Four Strong Winds: The Kingston Trio

The second troupe of The Kingston Trio (Bob Shane, Nick Reynolds, John Stewart) sings the classic song of love and loss composed and originally performed by Canada s Ian Tyson. This cut was recorded toward the end of the KT s first tenyear run (19571967) in its own recording studio in the Columbus Tower in San Francisco, a building owned by the Trio. For reasons never made clear though possibly because the song had been covered so often and successfully by this date the recording never made it onto a Kingston Trio album and has resurfaced only recently. Ian Tyson, of course, has enjoyed a long and distinguished career of nearly fifty years as a songwriter and performer both in Canada and the U. S. He still writes, records, and tours at the age of 75 as of 2009. His Four Strong Winds has been covered extensively by scores of other artists (with many of the best on YouTube) and was voted the greatest Canadian song of all time in a poll conducted by the CBC in 2005. T