POP MUSIC REVIEW : Kingston Trio Hasn’t Lost Its Humor or Voice

“Hang down your head Tom Dooley, Hang down your head and cry. . . .”

Sure, you know the words. C’mon and sing along! Then sing it a dozen more times for good measure. Now sing it a dozen more times. Again! Again!

Chances are that by about the fifth repetition, you’ll be asking the hapless Mr. Dooley to make room on the gallows. A good, honest noose has to be preferable to having this treacly ode to murder stuck in your craw indefinitely.

It may be a miracle greater than Lazarus, then, that the Kingston Trio not only sang “Tom Dooley” at the Crazy Horse Steak House on Monday evening--for what conservatively must have been more than the 6,800th time--but actually seemed to enjoy it.

Founding members Bob Shane and Nick Reynolds and 16-year Trio vet George Grove (the original third member was the late Dave Guard) did practically nothing to update the group’s legacy, sticking with three-decade-old songs and collegiate humor.

But if the material was dated, the delivery wasn’t. The voices rang as pure as ever, and the musicianship--abetted by three backing musicians on bass, drums, electric tenor guitar and viola--was sharp.

Though one hardly can imagine Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Phil Ochs drawing much inspiration from the Kingston Trio, the group from Northern California perhaps did open a door for them and other folk musicians. With its scrubbed, striped-shirt image, polished delivery and innocuous material, the trio made folk music safe for mass consumption. Shane, Guard and Reynolds were the perfect fodder for TV “hootenannies” at a time when such artists as Pete Seeger were blacklisted.

When the trio formed in 1957, it was all the rage for squeaky-clean performers such as Pat Boone to cash in with watered-down imitations of less socially acceptable artists, such as anyone who happened to be black, for instance.

Shane said Monday that the trio wasn’t anything so calculated, just three guys who liked to sing. They never claimed to be folk singers, Shane told the packed Crazy Horse crowd. “Then a man from Capitol Records came with a big suitcase full of money and said, ‘You’re folk singers.’ We said, ‘You bet your ass we are.’ ”

Sporting matching Southwestern shirts and various shades of gray and bald on their pates, Shane and Reynolds (who are pushing 60) and Grove (in his 40s) opened their performance as the trio often did three decades ago, with a driving rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “Hard Ain’t It Hard.” The 1963 hit “Greenback Dollar” also was given a strident vocal delivery, with peppery rhythmic accents from drummer John Green.

All three singers are strong. But Shane, who sported a long gray ponytail, was the standout as his rich, familiar voice bridged the decades with “Long Black Veil,” “Worried Man,” Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain,” the saloon song “Scotch and Soda” and even, yes, “Tom Dooley.”

Tenor guitarist Reynolds was most impressive during “M.T.A.” a humorous tale of a man lost forever on the busses of Boston’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. Grove, who provided splendid five-string banjo accompaniment through most of the show, switched to finger-picked acoustic guitar for his solo spot, the show’s one non-vintage number, “Middle of the Night” by Andy Elliot, a songwriter from Colorado.

Explaining the shortage, otherwise, of new material, Grove explained: “Neither Bob nor Nick has the temperament or the memory to do new songs.”

Between songs, the three made further light of their age and its infirmities. Grove declared that “Bob would never cheat on his wife--It’s hard enough just disappointing one woman.” Shane, in turn, tried to explain the trio’s weathered condition: “We’re the same age as Willie Nelson; we’ve just lived harder lives. We blew our money, he lost his.”

Their ages seemed immaterial, though, as the three ended their first of two encores with a pummeling version of the trio’s 1963 hit “Reverend Mr. Black” that left the stage littered with broken banjo and guitar strings.