Singer Glenn Yarbrough dies at 86

From left, Alex Hassilev, Lou Gottlieb and Glenn Yarbrough of the Limeliters in the early 1960s / Photo Courtesy: Everett Collection

NASHVILLE, Aug. 14, 2016 (Gephardt Daily) —  Folk singer Glenn Yarbrough, who was a founding member of ’60s folk group, The Limeliters, has died. He was 86.

According to Billboard, the folk singer’s daughter, Holly Yarbrough Burnett, says he died surrounded by friends and family at home in Nashville after suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dementia and other health issues.

Yarbrough sang and played guitar with fellow Limeliters members Lou Gottlieb and Alex Hassilev from 1959 and 1963.

Yarbrough was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and grew up in New York City. After leaving high school, he attended St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he roomed with Jac Holzman and began performing after he and Holzman attended a concert by Woody Guthrie.

During the Korean War he served in the U.S. Army as a codebreaker before joining the entertainment corps. After military service, he moved to South Dakota, helped organize square dances, and started appearing on local television shows. By the mid-1950s, he started performing in clubs in Chicago, where he met club owner Albert Grossman and performers including Odetta and Shel Silverstein. One of Elektra Records’ first artists, he was one of the first singers to record the traditional “The House of the Rising Sun.”

Yarbrough moved to Aspen, Colorado, and ran a club, ‘The Limelite,’ and formed a folk group with Alex Hassilev and Lou Gottlieb. They released their first album, Limeliters, on Holzman’s Elektra label in 1960.

The group was known for such songs as “There’s a Meetin’ Here Tonight,” ”City of New Orleans,” ”A Dollar Down” and “Lonesome Traveler.”

He left the Limeliters for a solo career in the mid-1960s. His most popular single, and the one for which he is most well-known today is “Baby the Rain Must Fall” (the main theme from the film of the same name), which entered the Cashbox chart on March 27, 1965 and reached No. 12 pop and No. 2 easy listening. According to Chartmasters of Covington, Louisiana, the song was one of the all time top 100 of the year.

Among other career highlights, Yarbrough provided vocals for the Rankin/Bass animated versions of “The Hobbit” (1977) singing songs such as “The Greatest Adventure,” “The Road Goes Ever On” as well as “The Return of the King” (1980) singing “Frodo of the Nine Fingers” in addition to singing the title song in the 1966 holiday classic, “The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t.”

Yarbrough also performed Utah Composer Michael McLean’s Forgotten Carols, creating a CD of the show as well as taking it on the road to local audiences in the 1990s.

Glenn Yarbrough was also an accomplished sailor who owned and lived aboard three different sailboats: Armorel, all teak and still in operation; Jubilee, which Yarbrough helped build, taking three years; and the Brass Dolphin a Chinese junk design, and has, according to Yarbrough, sailed around the world except for the Indian Ocean.

Yarbrough lost his ability to sing due to complications from throat surgery at the age of 80. In his last year or so of life, he suffered from dementia and was cared for by his daughter Holly in Nashville.

1 COMMENT

  1. My condolences to Holly, the rest of the family, and friends. He was a wonderful, gracious Christian gentleman with a voice as sweet as honey. The kind of man he was, it came out in his voice, in the way that he sang.

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