A Daydream Believer and So Much More

About three weeks ago, the music world lost a giant. Unfortunately, to the extent his passing was noted in the mainstream press at all, he was cited for what I would consider one of his lesser achievements - writing the song "Daydream Believer" in 1967 for The Monkees.

Not that there's really anything wrong with "Daydream Believer." I'm sure that a large part of my problem with it is due to the fact that it was introduced by "The Pre-fab Four," as some referred to The Monkees way back when. For those too young to remember, The Monkees was some record executive's idea of a way to stem the British invasion and get an American rock and roll act back on top of the charts. It was all engineered from the very start. A record label was lined up, a concept for a television show was in the works, they started to work on finding songs that would work ...

Oh, and that's right, they also had to find a few guys to make up the group. So ads went into Daily Variety, and casting calls were held. (Is this any way to form a rock 'n' roll band? A boy-band maybe, but rock 'n' roll?) Hundreds of aspiring actors/musicians turned out. Stephen Stills (who was still an unknown in 1966) clearly had the musical chops, but the producers felt he looked too old for the part. Stills referred a former roommate, Peter Thorkelson, who made the group under the name Peter Tork. The group also included two other Americans, Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith, and one Brit, Davy Jones. Micky Dolenz had been acting in television since the 1950s, when he had starred for three seasons in a show called "Circus Boy." Mike Nesmith was already a fairly successful musician and songwriter. He wrote the breakout hit "Different Drum" for Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys. (Mike's mom invented Liquid Paper, a typewriter correction fluid. A single mom, she no longer had to work as a secretary after that.) Davy Jones was a musical stage actor. He had already attracted a lot of attention in the role of the Artful Dodger in the original London and Broadway casts of "Oliver!" Along with the rest of the "Oliver!" cast, he appeared on the Ed Sullivan show the same night that the Beatles made their U.S. debut. (By the way, a few years later in an "Oliver!" revival on the West End in London, another future rocker made waves in the role of the Artful Dodger. His name was Phil Collins.)

But, as they say, I digress. Back to our Daydream Believer.

John Stewart was born (09/05/1939) and raised in Southern California. He showed musical ability from an early age, learned to play the guitar and banjo,and wrote his first song at the age of ten. As an adolescent, during the 1950s, he was a great fan of both traditional folk music (e.g., the Weavers and Pete Seeger) and the emerging music of rock 'n' roll (e.g., Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley). While still in high school, he formed his first band, Johnny Stewart and the Furies.

A little later, John teamed up with Gil Robbins (father of actor Tim Robbins) and John Montgomery as the Cumberland Three. As a trio, they were similar to and greatly influenced by the Kingston Trio, which had formed in 1957, and had become one of the most popular recording acts in the U.S. (At one point, the Kingston Trio had four albums in the Billboard Top Ten; not even the Beatles did that!) The Cumberland Three recorded a two-album set called "Songs from the Civil War." One record featured songs from the Union side, and the other songs of the Confederacy.

In 1961, Dave Guard, the founder of the Kingston Trio, wanted to pursue a less commercial sound, so he left to form the Whiskey Hill Singers. John Stewart was recruited to succeed Guard in the Kingston Trio, and under his leadership, they recorded twelve more albums between 1962 and 1967. However, as the 1960s progressed, it became increasingly difficult for the Trio to hold onto the fame and popularity they had once possessed. In some ways, they had sown the seeds of their own failure.

Without the popularity the Kingston Trio had brought to folk music between 1957 and 1962, it may have been difficult for newer artists like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and the like to have gotten record contracts and reached national audiences. Also, college students in the early 1960s were far more political than just a few years earlier. They wanted more from their folk artists than catchy world beats, tight harmonies and comic patter. Dylan, Baez and many of the other new folk acts delivered with relevant songs about social justice, civil rights, American imperialism in Central America and the Caribbean, and eventually, the anti-Vietnam War movement.

At the same time, new sounds were emerging that were claiming a larger and larger share of the pop music market. There was beach music personified by the Beach Boys, whose signature striped shirt look was copied almost directly from the Kingston Trio. There was also the emerging R&B sound coming from Detroit that was, for the first time, gaining broad mass appeal that went beyond black audiences. The final straw was the beginning of the British invasion with the Beatles' American debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. Folk music would never again claim as big a piece of the American music scene, and the success that it did enjoy would be shared by the topical artists, especially those attacking the continued U.S. presence in Southeast Asia during the 1960s and early 1970s.

I think that is part of the reason that John Stewart was not more successful in his solo career following the disbanding of the Kingston Trio (in it original form) in 1967. It's not that John wasn't topical. He toured extensively in support of Bobby Kennedy's presidential bid in 1968, before the campaign came to a tragic end following the California primary. But he wasn't a protest singer. Instead, I think Stewart wrote music and sang from the heart about everyday people holding their heads up and getting on with life. Though he lived his entire life in California, he traveled extensively and wrote about America. I've counted at least 35 of the 50 states that are mentioned in his song lyrics, not to mention many American towns and cities.

I'm attaching a YouTube player to this post (assuming I can figure out how to). The clips I will index there include a couple of tributes I found to John Stewart, as well as a number of performance clips. Some are recent, some from the 1970s, and a couple even date back to TV appearnaces he made with the Kingston Trio during the 1960s. I encourage you to give them all a try to get a picture of this great American musician.

Even though John had left the Kingston Trio back in 1967, they all remained good friends. There were occasional reunion appearances, and over the past few years, John Stewart and Nick Reynolds have held annual Trio Fantasy Camps in Scottsdale, Arizona. You can get information about the 2008 camp, which will be dedicated to the music of John Stewart, here.

If you are interested in the music of John Stewart, one great compilation is "The Phoenix Concerts - Live," recorded in the mid-1970s. In my opinion, it's one of the best live concert albums ever. To order more recent albums, you can visit John's website, chillywinds.com.