By chance I was reminded while scrolling around different folk sites that we are toward the end of the five week stretch when the Kingston Trio ruled the album charts with four LPs in Billboard's Top Ten in November and December of 1959.

I first read of that in maybe 1987 when I went to a John Stewart show at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica CA, now open for rather more than 50 years, and walked out with a copy of Allan Shaw's et al. The Kingston Trio On Record, still my favorite KT publication. I was stunned to see on the product table the number of CD/albums that Stewart had recorded and released over the years. In Los Angeles then, generally only the highest profile professional musicians got any notice in the LA Times, and it was really only at Stewart's death in early 2008 that the paper paid any attention at all. (To be fair, at Stewart's death the Times finally came up with three or four excellent articles by their best pop music writers.)

So Allan's book with Jack Rubeck and others noted that stat. When the internet rolled around big time and I was writing all those CV101 posts, I found out that the Trio's 4 top ten albums were actually there for four weeks, not the one noted by KTOR.

What I stumbled on today in the Billboard issue was that the 4 in the top ten were mono albums but that the KT scored the numbers 2 and 5 on the stereo charts just below.

The Trio's record of the 4 in the top ten (shared with Herb Alpert and the TJB's one week with four in 1966) lasted until both Prince and Whitney Houston scored five for two or three weeks following their deaths in 2016 and 2012 respectively.

But the Trio showed the way, and in 1959 45rpm singles were still outselling albums, and I think that gives the Trio's achievement even more impact.

My preview here tells me that the link should take you to the right page, but in case you just get Billboard -
the date is December 7, 1959 and the chart is on page 37.



https://books.google.com/books?id=5QcEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA14&dq=grammy++kingston+trio&lr=&as_pt=MAGAZINES&pg=PA37&hl=en#v=onepage&q=grammy%20%20kingston%20trio&f=false