Through Children’s Eyes: The Limeliters Remember Their Classic 1962 LP
by Peter S. Scholtes
Folk albums for children weren’t exactly new when the Limeliters recorded Through Children’s Eyes on December 29, 1961, with some 70 school kids at the Berkeley Community Theatre in Berkeley, California. Burl Ives, Lead Belly, and others had been releasing children’s records since the 1940s. Yet, when the bestselling trio—better known for its “Things Go Better with Coke” jingle—presented the album to RCA Victor, the label initially refused to release it, and then did so only under the dubious subtitle Little-Folk Songs for Adults. The album went on to crack the Billboard Top 50, introducing Malvina Reynolds’s “Morningtown Ride” to a generation of lullaby singers (the Seekers later covered it for a hit), and entered the 1960s slipstream as something more mysterious than the sum of its parts.
The idea for Through Children’s Eyes belonged to double-bassist and bass vocalist Lou Gottlieb, who made the children his co-conspirators. With his faux-pompous stage patter and ironic sense of play, Gottlieb was like a Tom Lehrer for kids—and indeed, the great satirist was a friend of the band. Gottlieb rehearsed the children, planted jokes among them, and used the full, chaotic loveliness of their singing as both backup and lead, with tender-voiced guitarist-tenor Glenn Yarbrough and warmly confident banjo-player-guitarist-baritone Alex Hassilev sharing the spotlight. That the assembly was racially integrated in 1961 made its own quiet statement. The songs were covers, yet the arrangements were so original that many became definitive, from the sweetly funny “Lollipop Tree” (on which Yarbrough sang lead) to the album-title-lending “Hey Jimmie Joe John Jim Jack,” one of the more darkly cheerful tunes ever written about adult empathy.
Earl Palmer, the New Orleans–born inventor of the backbeat, played drums. Benny Goodman veteran Allan Reuss played second guitar. Many of the children went on to their own careers in music. It was the kind of live recording where even the mistakes were magical, the mood earnest yet never far from the zaniness that could modify the chorus of the Carter Family’s “Keep on the Sunny Side” to add “You’ll feel no pain as we drive you insane.”
A half century later, with the album still in print on Brass Dolphin/Folk Era Records, we decided to call the surviving original members of the Limeliters, Glenn Yarbrough and Alex Hassilev, and ask them about their giddiest, prettiest recording, and their old bandmate Lou Gottlieb, who died in 1996.
Phone call to Glenn Yarbrough
How did this album come about?
We had just done a hit album, and RCA wanted us to do several more, and they were all pretty good. But we got tired of doing it. So we sat down and decided to do a children’s album. We took about 50 kids from the Berkeley school system, and we rehearsed them, and we did all new songs. And it was the best thing, I think, that the Limeliters ever did.
But the interesting thing was that when we finished it, we sent the tapes back to New York City to have it released, and they never released it. I kept calling them: “What’s happening?” And they wouldn’t talk about it. Finally I found out that they just didn’t want a children’s album. We were a big act at the time, and we were supposed to be singing to people in college. So Lou and Alex elected me to go back to New York and straighten them out.
You were the enforcer?
No, I was the only one who didn’t care about money. So I went all the way back to New York and went up to RCA Victor offices. About ten “suits” came, and they sat down, and I sat down. And they immediately told me why they didn’t want it. It was not the kind of thing that would sell. They apologized to me and said they would pay for what we had invested in it. And without my saying a word, they all got up and started to walk out of the room. I got pissed, and I just sat there. [laughs]
The last one out of the room, he looked back, and he saw me sitting there. So he came back. I told him that the Limeliters wanted this album to be released, and if we didn’t release it, we would simply wait until our contract was over and go to some other record company. They all came running back into the room and said, “Oh, yes, we’ll release it, we’ll release it.”
Did you ever run into any of the child singers as adults?
There was one guy named Marty who was a real tiny guy, and he was always late. So we just put him into a song [Malvina Reynolds’s “Marty”]. Anyway, I was in the San Diego airport, and this guy was standing next to me, about seven feet tall. He looked at me and said, “You remember me?” I said, “No, I don’t.” He said, “I’m Marty.” He went from about two-foot-tall to seven-foot-tall [laughs].
Phone call to Alex Hassilev
It strikes me that Through Children’s Eyes probably would have been good even if you didn’t have one of the greatest drummers of all time, Earl Palmer, and one of the great jazz guitarists, Allan Reuss. But it’s somehow more special because they were part of it.
Well, it didn’t hurt, because our time was always suspect. The Limeliter time was very bizarre, because the three members of the Limeliters each had a different conception of what 2/4 and 3/4 meant. Lou was a jazz-oriented musician, although he was a classically trained musician, and Glenn was what I would call a square-dance, Saturday-night-type guitar player. And I was influenced by Latin American music. I played quite well rhythmically, actually, and so did Glenn. Lou, on the bass fiddle, was somewhat erratic, and that was bad because the bass dictates where the downbeat goes.
Was your chemistry the same offstage as it was on?
Well, if you mean, “Were we the best of friends?” we certainly were not the best of friends, although we were not enemies. We were very individualistic people, and we came to the group having formed our likes and dislikes pretty well. We were all professional performers before we formed the group, unlike the Kingston Trio, who were essentially undergraduates when they started. Lou had a PhD in music, and I had started as an actor, and Glenn at the time was trying to become a folk-pop singing star. When we worked as a trio, Lou wrote the arrangements, and then Glenn and I used to pick them apart and “improve them,” quote-unquote.
The three of you seemed to have real chemistry with the kids.
Well, you know, kids are the natural audience for folk music. It’s easy to follow, they have a lot of fun, and they love it.
Did you worry that with “Stay on the Sunny Side,” some of the children might not come up with a joke?
No, but we did plant a couple of jokes, such as “My name is Steven.” That was definitely a plant, but it was pretty funny. That concert was just a magical thing. It’s incredible that we got a decent result, because we only did it once, or I think two full nights. [Editor’s note: CD liner notes indicate a second night at the Masonic Memorial Auditorium in San Francisco.] So essentially we were performing it live for the first time.
What did you listen to when you were five years old?
Well, I was born in Europe, so I listened to music in French and Russian. There’s some wonderful children’s songs in French, I must say. As far as children’s songs [in Russian], the only song I remember was a lullaby, with words by the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov.
I’m curious about your circle in 1961. Were the Limeliters involved in the Berkeley political left at that time?
Well, there are no Republican folk singers, as far as I’m concerned. But we were not necessarily activists, although Lou was very left-wing in his youth. I don’t know if he ever joined the Communist Party, but if he didn’t, he sure came close. He was sort of like Pete Seeger. He was part of that crowd. We broke up just at the time that we should have been going to Selma, but that’s a different story.
Mario Savio, of the Free Speech Movement, went to Mississippi right after you broke up before coming back to Berkeley.
A lot of folk singers got involved, principally Peter, Paul & Mary. They were very much in it, and more power to them. But we were just not of that breed, and as I say, we broke up in 1963. Look, all folk singers are politically subversive. The establishment knows that instinctively, just as a snake knows that a guy with a pitchfork is its enemy. Because folk singers are the antithesis of liars. They couldn’t sing the kind of music that they sing if they were liars. So folk singers tend to look at life unvarnished, and the establishment does just the opposite.
We were simply not the people who were going to overtly go out and record activist albums, for various reasons. I don’t really believe in that very much. There are very few artist-activists for whom I have any real respect. The only ones that come to mind are Diego Rivera and Pete Seeger. Beyond that, I certainly wouldn’t include Dylan, as great an artist as he is, and Dylan himself has said many times that he’s no activist.
Your sense of humor really comes across on this album.
Oh, absolutely, and of course that really came from Lou. Lou’s humor definitely was a very special kind of humor—not everybody could get with it. I mean, Lou was a pedant, but a very funny one. His sense of irony was supreme. He was a lousy standup comic on his own, but he was great as the spokesman for the Limeliters.
Those aren’t necessarily qualities stereotypically associated with the folk scene of the ’60s.
Oh, absolutely not. Lou was one of a kind. He was out of step, or everybody was out of step with him. Later, when the Limeliters broke up, he became a hippie, as far as a PhD in music could become a hippie. He was a very interesting guy, and I have to say, to be in his company was to be entertained at all times.
Did you guys have children when you recorded Through Children’s Eyes?
Yes, we all did.
Did that influence your decision to make the album?
No. The Limeliters were atypical. We were not folk-type people. We were not the kind of lovey-dovey togetherness–type folk. We never liked that kind of attitude. We were progressive in our outlook, but we didn’t sing “Kum ba yah,” I’ll put it that way.
I’m thinking of the scene in Animal House where Bluto smashes the guitar of the guy singing “The Riddle Song.” But now I see that and think, “That’s not what the guys who sang the song were like.”
[laughs] Well, that’s the whole point, though, as Tom Lehrer said: “The Great Folk Scare of the 1960s.”
Which is funny, because the Limeliters remind me of Tom Lehrer.
Tom Lehrer and the Limeliters appeared on the same bill at [the San Francisco club] as the hungry i many times. Tom actually wrote several lines in a couple of our songs as we were rehearsing. In “Gunslinger” [a Western-motif satire of psychological excuses for criminal behavior, off 1961’s The Slightly Fabulous Limeliters] he wrote the line “Did you come from a broken home on the range?”
Did he have any influence on this album?
No. But the point is, he obviously was a master satirist, and Lou, his whole attitude was satirical.
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You can purchase Through Children’s Eyes at the official Limeliters website, http://www.limeliters.com.
