Glen Yarbrough passed away
+12
espíritu del lago
shana
kipissippi
martygraw
Flamingo
ferret
CanuckBob
Carry Bean
simpsca
slainte39
Trailrunner
Ms.Thang
16 posters
Page 1 of 1
Glen Yarbrough passed away
So Glen has gone on to his glory, peacefully at 8:30 a.m. Surrounded by his family.
His music was a little before my time but we were friends for years when he lived here. Lots of us here knew him and what a great guy he was.
Who remembers Glen?
https://youtu.be/iJO8ZUVL1xs
His music was a little before my time but we were friends for years when he lived here. Lots of us here knew him and what a great guy he was.
Who remembers Glen?
https://youtu.be/iJO8ZUVL1xs
Ms.Thang- Share Holder
- Posts : 1097
Join date : 2012-04-22
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
Aww, thanks for the news. RIP Glen. Thought I saw the property listed recently.
Trailrunner- Share Holder
- Posts : 8007
Join date : 2011-04-18
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
One here.....a good and decent person......QDEP
slainte39- Share Holder
- Posts : 9348
Join date : 2010-07-22
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
I've seen him at concerts here and he was wonderful. He donated a lot of his time and concert proceeds to help stock and support libraries and other projects on the south side of the lake. I will miss him.
simpsca- Events Reporter
- Posts : 2519
Join date : 2010-04-16
Age : 77
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
What a shame. Sounds like a great guy. Whereabouts did he live here?
Carry Bean- Share Holder
- Posts : 3408
Join date : 2010-04-05
Location : Riberas
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
Oh my...that song brought back so many memories. Go seek out my hubby Glen...he loved that song too. RIP.
ferret- Share Holder
- Posts : 10326
Join date : 2010-05-23
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
I too loved his music. He had a house near San Luis Soyaltan. It was for sale when we lived in Joco in 2009.
Flamingo- Share Holder
- Posts : 1547
Join date : 2011-10-14
Location : Chapala
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
He used to show up at John and Lucy's in El Chante once in awhile.
Trailrunner- Share Holder
- Posts : 8007
Join date : 2011-04-18
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
Went to see his Christmas show about 10 years ago, he was great. R.I.P. Glen you will be missed.
martygraw- Share Holder
- Posts : 612
Join date : 2010-04-05
Age : 85
Location : Jocotepec
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
I never had the good fortune to meet him..but I always loved his music. Did see his lighthouse on the southside. Very cool. I thought he sold the place some time ago?
kipissippi- Share Holder
- Posts : 1870
Join date : 2010-04-04
Humor : goofy
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
In the years he lived on the south side of the lake he supported many projects to aid the community and started a computer lab for the kids with old computers that he collected from us when we upgraded.
He sometimes would come across to Ajijic to perform a concert. He moved back to the US when his wife was being treated for cancer.
He sometimes would come across to Ajijic to perform a concert. He moved back to the US when his wife was being treated for cancer.
shana- Share Holder
- Posts : 308
Join date : 2010-10-10
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
Very sad, good man..
espíritu del lago- Share Holder
- Posts : 4530
Join date : 2010-04-05
Humor : Sarcastic
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
Glenn's Obituary from the New York Times
Glenn Yarbrough, a folk singer who at midcentury found fame and fortune with the popular trio the Limeliters but who walked away from it all for a life at sea, died on Thursday at his daughter’s home in Nashville. He was 86.
The cause was complications of dementia, his daughter, Holly Yarbrough Burnett, said.
Founded in 1959, the Limeliters — comprising Mr. Yarbrough on vocals and guitar, Alex Hassilev on vocals and banjo and Lou Gottlieb on vocals and bass — was a contemporary folk group in the tradition of the Kingston Trio.
Known for their burnished tight harmonies, sophisticated if nontraditional arrangements and witty onstage banter, the Limeliters were wildly successful. Amid the folk revival of the 1960s, they appeared often on television and in live performance, sold records by the hundreds of thousands and became millionaires in the bargain.
By all critical accounts, Mr. Yarbrough’s silvery lyric tenor — a voice whose lightness belied his stocky appearance — was the group’s acoustic linchpin, soaring memorably in traditional tunes including “John Henry” and contemporary numbers like “Charlie, the Midnight Marauder,” about a hapless suburbanite who one night mistakenly enters the wrong house.
Reviewing a 1961 concert by the Limeliters at Town Hall in Manhattan, Robert Shelton wrote in The New York Times, “Mr. Yarbrough’s fine lyric voice had body, warmth and a lush vibrato that made ‘Lass From the Low Country,’ ‘When I First Came to This Land’ and ‘Zhankoye’ touching.” He added: “Mr. Yarbrough is a top-flight vocalist.”
In 1963, Mr. Yarbrough, restless, left the Limeliters, and the group disbanded. An ardent sailor, he intended to spend the next decade at sea but was persuaded by his record label, RCA Victor, to record solo albums instead.
He made a string of them, toured for some years as a solo act and had a hit single with “Baby the Rain Must Fall,” the title song of the 1965 film starring Steve McQueen and Lee Remick.
Continue reading the main story
In the mid-1960s Mr. Yarbrough began a collaboration with the poet and songwriter Rod McKuen that resulted in several albums, among them “The Lonely Things” and “Glenn Yarbrough Sings the Rod McKuen Songbook.”
But for Mr. Yarbrough, success brought myriad discontents.
“I did a show last year at the Fairmont in San Francisco and there was a big cover charge,” he told the journalist David Lamb during this period. (Mr. Lamb recounted the exchange in his 1993 book, “A Sense of Place: Listening to Americans.”) Mr. Yarbrough continued:
“The only people who could afford it were people already so embroiled in money that they’re already dead inside. I looked out at them and they’re just sitting there and they’re not even living people anymore. It just doesn’t give me a good feeling working for those people.”
By the late 1960s Mr. Yarbrough had sold his Rolls-Royce, his Porsche, his Bentley and his two Ferraris along with, Mr. Lamb reported, his house in New Zealand, his banana plantation in Jamaica and an apartment building he owned in Beverly Hills, Calif. With the proceeds, he established a school for disadvantaged children, most of them African-American, in the mountains outside Los Angeles.
“I’ve always wanted to teach,” Mr. Yarbrough told The Sunday Examiner & Chronicle of San Francisco in 1966. “I got into entertainment by accident. The idea for the school actually came to me when I was sailing to Hawaii. I got to thinking about why I was still doing something I didn’t want to do very much, and about what I could do to make it meaningful.”
The school endured until the early 1970s, when it closed for lack of funds. Mr. Yarbrough rented his home in the Hollywood Hills to the comedian Marty Feldman and, with his second wife, the former Annie Graves, and baby Holly, took to sea aboard the Jubilee, the 57-foot sailboat he had helped build. He did not return for the better part of five years.
Glenn Robertson Yarbrough was born in Milwaukee on Jan. 12, 1930. His parents, Bruce Yarbrough and the former Elizabeth Robertson, were social workers who had met while training at Hull House, the settlement house in Chicago.
While the elder Mr. Yarbrough traveled the country from one social-work post to another during the Depression, Glenn and his mother lived in New York. There, he helped support the family through his work as a boy soprano in the choir of Grace Church, the historic Episcopal church in Manhattan.
As a youth, Glenn attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., where he studied pre-Socratic philosophy. (His roommate, Jac Holzman, would become a founder, in 1950, of Elektra Records, which early on recorded Mr. Yarbrough singly and the Limeliters collectively.)
One day in the early 1950s, Woody Guthrie came to St. John’s, an event that for the young Mr. Yarbrough proved transformative.
“I never liked the pop songs of the day; I always thought it was real stupid stuff — ‘moon, June, spoon,’” Mr. Yarbrough told The Los Angeles Times in 1996. “So I went to this Woody Guthrie concert, and I was just overwhelmed — everything he sang was real. I was just a shy kid, but I walked up to him afterward with tears in my eyes and told him how much I loved what he had done. The very next day I went out and bought a guitar, and that was that.”
After Army service during the Korean War, where he performed with entertainment units in Korea and Japan, Mr. Yarbrough embarked on a solo career, playing the coffeehouse circuit. He became an owner of the Limelite, an Aspen, Colo., nightclub from which the singing group would take its name.
In mid-1959, Mr. Yarbrough and Mr. Hassilev, performing with Theodore Bikel at Cosmo Alley, a Los Angeles club, were introduced to Mr. Gottlieb, and the Limeliters were born. The group made its debut at the Hungry i, the storied San Francisco nightclub, later that year.
Throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, Mr. Yarbrough spent much of his time at sea, traversing many of the world’s oceans. He returned to land periodically, when his finances were at ebb tide, appearing as a soloist, performing in Limeliters reunion tours and making many records.
He sang the musical numbers for the 1977 animated television film “The Hobbit,” with characters voiced by luminaries including Orson Bean, Richard Boone, John Huston and Otto Preminger. In the 1990s and afterward, Mr. Yarbrough toured in a one-man Christmas show, “The Forgotten Carols,” with book, music and lyrics by Michael McLean.
Before moving to his daughter’s home six years ago, Mr. Yarbrough lived, during his dry-land periods, on Lake Chapala, near Guadalajara, Mexico, where he grew fruit and vegetables to give to the poor.
Mr. Yarbrough’s first marriage, to Peggy Goodhart, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Ms. Graves, and his third, to Laurie Ann Poole. At his death, he was separated from his fourth wife, Kathleen Pommer.
Besides his daughter Ms. Burnett, his survivors include two children from his first marriage, Stephany Yarbrough and Sean Yarbrough; two stepdaughters, Brooke and Heather, from his marriage to Ms. Poole; a grandson; and a great-grandson.
With Ms. Burnett, also a singer, Mr. Yarbrough recorded several albums, including “Family Portrait” and “No One Is Alone.”
Mr. Gottlieb, of the Limeliters, died in 1996. Mr. Hassilev, who juggled a long career as a musician, record producer and actor, lives in California.
Even when the Limeliters were at the height of their acclaim — or perhaps especially then — Mr. Yarbrough had deep misgivings about his unexpected calling.
“The only thing success has taught me is that success is meaningless,” he told The Saturday Evening Post in 1961. “An audience is like a lynch mob. Three years ago they were walking out on me. Now that they know we’ve been on the Sullivan show, they come and cheer.”
Glenn Yarbrough, a folk singer who at midcentury found fame and fortune with the popular trio the Limeliters but who walked away from it all for a life at sea, died on Thursday at his daughter’s home in Nashville. He was 86.
The cause was complications of dementia, his daughter, Holly Yarbrough Burnett, said.
Founded in 1959, the Limeliters — comprising Mr. Yarbrough on vocals and guitar, Alex Hassilev on vocals and banjo and Lou Gottlieb on vocals and bass — was a contemporary folk group in the tradition of the Kingston Trio.
Known for their burnished tight harmonies, sophisticated if nontraditional arrangements and witty onstage banter, the Limeliters were wildly successful. Amid the folk revival of the 1960s, they appeared often on television and in live performance, sold records by the hundreds of thousands and became millionaires in the bargain.
By all critical accounts, Mr. Yarbrough’s silvery lyric tenor — a voice whose lightness belied his stocky appearance — was the group’s acoustic linchpin, soaring memorably in traditional tunes including “John Henry” and contemporary numbers like “Charlie, the Midnight Marauder,” about a hapless suburbanite who one night mistakenly enters the wrong house.
Reviewing a 1961 concert by the Limeliters at Town Hall in Manhattan, Robert Shelton wrote in The New York Times, “Mr. Yarbrough’s fine lyric voice had body, warmth and a lush vibrato that made ‘Lass From the Low Country,’ ‘When I First Came to This Land’ and ‘Zhankoye’ touching.” He added: “Mr. Yarbrough is a top-flight vocalist.”
In 1963, Mr. Yarbrough, restless, left the Limeliters, and the group disbanded. An ardent sailor, he intended to spend the next decade at sea but was persuaded by his record label, RCA Victor, to record solo albums instead.
He made a string of them, toured for some years as a solo act and had a hit single with “Baby the Rain Must Fall,” the title song of the 1965 film starring Steve McQueen and Lee Remick.
Continue reading the main story
In the mid-1960s Mr. Yarbrough began a collaboration with the poet and songwriter Rod McKuen that resulted in several albums, among them “The Lonely Things” and “Glenn Yarbrough Sings the Rod McKuen Songbook.”
But for Mr. Yarbrough, success brought myriad discontents.
“I did a show last year at the Fairmont in San Francisco and there was a big cover charge,” he told the journalist David Lamb during this period. (Mr. Lamb recounted the exchange in his 1993 book, “A Sense of Place: Listening to Americans.”) Mr. Yarbrough continued:
“The only people who could afford it were people already so embroiled in money that they’re already dead inside. I looked out at them and they’re just sitting there and they’re not even living people anymore. It just doesn’t give me a good feeling working for those people.”
By the late 1960s Mr. Yarbrough had sold his Rolls-Royce, his Porsche, his Bentley and his two Ferraris along with, Mr. Lamb reported, his house in New Zealand, his banana plantation in Jamaica and an apartment building he owned in Beverly Hills, Calif. With the proceeds, he established a school for disadvantaged children, most of them African-American, in the mountains outside Los Angeles.
“I’ve always wanted to teach,” Mr. Yarbrough told The Sunday Examiner & Chronicle of San Francisco in 1966. “I got into entertainment by accident. The idea for the school actually came to me when I was sailing to Hawaii. I got to thinking about why I was still doing something I didn’t want to do very much, and about what I could do to make it meaningful.”
The school endured until the early 1970s, when it closed for lack of funds. Mr. Yarbrough rented his home in the Hollywood Hills to the comedian Marty Feldman and, with his second wife, the former Annie Graves, and baby Holly, took to sea aboard the Jubilee, the 57-foot sailboat he had helped build. He did not return for the better part of five years.
Glenn Robertson Yarbrough was born in Milwaukee on Jan. 12, 1930. His parents, Bruce Yarbrough and the former Elizabeth Robertson, were social workers who had met while training at Hull House, the settlement house in Chicago.
While the elder Mr. Yarbrough traveled the country from one social-work post to another during the Depression, Glenn and his mother lived in New York. There, he helped support the family through his work as a boy soprano in the choir of Grace Church, the historic Episcopal church in Manhattan.
As a youth, Glenn attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., where he studied pre-Socratic philosophy. (His roommate, Jac Holzman, would become a founder, in 1950, of Elektra Records, which early on recorded Mr. Yarbrough singly and the Limeliters collectively.)
One day in the early 1950s, Woody Guthrie came to St. John’s, an event that for the young Mr. Yarbrough proved transformative.
“I never liked the pop songs of the day; I always thought it was real stupid stuff — ‘moon, June, spoon,’” Mr. Yarbrough told The Los Angeles Times in 1996. “So I went to this Woody Guthrie concert, and I was just overwhelmed — everything he sang was real. I was just a shy kid, but I walked up to him afterward with tears in my eyes and told him how much I loved what he had done. The very next day I went out and bought a guitar, and that was that.”
After Army service during the Korean War, where he performed with entertainment units in Korea and Japan, Mr. Yarbrough embarked on a solo career, playing the coffeehouse circuit. He became an owner of the Limelite, an Aspen, Colo., nightclub from which the singing group would take its name.
In mid-1959, Mr. Yarbrough and Mr. Hassilev, performing with Theodore Bikel at Cosmo Alley, a Los Angeles club, were introduced to Mr. Gottlieb, and the Limeliters were born. The group made its debut at the Hungry i, the storied San Francisco nightclub, later that year.
Throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, Mr. Yarbrough spent much of his time at sea, traversing many of the world’s oceans. He returned to land periodically, when his finances were at ebb tide, appearing as a soloist, performing in Limeliters reunion tours and making many records.
He sang the musical numbers for the 1977 animated television film “The Hobbit,” with characters voiced by luminaries including Orson Bean, Richard Boone, John Huston and Otto Preminger. In the 1990s and afterward, Mr. Yarbrough toured in a one-man Christmas show, “The Forgotten Carols,” with book, music and lyrics by Michael McLean.
Before moving to his daughter’s home six years ago, Mr. Yarbrough lived, during his dry-land periods, on Lake Chapala, near Guadalajara, Mexico, where he grew fruit and vegetables to give to the poor.
Mr. Yarbrough’s first marriage, to Peggy Goodhart, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Ms. Graves, and his third, to Laurie Ann Poole. At his death, he was separated from his fourth wife, Kathleen Pommer.
Besides his daughter Ms. Burnett, his survivors include two children from his first marriage, Stephany Yarbrough and Sean Yarbrough; two stepdaughters, Brooke and Heather, from his marriage to Ms. Poole; a grandson; and a great-grandson.
With Ms. Burnett, also a singer, Mr. Yarbrough recorded several albums, including “Family Portrait” and “No One Is Alone.”
Mr. Gottlieb, of the Limeliters, died in 1996. Mr. Hassilev, who juggled a long career as a musician, record producer and actor, lives in California.
Even when the Limeliters were at the height of their acclaim — or perhaps especially then — Mr. Yarbrough had deep misgivings about his unexpected calling.
“The only thing success has taught me is that success is meaningless,” he told The Saturday Evening Post in 1961. “An audience is like a lynch mob. Three years ago they were walking out on me. Now that they know we’ve been on the Sullivan show, they come and cheer.”
DaveP- Share Holder
- Posts : 771
Join date : 2010-04-05
Location : San Antonio Tlayacapan
Humor : A little English
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
Thank you, DaveP! So much I didn't know about him, what a terrific obituary.
Talk about a life well-lived! Bravo and rest in peace good man.
Talk about a life well-lived! Bravo and rest in peace good man.
Trailrunner- Share Holder
- Posts : 8007
Join date : 2011-04-18
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
In case you did not know Glenn and Jerry Mayfield were great friends and collaborated on quite a number of songs some of which Jerry sings at his weekly concerts at Bar Tia Mia in Ajijic and El Patio in Chapala
DaveP- Share Holder
- Posts : 771
Join date : 2010-04-05
Location : San Antonio Tlayacapan
Humor : A little English
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
Thank you for sharing this, DaveP. Fascinating man and a life well lived.
Lady Otter Latté- Share Holder
- Posts : 6760
Join date : 2011-07-26
Location : Chapala
Humor : Biting
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
Thanks DaveP. A wonderful obituary.
I've been having a trip down memory lane on youtube...and I found this particular song which moved me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwTbfGpzxJg
I've been having a trip down memory lane on youtube...and I found this particular song which moved me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwTbfGpzxJg
ferret- Share Holder
- Posts : 10326
Join date : 2010-05-23
Lady Otter Latté- Share Holder
- Posts : 6760
Join date : 2011-07-26
Location : Chapala
Humor : Biting
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
You might like this as a final memory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIgQNRg_sBk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIgQNRg_sBk
DaveP- Share Holder
- Posts : 771
Join date : 2010-04-05
Location : San Antonio Tlayacapan
Humor : A little English
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
Glenn Yarbrough's interest in Windsong - his property in San Luis Soyatlan - was purchased several years ago. His generosity while living there was legendary. My favorite part of Windsong was the "lighthouse" - it so reflected his lifelong love of the sea. RIP
manymoonsago- Share Holder
- Posts : 210
Join date : 2012-05-11
Humor : Ironic; Over the Edge
Re: Glen Yarbrough passed away
Thanks for sharing his obituary. He certainly had an interesting life
cathlaur- Newbie
- Posts : 8
Join date : 2016-08-16
Age : 58
Location : Ontario Canada
Similar topics
» Mom passed away
» Ann Villela Passed Away
» Pedro has passed away
» Donna Dykes passed away
» LES STRONG - Past Chili Cook-Off M.C. has passed.
» Ann Villela Passed Away
» Pedro has passed away
» Donna Dykes passed away
» LES STRONG - Past Chili Cook-Off M.C. has passed.
Page 1 of 1
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
|
|