Glenn Yarbrough joined The Limeliters when
he had already established himself as an outstanding single night club act at the Gate of Horn in Chicago, Cosmo Alley in Los Angeles and the Limelite in Aspen, Colorado; he had recorded 3 LP albums for Elektra records, one in collaboration with Marilyn Child.
Like his colleagues in The Limeliters, Glenn has pursued a fascinatingly checkered and diverse career. Not to be outdone by the cerebral Northern Lights emanating from the Latvian brow of Dr. Louis Gottlieb, Glenn can point to his years attending St. John's College in Annapolis (the "Great Books" college of legendary intellectual toughness) and to the serious concern with philosphical studies at Mexico City College. In 1955 he studied classical Greek by day and supported himself in a typically bizarre fashion - as night bouncer in a New York City hotel.
Glenn opened as a single in Aspen's "Limelite," returned each year and eventually purchased the Club. Prior to the historic meeting with Lou Gottlieb, he did a duet with Alex Hassilev.
The outstanding solo voice in the group, Glenn possesses a lyric tenor of startling clarity and warmth and is the featured performer on the touching ballads such as "The Far Side of the Hill," "When I First Came To This Land" and his own dramatically distinct arrangement of the classic "Molly Malone." Enrico Banducci, owner of the hungry i maintains, "I must have had fifty folk-singers in my club, all of them singing 'Molly Malone,' but when Glenn sings it, the old chestnut takes on a beauty and pathos I never heard before."
Not the least of Glenn's contributions to The Limeliters is his virtuoso technique on the classical guitar, which he plays with extreme delicacy and wistfulness on such numbers as "Seven Daffodils." When it comes to the real old-time rousers like "There's a Meetin' Here Tonight," however, he strums with a preoccupied ferocity, making the single instrument sound like "no holds barred at a hootenanny."
Glenn approaches every song with effortless poise and a refreshing air of relaxed affection. The audience response is immediate and overwhelming - it is obvious that here is an artist who loves to sing and who simply lets music pour out of his heart.
Click here for another photo of Glenn performing.
1963 Souvenir Program
Introduction | historiography |
louis gottlieb | alex hassilev | glenn yarbrough |
the doctor and the fiddle | thank you
Last update: December 29, 1997
