Robert Castle Schoen (February 1, 1934 – January 26, 2020), known professionally as Bob Shane, was an American singer and guitarist who was a founding member of The Kingston Trio.

[1] Shane was born on February 1, 1934, in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii, the son of Margaret (Schaufelberger) and Arthur Castle Schoen, a wholesale distributor of toys and sporting goods.

During these years, Shane (the phonetic spelling he began using in 1957) taught himself to play first ukulele and then guitar, influenced especially by Hawaiian slack key guitarists like Gabby Pahinui.

[7][8] However, Shane had discovered a natural affinity for entertaining and at night pursued a solo career in Hawaii, including engagements at some of Waikiki's major hotels.

[10] At the same time back in California, Guard and Reynolds had organized themselves somewhat more formally into an act named "The Kingston Quartet" with bassist Joe Gannon and his fiancée, vocalist Barbara Bogue.

This group appeared for a one-night engagement at a restaurant called the Italian Village in San Francisco, to which they invited publicist Frank Werber, who had caught the Calypsonians' act with Shane some months earlier at the Cracked Pot beer garden in Palo Alto.

Under Werber's rigorous tutelage, Shane, Guard, and Reynolds began almost daily rehearsals for several months, including instruction from prominent San Francisco vocal coach Judy Davis.

The group's first significant break came in the summer of 1957 when comedian Phyllis Diller had to cancel an engagement at The Purple Onion, a small San Francisco night club, and Werber talked the management into hiring the untested trio for a week.

The trio's close harmonies, varied repertoire, and carefully rehearsed but apparently spontaneous on stage humor made them an instant success with the club's patrons, and the engagement stretched to six months.

[16] The album The Kingston Trio was released in June 1958 at the same time that the group was beginning a long engagement at San Francisco's more prominent Hungry i night club.

In the summer of 1958, while Shane and the Trio were performing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, disc jockey Paul Colburn in Salt Lake City began playing the "Tom Dooley" cut from the album on the air, and DJs in Miami and nationally followed suit.

[21] Shane, Reynolds, and Werber bought out Guard's interest in the partnership and moved quickly to find a replacement, settling on John Stewart, a young folk performer and composer who had written a number of songs that the Trio had already recorded.

The Shane, Reynolds, and Stewart Kingston Trio remained together for another six years, releasing nine more albums on Capitol and scoring a number of Top 40 hit singles until diminishing record sales resulting from the passing of the popular folk boom and the rise of Capitol's other major acts the Beach Boys and the Beatles prompted the group to move to Decca Records.

Deciding to stay in the entertainment business, Shane experimented both with solo work (he recorded several singles, including the original version of the song "Honey" that later became a million-seller for Bobby Goldsboro)[23] and with different configurations with other folk-oriented performers.

Shane and the other principals assented, and the concert was staged and taped at the Magic Mountain amusement park in Valencia, California in November 1981; it was broadcast over PBS stations in March 1982.

Shane's Kingston Trio relied heavily on a "greatest hits formula" augmented by a number of other songs acquired through the years that fans had accepted as part of the group's repertoire.