Return To 60’s Main Menu Recording Artists Of The 60s
GLEN YARBROUGH
“BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL”
(Ernie Shelton, ELMER BERNSTEIN)
RCA Victor 8498
No. 12 May 22, 1965
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The Limeliters were quite successful in their day–one of the prime components in the ’50s revival of
folk music in the U.S. From 1959 to 1963, all 10 of this folk trio’s LPs made healthy in roads on to
Billboard’s top pop albums chart. The group played all the big New York nightspots like the Village
Vanguard, Mr. Kelley’s, and the hungry i. They appeared with Shelly Berman, Mort Sahl, and George
Shearing. While only “A Dollar Down” made the pop charts (#60, 1960), the Limeliterswere one of the
hottest campus and concert acts of the entire hootenanny/folk revival period. Burn-out and the British
Invasion ended all that.
Lou Gottlieb, Alex Hassilev, and Glenn Yarbrough parted company in 1964. Al and Lou continued on as
the Limeliters for a spell, with Ernie Shelton filling in for Glenn. Months later, Yarbrough had his big
moment with a Shelton number picked as the theme for the Steve McQueen/Lee Remick flick Babythe Rain
Must Fall (1964).
Numerous Yarbrough albums followed–three featuring lyrics totally created by Rod “Dor” McKuen (1/2 of
the comedy team BOB MC FADDEN & DOR)–but his only other Hot 100 item came in 1965 with the folk-
rockish “It’s Gonna Be Fine” (#54). Glenn, you see, was big, bulky, and balding, and did not look like your
hip and happening hoodoo. RCA packaged him as a lawn-tending family man: no problem there, only
during the ’60s this image began waning in fashionability. Change was a-blowin’ in the wind.
Glenn Yarbrough (b. Jan. 12, 1930, Milwaukee/guitar, vocals) began his musical career at the age of eight,
as a featured vocalist at Grace Church in upper Manhattan. His soaring soprano won him a scholarship
to the St. Paul School in Baltimore. In his late teens, wanderlust struck, so he hiked around Canada and
Mexico before settling down with ancient philosophy texts at St. Joho’s College and, later, the New School
for Social Research.
For post-Socratic fun, Glenn sang folk songs. His discovery in the mid-’50s by the owner of Chicago’s
Gate of Horn quickly led to a career on the coffeehouse circuit. For awhile, Yarbrough and Alex Hassflev
(b. July 11, 1932, Paris/guitar, banjo, vocals), an aspiring actor, owned their own coffee house in Colorado
Springs called the Limelite. While the two were playing together at the Cosmo Alley Club in L.A., Lou
Gottlieb (b. 1923, Los Angeles/bass)- -a PhD who had studied music under Arnold Schoenberg and had
been an arranger for the Kingston Trio and a former member of the Gateway Singers–appeared. In 1959,
the three formed the Limeliters.