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Kathy & Carol // The Blacksmith

2,858 views · Published 3 July 2016 · 3:53 · Indexed 1 October 2026

Channel: Underrated · 2016 · Music

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During the 1960s folk revival, plenty of singers drew upon a wide range of traditional material for their base repertoire, taken from old folk song collections or learned first-hand from other performers. Kathy & Carol's sole album, released by Elektra in mid-1965, drank deeply from that well, also blending in tunes by the Carter Family and fellow Elektra artist Mark Spoelstra. What made it stand out most from similar releases of the time were the pair's extraordinary close, high, and haunting harmonies. Unfortunately, relatively few listeners of subsequent decades have had the opportunity to hear them, the album slipping out of print and becoming one of the rarest mid-'60s Elektra releases.

Kathy Larisch and Carol McComb -- both of whom sang and played guitar and autoharp -- began singing together in their high school years in Vista, California, about 40 miles north of San Diego. As esteemed folklorist (and New Lost City Ramblers multi-instrumentalist) John Cohen's liner notes on the original LP pointed out, Joan Baez was a major early influence on the duo. McComb also cites folk musician Michael Cooney (for whom Kathy & Carol often opened) as an influence on her guitar style, and names Gene Autry, Pete Seeger, and Peggy Seeger as other early favorites. The two worked the Southern Californian folk circuit, opening for the likes of the New Los City Ramblers, Bill Monroe, Taj Mahal, and Phil Ochs, often at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. It was through Cooney that they met Mark Spoelstra, whom Carol recalls introducing them to Elektra producer Paul Rothchild.
     
   The album was released shortly before the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Kathy & Carol performed Richard Farina's "A Swallow Song," a composition he'd specifically sent them to do (McComb thinks it might been relayed via Joan Baez's manager, Manny Greenhill). The 20-year-olds also had a ringside view of the stage for Bob Dylan's famous electric rock set at Newport that year, and took advantage of the trip back East to play a few gigs, including some at Cambridge's fabled Club 47, where lines stretched around the block. It was one of the few times they played outside of California; other than that Eastern swing in the summer of '65, McComb only remembers traveling outside the state for gigs in Tucson, Arizona (where a young Linda Ronstadt opened for them) and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

    For reasons that do not remain entirely clear nearly 40 years later, however, the live Newport version of "A Swallow Song" (eventually issued on the CD compilation Folk Music at Newport Part 1) would be the only other Kathy & Carol track ever released. Though the passage of several decades has made the timeline uncertain, both Larisch and McComb remember that after the LP, Rothchild and Elektra wanted to record material that would have used electric rock backing, as well as some of the original songs they were starting to write (at the company's suggestion). "We came up with some really interesting combinations," recalls McComb. "They sounded sort of like Renaissance chord changes with contemporary lyrics. Some of them were sort of country-ish. They wanted to hook us up with some rock'n'roll band. They never did reveal who that band was going to be, but it was definitely a band that was already engaged with Elektra. I think they had kind of a Marianne Faithfull idea for us: kind of more delicate voices with rock'n'roll voices. I remember Paul saying he thought that would be very commercial, a very appealing combination; I think it was his idea." Larisch also reveals, interestingly, that Elektra wanted them to record a single around late 1965, and wanted her specifically to be in a movie with Mimi Farina that the company was thinking of making, though nothing came of it.

    Carol McComb has continued to be an active performer and recording artist to the present day, playing and touring with Mimi Farina in the early '70s; releasing several solo albums; scoring films; touring and recording with the Gryphon Quintet; and authoring a country and blues guitar instruction book (for more information on her work, check her website, www.carolmccomb.com). Kathy Larisch retired from professional music, and is now associate professor at California College of the Arts, though she and Carol have sung together informally on occasion. It's a shame that a large chunk of their career together is undocumented on record, but this CD reissue of Kathy & Carol at least restores to wide availability their only album, long one of the most coveted rarities in the Elektra folk catalog. - Richie Unterberger

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