The Whiskeyhill Singers were an American folk revival group formed in early 1961 by Dave Guard after he left The Kingston Trio.
Although The Kingston Trio had quickly risen in three years from smoky gigs in the San Francisco peninsula's college town fraternity houses, bistros and bars to San Francisco's prestigious hungry i and Purple Onion, and then on to become nationally and internationally well known, accepted, and successful, Guard felt that by 1961 the Trio's musical style had become fixed and predictable, and its performances increasingly commercial.
Shortly thereafter Guard formed the Whiskeyhill Singers with another Punahou high school friend, Cyrus Faryar, and the Trio's bassist and musicologist David "Buck" Wheat.
In line with Guard's intention to return to folk music, with its frequently uninhibited enthusiasm and vocal harmonies, Faryar suggested the group bring in an acquaintance of his, Judy Henske, to provide a female balance to the male harmonies, and in so doing, move definitively away from the Kingston Trio's male-only vocal format.
Guard agreed, and the Whiskeyhill Singers, with Henske as female lead developed their own, often innovative, folk music mood, style, and sound.
The producers of the MGM film How the West Was Won had approached The Kingston Trio to sing folk songs on the soundtrack for the movie.
They performed several folk songs, "The Erie Canal", "900 Miles", "The Ox Driver", "Raise A Ruckus Tonight" (along with The Ken Darby Singers, as the general chorus behind Debbie Reynolds).
He was a well-known jazz guitarist and bass player with the big dance bands and in 1957 recorded with the Chet Baker Trio on "My Funny Valentine" and "Embraceable You".
Liz Seneff (aka Elizabeth Seneff-Corrigan) joined The Whiskeyhill Singers in July 1962 after Judy Henske departed the group.
A high school drama presentation of Oklahoma in 1951 brought Guard and Shane, along with similarly guitar-competent classmate Bob Murphy, together as a group.
While at Punahou, Guard and his '52 classmate Bob Shane were frequently and regularly exposed to the words and a cappella harmonies of the classical Hawaiian music of Hawai'i's revered Queen Liliuokalani.
Being able to sing along and play a ukulele or guitar was a recognized and envied accomplishment at which Guard and Shane gradually to excelled during their high school years at Punahou.
Within this background of Hawaiian/Polynesian harmonies and instrumental accompaniments for venerable staples like Genoa Keawe's "Kaimana Hila" came the folk music of Burl Ives and Pete Seeger, with party songs like Burl Ives' rendition of "On Top Of Old Smokey", Pete Seeger and The Weavers' ever popular "Goodnight, Irene" and Roy Acuff's "Wabash Cannonball".
Then a bit later in the early 1950s, came Fijiian tunes, like "Isa Lei", the perennial slack key favorite, the comic Samoan "Salomila", the classic "Pupu o Ewa", taught as one of Shane's Punahou graduating class of 1952's Hawaiian songs sung en chorale during their graduation (and which Don Ho's performed with English lyrics to become his signature, tourist favorite "Pearly Shells"), and the catchy, toe-tapping "Molokai Nui Ahina", all of which were beach and house party favorites that clearly influenced and contributed to Guard and Shane's music style and rhythms.
In the pop music realm, both Guard and Shane were clearly influenced by the harmonies and often lusty style of Mitch Miller's group,[n 1] and the distinctive voices of Vaughn Monroe,[n 1] and (early on) young Dean Martin.
Guard and Shane's relative isolation from the varieties of mainland pop music and their continual exposure to Polynesian sing-along harmonies with their strummed guitar accompaniments are clearly heard in both the Trio's and the Singers' renditions.
If Guard's objective was to meld traditional folk with contemporary '60's activist intensity and Trio-style renditions, he may well have succeeded in accomplishing his goal.
In his absence, the other two members of the Trio, Bob Shane and Nick Reynolds, recruited John Stewart to take Guard's place.