No folk music reference volumes include The Easy Riders, and searches through twentieth-century popular music encyclopedias likewise turn up no mention of the ensemble, even though their early-1957 single “Marianne” scored a massive success and their compositions reached recordings by acts as varied as the Kingston Trio, Dean Martin, and Doris Day. The three principals—Terry Gilkyson, Richard Dehr, and Frank Miller—filled the stretch commonly called the overlooked years of the folk revival, the interval separating the Weavers’ dissolution from the Kingston Trio’s commercial ascent.
Other folk performers did issue discs in that span, among them Ed McCurdy and Oscar Brand, chiefly for independent imprints such as Elektra. The Easy Riders stood apart, however, because Columbia Records, a major label, signed them. Their absence from scholarship and public recollection probably stems from their avoidance of the political stance associated with the Weavers—though Richard Dehr had once collaborated with Woody Guthrie and several future blacklistees—and from the fact that they were two decades older than the Kingston Trio and therefore never appeared at the forefront of a new musical trend. The trio of Terry Gilkyson, Richard Dehr, and Frank Miller never matched the lasting visibility of the Weavers or the Kingston Trio, yet they bridged the two stages of the 1950s folk revival while producing an abundance of strong material.
Hamilton Terry Gilkyson (born June 17, 1916, Phoenixville, PA) received formal musical instruction beginning in elementary school and concentrated on music during his two years at the University of Pennsylvania. He taught himself guitar by listening to other musicians. Employment at an Arizona ranch prompted him to enlist in the Army cavalry during World War II, only to witness his mounted unit converted into a mechanized battalion. After the war he married and relocated to California to pursue a musical career. He absorbed core elements of the folk repertoire from the collections of John and Alan Lomax, secured a position with Armed Forces Radio as “The Solitary Singer” from 1948 through 1951, and deliberately avoided leftist union work and politically charged material amid rising suspicions directed at folk artists—placing his approach closer in outlook to Burl Ives and stylistically nearer to Richard Dyer-Bennett than to Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie.
In those same years he obtained a Decca Records contract and began appearing in films, drawing on his musical skills starting with RKO’s Slaughter Trail in 1951. He sometimes supplied a song for the soundtrack, yet most often portrayed singers performing with guitar in the background of scenes; in later films he occasionally received spoken lines. A decisive breakthrough arrived in 1950 when Frankie Laine recorded Gilkyson’s original composition “The Cry of the Wild Goose.” Gilkyson had already cut the song himself for Decca in 1949 before producer Mitch Miller brought it to Laine; that initial connection with Miller would prove advantageous throughout the ensuing decade.
Decca attempted to position Gilkyson as a folk artist in the Weavers’ mold, mixing traditional-sounding pieces with adaptations of folk material, some written by him, and even arranged a session with the Weavers that produced the hit “On Top of Old Smoky.” His more formal baritone, however, failed to blend with the quartet’s style, and the partnership proved brief. Today the Gilkyson/Weavers renditions of “Across the Wide Missouri” and “On Top of Old Smoky” sound overly polished and artificial.
Brooklyn-born Frank Miller (born July 29, 1918) took up the guitar before his teenage years. At Purdue University he formed a singing group, then returned to New York and lived briefly in Greenwich Village just before the war, encountering Richard Dyer-Bennett, Burl Ives, and Pete Seeger, who was then assembling the Almanac Singers with Lee Hays and Millard Lampell. Three years of naval service removed him from New York yet not from folk music; even aboard the USS Saratoga during combat he kept his guitar and acquired numerous songs from shipmates.
After discharge Miller moved to California, where he first met Richard Dehr at a 1950 memorial concert for Leadbelly. Dehr possessed a stronger voice and engaged more deeply with the musical and political dimensions of the emerging folk movement; he maintained close ties to Woody Guthrie and to actor-singer Will Geer, who was blacklisted from film work in the early 1950s.
Later in 1950 Miller and Dehr began recording for Decca under the name The Easy Riders. They encountered Gilkyson through a mutual acquaintance of Miller’s and found their skills complementary: Gilkyson already enjoyed success as a songwriter, whereas Dehr and Miller had taken only tentative steps as composers, yet Dehr commanded a strikingly fine voice and Miller played guitar with assurance. The three worked well together, and at Dehr’s wife’s suggestion the duo expanded into a trio.
Before the Easy Riders recorded as a unit they achieved success as songwriters: Dean Martin reached number one in 1955 with their “Memories Are Made of This,” a track that also charted for Gale Storm and received a cover by Spike Jones. Gilkyson’s prior association with Mitch Miller aided the trio when Columbia Records signed them; Miller had by then assumed leadership of the label’s pop division.
The Easy Riders cut their first sides as a trio for Columbia on May 31, 1956. Their debut session produced their biggest single and sole hit, “Marianne,” which climbed to number five on Billboard’s best-selling singles chart and number two on Cashbox in February 1957. Credited to Terry Gilkyson & the Easy Riders, the song sold strongly for the group and was widely covered by other folk artists, including Burl Ives and Harry Belafonte.
Their influence reached beyond their own discs. They developed a distinctive sound—rich three-part harmony capable of the softest male singing of the period or of exuberant, infectious energy akin to the liveliest pop ensembles—that set them apart from the Weavers and earlier folk-based groups. They particularly shaped three students at Menlo College in California—Dave Guard, Bob Shane, and Nick Reynolds—who by early 1958 had formed the Kingston Trio.
The Easy Riders did not confine themselves to traditional folk material; they also performed calypso numbers, sea shanties, and cowboy songs—“Marianne” itself adapted a Bahamian melody. They remained popular while the Kingston Trio sought its first hit; the two groups’ sounds overlapped, yet the Easy Riders stayed closer to traditional folk practice and lacked the Trio’s youthful drive. Although Mitch Miller employed certain studio-generated electronic effects, the Easy Riders never acquired the highly produced, multi-layered instrumental and vocal textures associated with the Kingston Trio. Their Columbia affiliation nevertheless granted them access to leading session musicians of the era, among them guitarists Merle Travis and Joe Maphis.
Beyond their own singles, the Easy Riders supplied themes for television programs such as “The Ballad of Yermo Red,” and other compositions such as “Red Sundown” appeared in films; they also backed Frankie Laine on the Top Ten hit “Love Is a Golden Ring.” Their songs reached pop vocalists including Laine, Doris Day, Guy Mitchell, Jerry Vale, Julius LaRosa, and Eddie Fisher, yet their greatest impact occurred within the folk field: “Greenfields” became a number-two hit for the Brothers Four; “South Coast” and “Fast Freight,” both introduced by the Easy Riders, entered the Kingston Trio’s core repertoire; and “Everybody Loves Saturday Night” scored a hit for the New Christy Minstrels in the early 1960s.
Internal differences ended the trio before the close of the 1950s. Fatigue from sustained collaboration played a part, as did disputes over songwriting credits in which Gilkyson and Dehr believed they carried more than two-thirds of the load. The original lineup held its final recording session in February 1959. Later that year Gilkyson and Dehr cut one additional album with two supporting musicians and subsequently recorded a collection of Western songs following Marty Robbins’s major success in that idiom. Frank Miller continued working for a time as a solo artist and as a member of the Tarrytown Trio; he also led a group called Frank Miller’s Easy Riders that included Jerry Yester, later of the Association and a future collaborator with Judy Henske on Farewell Aldebaran, released on Frank Zappa’s Bizarre/Reprise imprint.
Gilkyson kept writing songs and eventually contributed to the soundtrack of Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book in the mid-1960s. Miller eventually ceased recording and retired. Dehr, who had long suffered physical ailments, withdrew from music as his health deteriorated and later died of cancer.
The Easy Riders belonged to the same generation as the Weavers yet never faced blacklisting. Twenty years older than the Kingston Trio, they never connected with late-1950s college audiences in the same manner, even though they exerted a formative influence on the younger group. Their accomplishments as songwriters nearly overshadowed their work as recording artists and performers, although recording sessions remained plentiful—an unusually high proportion of their output stayed unreleased at the time. Their music retains freshness and appeal, almost timeless in its beauty and universality, much like that of the Kingston Trio.
