The Folk Music Brothers You Need to Know

The Folk Music Brothers are a duo you need to know about! With their catchy tunes and clever lyrics, they’re quickly making a name for themselves in the folk music scene. Learn more about them in this blog post.

The Everly Brothers

The Everly Brothers were an American country-influenced rock and roll duo, known for steel-string acoustic guitar playing and close harmony singing. Consisting of brothers Don Everly (born 1937) and Phil Everly (1939–2014), they had their greatest success between 1957 and 1964. Their best known songs include “Wake Up Little Susie”, “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, and “Bye Bye Love”.

Simon & Garfunkel

Simon & Garfunkel were an American folk rock duo consisting of singer-songwriter Paul Simon and singer Art Garfunkel. They were one of the most popular groups of the 1960s and are best known for their songs “The Sound of Silence”, “Bridge over Troubled Water” and “The Boxer”.

The Kingston Trio

The Kingston Trio was a highly successful American folk music group that became synonymous with the genre in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The trio was founded by Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds and Dave Guard, who met while attending college in California. The group found success with their self-titled debut album, which included the hit single “Tom Dooley,” and went on to release a string of successful albums throughout the 1960s. The Kingston Trio were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1991 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999.

The Weavers

The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. Their sound was influential in the development of commercial country and western music and they were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Vaudeville Hall of Fame. The group was founded in 1948 by Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Ronnie Gilbert as a response to the anti-Communist blacklisting of the early 1950s.

The Limeliters

The Limeliters are an American folk music group formed in 1959 by Lou Gottlieb, Alex Hassilev, and Glenn Yarbrough. The trio became one of the most popular folk groups of the 1960s, thanks to their close harmonies and catchy songs. All three members were accomplished singers and instrumentalists, and their recordings featured a mix of traditional folk tunes and original compositions. Their debut album, The Limeliters (1962), topped the Billboard charts and spawned the hit single “A Dollar Down.” The group continued to enjoy success with follow-up albums such as Folk Circle (1963) and Folk Matinee (1964). In later years, Gottlieb and Hassilev retired from the group, but Yarbrough continued to perform as a solo artist and with various incarnations of the Limeliters. The group was inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame in 2011.

The New Christy Minstrels

The New Christy Minstrels are an American folk music group founded in 1961, remaining active in various incarnations into the present. They were one of the most prominent and commercially successful groups of the early 1960s, recording more than 20 albums and charting more than a dozen hit singles, including “Green, Green”, “Saturday Night”, and “This Land Is Your Land”. The group’s success with live performances on television variety shows helped to popularize folk music in the middle of the decade. The band has continued to perform intermittently into the twenty-first century.

The Highwaymen

The Highwaymen were an American folk music supergroup consisting of four of the most notable folk musicians of the 20th century: Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and Josh White. The group is most famous for their recordings of traditional songs like “Midnight Special” and “I Ain’t Got No Home”, as well as their covers of popular songs like “Goodnight, Irene” and “Cocaine Blues”. The Highwaymen were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2006.

Peter, Paul & Mary

Peter, Paul & Mary was an American folk music trio formed in New York City in 1961, during the American folk music revival phenomenon. The trio consisted of tenor Peter Yarrow, baritone Noel “Paul” Stookey and contralto Mary Travers. The group’s hits include “Lemon Tree”, “Leaving on a Jet Plane”, “Puff the Magic Dragon”, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “The Times They Are a-Changin'”, and “Don’t Laugh at Me”. They were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999.

Yarrow and Stookeny were successful songwriters before they formed the group, with Yarrow having co-written (with Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan) the No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit “Love Is All Around” sung by Wet Wet Wet and Stookeny having co-written “For All We Know” (a No. 2 Billboard Hot 100 hit for Carpenters) with Fred Karlin. The trio recorded their first album, Peter, Paul and Mary, the following year. It included a version of Dylan’s tune Blowin’ in the Wind that made it to No. 2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart; Barbra Streisand later had a No. 1 hit cover version of the song in 1963

The Seekers

The Seekers are an Australian folk music duo, consisting of brothers Tim and Neil Finn. The pair have been making music together since the early 1990s, and have released five albums. They are perhaps best known for their work on the soundtrack to the film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, for which they won an Academy Award.

The Brothers Four

The Brothers Four are an American folk music quartet, founded in 1957 in Bellingham, Washington, known for their 1960 hit song “Greenfields”. Bob Flick, John Paine, Mike Kirkland and Dick Foley met while students at the University of Washington; all four were members of the Delta Chi fraternity. The brothers sang together informally during their college years and decided to form a professional group after graduation. The name “Brothers Four” was suggested by a club owner who booked them for a fraternity party.