P. 2
Terry Gilkyson’s extraordinary career began with appropriately humble roots in the small town of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, where he arrived on June 17, 1916. Radio and music were a big part of family life in that time period, and their home was no different than most homes of the day---music was a prime source of entertainment. His interest and schooling in music began when he was a child, and continued throughout his formal education. He majored in Music at the University of Pennsylvania, but left after two years.
He moved to Tucson, AZ, around 1937, spent a few years working on a friend’s ranch, and began to write some simple folk songs. With WWII’s arrival, he went into the armed forces. After a stint in the Army’s cavalry he spent the rest of his military time in the Army Air Corps until his discharge in December, 1945.
Like many a son of the times, he returned home to Pennsylvania and took over his father’s insurance business, expanding it to include some real estate interests. None of these interests would hold him long in Pennsylvania. After only two years, his dream of a career in music became too vivid and in 1947 he packed his bags and, with his new bride, headed to California hoping to promote his songs and start a career as a folk singer.
"It’s a mighty hard row..." Woody Guthrie had written about the migrant’s dillema, and it was also a hard row to hoe for someone without connections to get a start in the L.A. music industry. After a year, Gilkyson landed his first professional job in the music business at Armed Forces Radio. His weekly show was titled "The Solitary Singer" and ran from 1948 through 1951. This job had him performing folk songs on the air and discussing them. He was thoroughly aware of the McCarthy hearings and the "Red Scare," which was beginning to take its toll on many other folk singers of the time. By carefully avoiding controversial political and social topical folk songs that were prominent at the time, he side-stepped the fear of being blacklisted.
His non-standard approach to a folk music career was probably more a benefit than a hindrance. Instead of being a student of folk music and studying the history of the songs and writers, Gilkyson focused more on writing his own songs in the folk music style. Because of that, he was able to begin selling his own songs, rather than trying to rise to the top as a folk performer.
One of Gilkyson’s first recordings (June 6, 1949) was "The Cry of the Wild Goose" for Decca Records. A few months later Gilkyson’s friend, Wally Brady, who was a music promoter, passed the song on to Mitch Miller, who was then head of A&R (artist and repertory) for Mercury Records. Miller then pitched it to Frankie Laine who made the song a #1 hit in 1950. Tennessee Ernie Ford would also score big with that song in the mid 1950s.
Decca was trying to promote Gilkyson as a folk singer, so at the suggestion of someone at the top of the record company, the Weavers were asked to record a couple songs with him. Having worked to earn their own place in folk music, it seems that the Weaver’s didn’t enthusiastically embrace the idea. Nonetheless, the recording session handed the Weavers a #2 hit for eight weeks in 1951 when ON TOP OF OLD SMOKY (Decca 27515)" was released along with their other collaboration, ACROSS THE WIDE MISSOURI.
Decca released the following Gilkyson solo albums: FOLKSONGS (Decca 5263/1950), TERRY GILKYSON (DL 5305/1951), and GOLDEN MINUTES OF FOLK MUSIC (DL-5457/1952).
In 1951 Gilkyson began moving his career more towards movies. In past years he had occasionally done film work as an extra, but the work seemed to be coming his way more and more. He nearly always played a folksinger or a cowboy with guitar role, and slowly he started getting roles with dialogue. He received credits in the movies "Star in the Dust" (1956) (as The Music Man) and "Slaughter Trail" (1951) (as Singalong)
Sometime around 1953 Gilkyson met Rich Dehr and Frank Miller at a radio station. At the time, the station, KGIL, would allow folk singers to come in and play live on one of their evening radio shows. The three of them happened to be at the radio station one night and got together afterwards. Dehr and Miller had been performing in small clubs for a number of years as the Easy Riders. The group name evolved one day when the two of them were playing the song "C.C. Rider." Gilkyson seemed to be a perfect fit to the duo and joined the group soon after. Gilkyson’s baritone voice melded perfectly with Dehr’s alto and Miller’s tenor vocals. Rich Dehr carried the lead vocal on most of the Easy Riders’ songs until their breakup.
Dehr and Miller had already been writing a few songs together, but with the addition of Gilkyson, they had the added benefit of an already successful songwriter amongst the group, with label recognition. Ironically, the Dehr-Miller duo often performed in the Topanga Canyon area, where many prominent folk artists had settled. Rich Dehr lived in the area and among those in his circle of friends were Woody Guthrie and Will Geer. Still, the group would steer clear of controversial songs during their career.
Before the Easy Riders ever released a record, the trio enjoyed enormous success when they co-wrote the #1 hit "Memories are Made of This," which Dean Martin recorded with the Easy Riders singing background. The recorded a few singles including YERMO'S NIGHTMARE, YERMO RED (Columbia 40742/1956) and the infectuous island-style MARIANNE (Columbia 40817).
On May 31, 1956, they went into Columbia’s L.A. studios to record their first album, MARIANNE AND OTHER SONGS (Rel. 1957/CL990). On the first day they cut "Whatcha Gonna Do?", "So True Blues," "U.S. Adam," "Rollin’ Home," "Everybody Loves Saturday Night," and "Marianne." The casual live feeling and astonishing vocal harmonies on these first songs certainly make them treasures. The oft-covered "Marianne" would become the Easy Riders’ biggest commercial hit, but is still far from being their best. "Marianne" would later be covered by Burl Ives, The Kingston Trio, and Harry Belafonte. During the Columbia years, the Easy Riders enjoyed another benefit of being on contract to a major label--access to some of the best musicians in L.A. Talents like Merle Travis, Red Callender, Perry Botkin, and Joe Maphis are scattered throughout many of their recorded tracks.
Continuing their career propensity for being more successful as songwriters than performers, 1957 found Frankie Laine returning to record another Gilkyson penned song, "Love is a Golden Ring" which he took to #10 in the charts, while also charting with "The Girl in the Wood" as well as his earlier hit with Gilkyson "Cry of the Wild Goose" back in 1950. Two other Easy Rider songs popularized by others were, "South Coast" and "Fast Freight," which The Kingston Trio included on three of their earliest albums. The folk group The Brothers Four took the Riders’ "Greenfields" to #2 in 1960 and The New Christy Minstrels cut "Everybody Loves Saturday Night" in 1963 which made the top-30.
The Easy Riders recorded three albums for Columbia Records, MARIANNE AND OTHER FOLK SONGS YOU'LL LIKE (CL-990/1957), WINDJAMMER (CL.../....), and WANDERIN’ FOLK SONGS (CL1302/1959), before breaking up in the Spring of 1959. Among the singles released were: "TINA" (CL 40910/May 1957) and "THE SWEET SUGAR CANE" (CL 41284), both of which were calypso follow-ups to the success of "Marianne.".
During their time together they recorded traditional Irish and American folk songs as well as Cowboy songs, sea-shanties, Blues, Mexican, Gospel, and Calypso music. While they shied from labor union songs, and those with contemporary political or social commentary, their body of adapted and new folk music embodies the rest of the genre like a warm quilt.
Late in 1959, Terry Gilkyson went in the studio and recorded two songs for Columbia, neither of which made it to vinyl. In May of 1960, he returned to the studio with Rich Dehr and two young singer-musicians, Bernie Armstrong and Carson Parks, this time to record for Kapp Records. Armstrong and Parks had been performing as a folk duo in clubs and had met Terry Gilkyson at Gold Star Studios in the fall of 1959.
Carson Parks recalls, "When Bernie Armstrong and I went into Gold Star Studios in late ‘59 [to record some audition demos], the engineer said ‘You guys should go see Terry Gilkyson’. To me, it was like a suggestion to see the Pope! Bernie and I continued to play the clubs at night, but we also spent much of the fall of ‘59 and spring of ‘60 rehearsing for the first album with Terry and Rich."
This new assembly of Gilkyson-Dehr-Parks-Armstrong would come to be known as "Terry Gilkyson and the Easy Riders." They would record two albums of new material, with a couple of songs re-recorded from Gilkyson’s solo career earlier in the decade. Another recording, REMEMBER THE ALAMO, released in 1960 contained two songs written for the John Wayne-Richard Widmark motion picture "The Alamo." "The Ballad of the Alamo" reached #34 for Marty Robbins. The other releases were: ROLLIN’ (Kapp 3196/1960) and CRY OF THE WILD GOOSE (Kapp 1327/1963).
It is hard to understand why Terry Gilkyson’s and the Easy Riders’ careers are not more well known today. Perhaps it was that their songs steered clear of political topics, unlike the folk movement that followed in the early ‘60s. Perhaps it was because they were twenty years older than the college students of the day. One thing is for certain---Terry Gilkyson and the Easy Riders were a big influence on the successful careers of many music artists and there is little doubt they are one of the missing links to the "lost" years of folk music.
Gilkyson’s interests once again returned to the film industry where , during the ‘60s, he worked extensively for Disney, writing songs and themes for Swiss Family Robinson (1960), Savage Sam (1963), The Jungle Book (1967), The Aristocats, Thomasina, and television’s The Wonderful World of Disney.
His Oscar nomination for writing "The Bare Necessities" is also augmented by being a five-time BMI award winner for "Greenfields," "Memories are Made of This," "Marianne," "Tell Me a Story," and "Cry of the Wild Goose."
Terry Gilkyson retired in the ‘70s and lived his last years in Santa Fe, NM.
He left a gift behind for all of us that is his music. He also leaves behind three children who followed him into the music business. Nancy, who had risen to be VP at Warner Bros. Records; Eliza, who continues with her own celebrated career as a folk singer-songwriter; and Tony, a guitarist/producer and former member of the L.A.-based rock band "X".
---Don Richardson, October 25, 1999
©Don Richardson