The Gateway Singers, Travis Edmonson (later of Bud & Travis), Lou Gottlieb (later of the Limeliters), Elmerlee Thomas, and Jerry Walter (later versions of the group included Ernie Sheldon, Betty Mann, and Milt Chapman, among others), were often referred to as "the West Coast Weavers," and it's an apt comparison, right down to the songs the two groups sang. All comparisons aside, the Singers knew how to work a crowd with folk music, having been the house band at San Francisco's Hungry I from 1955 to 1957, and they kept it uptempo and energetic, a superb and professional live act. Proof of that is here in this delightful two-disc set recorded at a 1957 concert at Stanford on a homemade 15ips stereo recorder. It's a wonderful document of a folk group who, because they were multi-race in makeup, were essentially blacklisted for most of their time together. The set list is full of folk standards -- or songs that would become standards a dozen years on when the commercial folk revival hit -- but the group attacks each song with such joyous vitality that old songs like "Poor Boy" and "East Virginia" seem to take on a special spark and life. The tapes were then shelved for some 50 years, making this reemergence set not just a fun, wonderful show from a vibrant but unsung group in its original (and arguably best) configuration, but also an important and historic one. This is the very definition of Buried Treasure.
© Steve Leggett /TiVo