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Steve Trott, after graduating from Harvard Law, became a prosecutor in the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. Later, he served as Associate Attorney General, the number two position in the United States Department of Justice during the Presidency of Ronald Reagan and in 1987 was appointed a judge of the United States Court of ...
Steve Trott sings baritone with the Highwaymen and plays three (yes, count 'em, THREE) mandolins made by the legendary Rolfe Gerhardt, and a Norman Blake model Martin guitar. But only one at a time. So far.
In the fall of 1958, Dave Fisher, Steve Butts, Bob Burnett, and Chan Daniels met through a performance at a college fraternity show, and guitarist Steve Trott came aboard during their rehearsals.
- Formation, First Demo, Name Change
- Debut Album, “Santiano,” “Michael”
- “Michael” Hits Us, UK #1
- Standing Room Only, Encore, March ON, Brothers
- Hootenanny with The Highwaymen, One More Time
- Other 1960s Albums, Appearances
- 1970s, 1980s, 1990s
- 2000s, Final Albums, Performances
Originally called The Clansmen – no, that was not a typo – the group was spearheaded by Dave Fisher, an ethnomusicology major who had sung lead in the New Haven-based doo-wop quintet The Academics, whose single “Too Good to be True” was the #1 song in Connecticut in 1957. Just two weeks after arriving at Wesleyan in September 1958, Fisher brought t...
In 1959, Greengrass’ strategy paid off when The Highwaymen signed with United Artists and recorded their eponymous debut album with producer Don Costa, a Boston native who had produced records for Paul Anka (and would produce Frank Sinatra’s classic Sinatra and Strings in 1962). In May 1960, the group played at the Indian Neck Folk Music Festival i...
The Highwaymen’s apparent demise was thwarted, however, in large part due to the persistence of Edward “Big Ed” Dinello, an independent record distributor from Connecticut who saw potential in “Michael” and persuaded fellow distributors to promote it and local disc jockeys to spin it regularly. By July 1961, the track was a hit across New England a...
In late 1961, UA released the band’s second album, Standing Room Only. Their rendition of the ballad “The Gypsy Rover” reached #12 in the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart and a sublimely harmonized rendition of the little-known Lead Belly song “Cotton Fields” reached #3. The Beach Boys recorded the song for their 1969 album 20/20and Creedence Cle...
In November 1962, the Highwaymen appeared on The Tonight Show with its new host, Johnny Carson, and in 1963 they recorded the live album Hootenanny with the Highwaymen. They followed with the studio LP One More Time, which included covers of Buffy Saint-Marie’s “Universal Soldier” and “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” written by Ewan McColl an...
In early 1964, the group recorded another live album, Homecoming!, on the Wesleyan campus and that summer they recorded their final United Artist album, The Spirit and the Flesh. In 1965, ABC-Paramount released their next two albums, The Highwaymen on a New Road and Stop! Look! & Listen! In April 1967, the group played at The American Festival of M...
Throughout the 1970s, several iterations of The Highwaymen reunited and in 1974 Fisher, Trott and Daniels appeared at The Great Folk Festival, broadcast on ABC. After Daniels passed away in August 1975, the surviving members played two concerts at Wesleyan in 1987, recorded for their self-released LP 25th Reunion Concert, which includes their rendi...
In the early 2000s, until Fisher died in 2010 (followed by Burnett in 2011), the group performed about a dozen shows per year. They recorded their final studio album, The Water Of Life: A Celtic Collection (2004), on the Varèse Sarabande label and self-released two live LPs, In Concert (2002) and When the Village Was Green(2007), the latter recorde...
Steve Trott, mandolin and guitarist for the group, explained that "Michael" was such a big hit because Dave Fisher "pu... #1 for two weeks Sept. 4 and 11, 1961.
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- HistoricusJoe
Oct 1, 1990 · As judge for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Stephen Trott is one of the top legal officials in the country. But he recently found himself conceding to the simple common sense of country...
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May 13, 2010 · Fisher is “the guy responsible for one of the seminal folk groups of 1960s,” said Steve Trott, who played mandolin and guitar for the group and made a career as a federal appeals court judge ...
