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Donald David Guard (October 19, 1934 – March 22, 1991) was an American folk singer, songwriter, arranger and recording artist. Along with Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane, he was one of the founding members of the Kingston Trio.
Guard was born in San Francisco and went to Punahou School in Honolulu in what was then the pre-statehood U.S. Territory of Hawaii. Upon completion of his final year of high school in 1952 at Menlo School, a private prep school in Menlo Park, California, he matriculated at nearby Stanford University, graduating in 1957 with a degree in economics.
While an undergraduate at Stanford, Guard started a pickup group with Reynolds and Shane. Guard called his group Dave Guard and the Calypsonians, with a The Weavers-style signature sound that was principally two guitars, a banjo, and rollicking vocals. Guard kept the group together after Reynolds and Shane left, changing the name of the Calypsonians to the Kingston Quartet. Then in 1957, when Reynolds and Shane agreed to team up with Guard again, the group changed its name to the Kingston Trio. Under contract with Capitol Records, the Trio became a huge commercial and influential success.
Guard attended Punahou School, a private school established in 1849 by Hawaii's New England missionary families during junior high school and high school. Hawaiian culture and music played an important part in his school's educational program. Along with all his other classmates, Guard early on learned to play Hawaii's ubiquitous ukulele in a 7th grade junior high school music class required of all students. It was in that class that Punahou's young 7th graders like Guard and his future Kingston Trio partner-to-be Shane learned the basics of playing the ukulele. The "ukulele" class made an impact on Shane, who during the next four years progressed steadily from the 4-string ukulele to the less toy-like and more professional-appearing baritone uke, on to the tenor guitar, and finally to the 6-string acoustic guitar. According to Guard, his own first serious exposure to stringed instruments came from Shane, who taught him the rudiments of playing the six-string guitar.
Guard participated in sports, and was a member of Punahou's ROTC battalion. In his junior year he participated in musical skits along with a number of other classmates who, like himself, had by that time also had become accomplished musicians. Guard left Punahou at the end of his junior year, completing his final year of high school at the Menlo School, a private prep school that helped him prepare for acceptance and matriculation at nearby Stanford University. At Stanford, Guard was a member of the Beta Chi chapter of Sigma Nu fraternity. He graduated from Stanford with a degree in economics in 1956.
With material gathered from a variety of sources, under Guard's musical arrangements and direction, the Kingston Trio quickly became a success. Guard, Shane, and Reynolds worked well together. In addition to developing the characteristic "Kingston Trio sound" of the group's two guitars and a banjo, success came to the group from Guard's musical arrangements and renditions of folk and Irish ballads, Shane's talent for style and performance along with an innate knowledge of what pleased audiences, and Reynolds's management of the group's logistics.
The Kingston Trio with Guard recorded for Capitol Records; subsequent iterations of the group managed first by Werber and Shane and later by Shane alone recorded for Decca Records, Folk Era, Silverwolf, Pair, Collector's Choice Music, CEMA, and MCA, and had many Chart-topper songs in its initial ten-year run. The trio's many songs include "Tom Dooley", "A Worried Man", "Hard Travelin'", "The Tijuana Jail", "Greenback Dollar", "Reverend Mr. Black", "Sloop John B", "Scotch and Soda", "Merry Minuet", "Hard, Ain't It Hard", "Jumbie Jamberee", "M.T.A.", "Three Jolly Coachmen", and "Raspberries, Strawberries".
By late 1960 Guard's frustration and discontent with his partners, combined with an alleged embezzlement of the group's finances, had reached a point where he no longer wanted to work with Reynolds and Shane. Giving his partners notice that he intended to leave the Trio, and unwilling to cause the group he had founded to disband, Guard agreed to stay on with the Trio until his personal commitments were completed and until Shane and Reynolds were able to find a suitable replacement for him. By early 1961 Shane and Reynolds had found a replacement. After a reportedly acrimonious meeting with Shane, Reynolds, and the Trio's business manager over the future of the Trio, Guard quit the group. The group continued to perform for six years as the Kingston Trio before disbanding in 1967, with John Stewart taking Guard's place.
Their voices can be heard on "The Erie Canal," "900 miles," "The Ox Driver," and "Raise A Ruckus Tonight". Cyrus Faryar can be heard performing solo on the track "Wanderin'" and Dave Guard on "Poor Wayfarin' Stranger". Judy Henske featured solo on "Careless Love". Judy Henske was eventually replaced by Liz Seneff, but the Whiskeyhill Singers were disbanded in late 1962 after Guard left for Australia.
Dave Guard and The Whiskeyhill Singers recorded their first album at Henry Jacobs' studio at Sausalito, and it was released on the Capitol record label. A second album was recorded at the same private studio, but it was never released. The soundtrack to How the West Was Won was the group's final recorded appearance to be released commercially.
He hosted his own ABC-TV national variety show, Dave's Place, on Sunday nights for 13 weeks in late 1965. Four episodes of Dave's Place featured Judy Henske as a guest performer.
Until his return to the United States in 1968, Guard gave guitar lessons and, with the help of his wife, Gretchen, wrote a book, Colour Guitar, describing a unique guitar teaching method relating music theory to a 12-valued chain of chords with color.Mildred Hamilton, San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle, February 19, 1978.
Guard's relationship with the Trio remained strained while he was in Australia. According to Guard, while he was in Australia, he was never in contact with Reynolds and Shane, and he never heard any of their albums. Popular Folk Music Today, Spring 1991 as reprinted in The Kingston Trio on Record.
Following his return from Australia in 1968 and his wife's 1970 graduation from Stanford with a degree in art, Guard and his wife collaborated in researching, writing, and publishing a book on the ancient Irish folk tale, Deirdre of the Sorrows, followed by a second book about a 400-year-old folk tale.
In the 1970s, Guard recorded a live album at The Ice House in Pasadena. His backing group on this album was The Modern Folk Quartet, which included former Whiskeyhill Singer Cyrus Faryar. The album was turned down by Capitol and was never released.
During the 1980s, Guard continued to perform as a soloist and teach music. He did four tracks on a 12-track cassette recorded to accompany the "All Along the Merrimac" tour of New Hampshire and a final solo album, Up & In (1988), which received mixed reviews. The album included the Kingston Trio standard "Scotch and Soda", which he had arranged in 1956 but which for thirty years had been performed in The Trio only by Bob Shane.
Over the years following his return to the US, Guard worked with a number of people, including Alex Hassilev, Mike Settle, Judy Henske, Cyrus Faryar, Tim Buckley, Tommy Makem and David White.
Guard died on March 22, 1991 at the age of 56. His memorial service in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, was attended by Bob Shane, Glen Yarbrough, the Limeliters and many other figures from the folk world. He was survived by his mother Marjorie, ex-wife Gretchen and three children Sally, Catherine, and Tom.
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