Bob Shane

Robert Castle Schoen (February 1, 1934 – January 26, 2020), known professionally as Bob Shane, was an American singer and guitarist who was a founding member of The Kingston Trio. In that capacity, Shane became a seminal figure in the revival of folk and other acoustic music as a popular art form in the United States in the late 1950s through the mid-1960s.

The success of the Kingston Trio in its heyday had repercussions far beyond its voluminous album sales (including four albums simultaneously in the Top 10 in 1959), its host of imitators, and the relatively short-lived pop-folk boom it created. For the Kingston Trio's success took acoustic folk-based music out of the niche market it had occupied prior to the Trio's arrival and moved it into the mainstream of American popular music, opening the door for major record labels to record and market both more traditional folk musicians and singer-songwriters.

Shane was born on February 1, 1934, in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii, the son of Margaret (Schaufelberger) and Arthur Castle Schoen, a wholesale distributor of toys and sporting goods. His mother was from Salt Lake City, and his father was a Hawaiian of German descent. Shane was in his own words "a fourth-generation islander". He attended local schools, including the prestigious Punahou School for his junior high and high school years. Punahou's curriculum emphasized native Hawaiian culture, complementing Shane's already developing interest in music in general and Hawaiian music in particular.

During these years, Shane (the phonetic spelling he began using in 1957) taught himself to play first ukulele and then guitar, influenced especially by Hawaiian slack key guitarists like Gabby Pahinui. It was also during these years that Shane met Punahou classmate Dave Guard and began performing with him at parties and school variety shows.

Following graduation in 1952, Shane attended Menlo College in Menlo Park, California, while Guard matriculated at nearby Stanford University. At Menlo, Shane met and became fast friends with Nick Reynolds, originally from the San Diego area and also a musician and singer with a broad knowledge of folk and popular songs, due in part to Reynolds's music-loving father, a captain in the Navy. Shane introduced Reynolds to Guard, and in 1956, the three began performing together as part of an informal aggregation that could, according to Reynolds, expand to as large as six or seven members. The group went under different names, most often as "Dave Guard and the Calypsonians". They made little more than beer money and had no formal professional aspirations. Shane dropped out of college in his senior year and returned to Hawaii to work in the family business.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.