Red River Shore- (CA) 1965 Kingston Trio REC
[From Kingston Trio; Somethin' Else; Released November 15, 1965; LP record (Decca DL4694). This version is not traditional but an arrangement and is included here as an adaptation of a traditional ballad (probably Dobie's version collected in 1925 with the title, On the Red River Shore, from the Norman Luboff Choir version c. 1960) in a pseudo country-western style. The song as arranged by Jack Splittard and Randy Cierley. Jack Splittard was a pseudonym used by Kingston Trio for publication of some compositions early in their career. They met Cierley in California around 1962. Randy Cierley commented on his site:
Since I had met and become friends with Mo Ostin, who was now president of “Reprise Records,” while working with the “Kingston Trio” I decided that we had nothing to lose and went to see him one day.
Here's more from the Comparative Video 101 site: The copyright for "Red River Shore" is assigned as "Adapted by Jack Splittard and Randy Cierley." The former is the pseudonym that the KT adopted for copyrights that the three musicians wanted to claim jointly, much as "Paul Campbell" had been for The Weavers - albeit with the KT-ish humor of splitting the jack, a now nearly archaic term for money. Cierley, however, is a very real person who figured in the late stages of the Trio's first decade; he has had a fascinating and somewhat harrowing life and musical career that he chronicles in a great website HERE. It's certainly worth a look: Cierly has worked with some of the greats and has endured more than most of us ever will. In his youth, though, he worked as a musician and arranger on some of the cuts on the Kingstons' failed attempt at folk-rock, Something Else - though this arrangement of a traditional song works somehow mysteriously for me.
Cierley's and the Trio's changes to the original song are apparent when you listen to a version from five years prior by the Norman Luboff Choir, a wonderful chorale that I remember most for supporting Harry Belafonte on a number of his 1950s and 60s albums.
R. Matteson 2014]
BALLAD OF THE RED RIVER SHORE- Kingston Trio 1965
At the foot of yon mountain where the big river flows,
There's a fond creation and a soft wind that blows,
There lives a fair maiden, she's the one I adore.
She's the one I would marry on the Red River shore.
She wrote me a letter, and she wrote it so kind.
And in that letter, these words you will find.
"Come back to me, darling, you're the one I adore.
You're the one I will marry on the Red River shore.
So I jumped on my bronco and away I did ride,
To marry my true love on the Red river side.
But her pa knew the secret, and with twenty and four,
Come to fight this young cowboy on the Red River shore.
I grabbed my six-shooter, spun round and around,
Till six men were wounded and seven were down;
I can't fight an army of twenty and four,
When I'm bound for my true love on the Red River shore.
At the foot of yon mountain where the big river flows,
There's a fond creation and a soft wind that blows,
There lives a fiar maiden, she's the one I adore.
But never will marry on the Red River shore.