In polls in both Billboard and Cash Box they were voted "The Best Group of the Year for 1959" by the nation's disc jockeys.

[1] In reviewing The Kingston Trio At Large for Allmusic, music critic Bruce Eder wrote the album "shows in the far more complex sound achieved by the trio throughout this album, with voices and instruments more closely interwoven than on their earlier studio recordings and achieving control over their volume that, even today, seems astonishing."

He specifically praised Guard's banjo playing, writing it "shines throughout this album, and it was beginning here that Guard was to exert a separate influence on a whole generation of aspiring folk musicians and even one rock star (Lindsey Buckingham) with his banjo.

"[4] Music critic Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr. reviewed the Capitol reissue and wrote "Vocally, the group also began to sweeten its harmony...

capture the Kingston Trio early in their career, grounded in the success of their first albums and searching for new directions.