Alex Hassilev, final unique member of the ’60s folks trio the Limeliters, dies at 91

Alex Hassilev, the singing, songwriting, guitar and banjo virtuoso who was the very last surviving primary member of the 1960s folks trio the Limeliters, died of cancer April 21 at Providence Saint Joseph Health care Heart in Burbank. He was 91.

Hassilev was the youngest member of the Limeliters, whose other original members were being bassist and comedian spokesman Lou Gottlieb (1923-1996) and star tenor Glenn Yarbrough (1930-2016). The band was 2nd only to the Kingston Trio in its recognition throughout the peak years of the American city folks songs increase of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

After getting a hit act at San Francisco’s fabled hungry i nightclub only two months just after their development in 1959, the Limeliters became an inescapable existence in mass media. They recorded 13 albums, appeared on television and toured as quite a few as 310 days out of the calendar year. Their most enduring album, “Through Children’s Eyes,” was common between generations of youngsters and their moms and dads.

Hassilev’s highly effective chops on banjo and guitar gave the group’s new music a great deal of its rhythmic push, and his expertise in overseas languages — significantly in French, Portuguese and Russian — produced it possible to insert songs from outside American folk new music to the group’s repertoire. Tall, debonair and handsome, Hassilev also was the sexual intercourse image of the trio.

Hassilev was born in Paris on July 11, 1932, to Russian emigré dad and mom Leonide and Tamara Hassilev. Like his colleagues in the Limeliters, he was an only boy or girl — and to a single a different the three musicians ended up likely the closest detail to brothers they at any time experienced.

The Hassilevs were Jewish and still left Paris for New York Metropolis in 1939 in advance of the Nazi profession of France during World War II, and in Manhattan Leonide Hassilev continued his profession as a civil engineer specializing in hydroelectric jobs. Hassilev experienced showed early brilliance as a child, picking up new languages with simplicity and finally talking 6 fluently. When he arrived to The us, he found that he was forward of his classmates.

“I breezed by university, other than that I was awful at shop,” he reported in just one of the interviews that eventually resulted in my current biography of the band’s core trio, “Makin’ a Joyful Sound: The Life and Instances of the (Slightly) Wonderful Limeliters.”. “I was good at almost everything in those times due to the fact I had this tremendous track record from my European days, wherever they teach at a greater level.”

Hassilev’s musical background was mainly in the classical area, while he knew some Russian folks songs that his parents brought about as properly as some Brazilian and French music. He claimed that he didn’t find American folk music until finally his early 20s when he was stationed in England after being drafted into the Army.

A probability listening to the Weavers’ recording of “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” on the radio electrified him.

“I considered, goddamn, that is the biggest factor I at any time heard, and it built this sort of an impression on me that it kindled my interest in American people audio,” he explained for the duration of an job interview in 1989. “At the time, I did not know any music in English.”

Hassilev attended Harvard for a year, but dissatisfied with the Ivy League environment, he transferred to the University of Chicago with the thought of likely into the diplomatic corps. The entice of the theater ultimately gained out, and he enrolled at New York’s Community Playhouse, wherever he researched with Sanford Meisner and Martha Graham. On graduation, he looked for operate as an actor even though participating in the people tunes scene in Greenwich Village, the place he met Yarbrough at a bash.

Sooner or later, Yarbrough requested Hassilev to be a part of him as a co-operator and performer at an Aspen, Colo., nightclub called the Limelite, forming a trio with singer-actor Marilyn Youngster. The two males also sang jointly at a compact club in Hollywood referred to as the Cosmo Alley, and it was there in 1959 that Gottlieb — then striving to promote arrangements to the Kingston Trio — listened to and favored their audio.

At first Gottlieb only wanted them to assist him make demo tapes for the Kingstons to learn music, but Hassilev and Yarbrough countered with an supply to operate up an act of their have. Gottlieb agreed and received hungry i owner Enrico Banducci to present the new trio of Gottlieb, Hassilev and Yarbrough and a gig there, sight unseen and unheard.

Banducci’s gamble compensated off big time. Inside days just after their opening, the Limeliters were promoting out audiences and had been besieged with gives from important report firms keen to cash in on the folks growth. Immediately after building a modestly advertising album for Elektra, the group signed with RCA Victor. Their first RCA album, “Tonight: In Individual,” recorded stay at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles, rose to No. 5 on the charts. Commercials for Folger’s coffee, L&M cigarettes, Ford Motor Co. and Coca-Cola adopted, which irked people purists but gave the team immense publicity.

The three Limeliters had been an clever and unstable established of personalities armed with formidable debating expertise, and they regularly argued about repertoire, cash, and even the dresses they wore onstage.

“They had been breaking up each and every working day they have been in existence,” their then-manager Ken Kragen recalled. Their touring program elevated the tensions, and a December 1962 plane crash in the vicinity of Provo, Utah — from which they were being lucky to survive with only minimal injuries — contributed to their initially break up. Yarbrough still left the group in July 1963 to go solo Hassilev and Gottlieb continued for two a long time as a recording act to fulfill their RCA Victor contract, with Ernie Sheldon replacing Yarbrough.

Unsure as to what to do subsequent, Hassilev attempted a solo singing occupation but gave up just after two unsuccessful albums and an aborted nightclub gig. He turned to performing, landing a outstanding purpose as a Russian-talking sailor in the Norman Jewison Cold War comedy “The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming,” as effectively as a visitor shot on TV’s “Get Wise.” He became interested in developing data, founding an early household recording studio that at its peak operated around the clock in his basement in West Hollywood, around the Sunset Strip.

His studio was just one of the very first to have a Moog synthesizer — effectively just before the Beatles, the Monkees and other pop bands learned the instrument. He and Mort Garson made use of the Moog to enable develop a average-sized strike album by the Zodiac, “Cosmic Seems.” As a producer, Hassilev also managed to get Gottlieb and Yarbrough to record a period-pop-flavored Limeliters reunion album, “Time to Assemble Seeds,” in 1968.

At some point, Hassilev worn out of operating the studio and wound down his schedule. When the opportunity came to reunite the Limeliters again as a element-time touring act in 1972, Hassilev, who now exclusively owned the legal rights to the group’s identify, jumped at the possibility. The aged vocal chemistry was continue to there, the show drew extremely beneficial critiques and large crowds. But the folks growth experienced long because deflated, and the Limeliters never could catch the attention of the exact stage of interest from document firms.

Sooner or later Yarbrough grew restless, leaving the trio in 1977 and returning in 1980, only to depart all over again following a number of months of touring in which the outdated group tensions rose all over again. Hassilev, now totally in cost, stored the Limeliters heading, replacing Yarbrough with tenors Purple Grammer in the 1980s and Rick Dougherty in the 1990s, experimenting with country audio ahead of doubling back again to their people base.

When Gottlieb died suddenly in 1996, Hassilev changed him with Invoice Zorn. That edition of the Limeliters lasted until eventually 2002, when Hassilev made bladder most cancers and had to depart the road. When he recovered, a lawful dispute blew aside that edition of the trio, but Hassilev saved the Limeliters going, teaming up with Andy Corwin and Mack Bailey.

Hassilev retired in 2006, leaving the management of the touring Limeliters to Corwin when still proudly owning the group’s identify. Less than Corwin, the Limeliters, with a variety of changes in staff, stay energetic to this day.

In retirement, Hassilev moved from West Hollywood to North Hollywood, where by he expended hours and several hours modifying and re-sequencing potential albums of his get the job done by itself and with the trio, as perfectly as doting upon his 5 pet dogs. However increasingly bodily motionless in his previous 10 years, Hassilev remained sharp mentally, developing conservative in his politics and prepared to discussion his liberal pals. Even at 90, he could dominate a area with his bass-baritone voice and a heat that could smooth above rigidity.

Hassilev’s survivors consist of his next wife, Gladys his son from his to start with marriage to Ginger Stagner, David two grandchildren and a few great-grandchildren.