, Anne Murray, Linda Ronstadt and Iain Matthews each achieved great success with the song. There have also been many other versions.
"The Garden of Eden" is a song written and composed by Dennise Haas Norwood, and first recorded by Joe Valino, which reached Number 12 on the Billboard chart in October 1956. Valino recorded the song at his second session for Vik Records, a subsidiary of RCA. "I knew it would be a hit, even as I was recording it," he told Wayne Jancik in The Billboard Book of One-Hit Wonders.
The Crescendos were an early American rock and roll group from Nashville, Tennessee.
Roger Sprung was an American banjo player and teacher best known for introducing authentic bluegrass banjo picking styles to the folk music community in the north and for the eclectic manner in which he adapted bluegrass banjo techniques to music of other genres. His 1963 album Progressive Bluegrass may have been the first use of that title, later applied to a subgenre of bluegrass music by him and others.
"Happy, Happy Birthday Baby" is a 1957 song written by Margo Sylvia & Gilbert Lopez. "Happy, Happy Birthday Baby" was originally performed by The Tune Weavers, who had their only hit with this song. Both Margo Sylvia and Gilbert Lopez were members of The Tune Weavers. The single went to number four on the R&B chart and went to number five on the Hot 100. The B-side of "Happy, Happy Birthday Baby, was The Tune Weavers version of "Ol' Man River".
