Getaway John" Manuscript

1959. Very good. Original working manuscript of "Getaway John" from the album At Large, handwritten by Dave Guard, founding member and leader of The Kingston Trio. Titled at top, with chord symbols, full musical notation in treble and bass clefs, and complete lyrics written in phonetic spelling for singing pronunciation, in dark pencil with several neat revisions and corrections, and erasures throughout; on recto of a 12" x 16" sheet of yellow 12-staff manuscript paper. Measure numbers and structural notations appear at bottom. Guard's complete arrangement of the traditional folk ballad previously recorded by the Carter Family in 1929. John Hardy was an actual historical figure executed by hanging in West Virginia in 1894 for the murder of a man following a card game, though the killing apparently stemmed from a love triangle. The ballad's final verse references Hardy's religious conversion during his imprisonment, when authorities permitted him to undergo baptism in a river on the morning of his execution.

The Kingston Trio achieved immediate commercial breakthrough in 1958 with "Tom Dooley," which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, sold six million copies, received the inaugural Grammy Award for Best Country & Western Recording (1959), and earned induction into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. The single's extraordinary success catalyzed the folk revival that dominated American popular music through the early 1960s, establishing commercial viability for performers including Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, and Bob Dylan. This folk boom subsequently enabled the development of folk rock when groups like The Byrds and The Animals electrified traditional arrangements during the mid-1960s, but the genre's mainstream acceptance originated with The Kingston Trio. Guard, the sole member possessing musical literacy and notation skills, functioned as the group's principal arranger and architect of their distinctive sound until his departure in 1961.