Glenn Yarbrough

Biography

Glenn Robertson Yarbrough (January 12, 1930 – August 11, 2016) was an American folk singer. He was the lead singer with the Limeliters from 1959 to 1963. He also had a prolific solo career, recording on various labels. Yarbrough was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and grew up in New York City. After leaving high school, he attended St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he roomed with Jac Holzman and began performing after he and Holzman attended a concert by Woody Guthrie. During the...

Glenn Robertson Yarbrough (January 12, 1930 – August 11, 2016) was an American folk singer. He was the lead singer with the Limeliters from 1959 to 1963. He also had a prolific solo career, recording on various labels.

Yarbrough was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and grew up in New York City. After leaving high school, he attended St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he roomed with Jac Holzman and began performing after he and Holzman attended a concert by Woody Guthrie.

During the Korean War he served in the United States Army as a codebreaker before joining the entertainment corps. After military service, he moved to South Dakota, helped organize square dances, and started appearing on local television shows. By the mid-1950s, he started performing in clubs in Chicago, where he met club owner Albert Grossman and performers including Odetta and Shel Silverstein. One of Elektra Records' first artists, he was one of the first singers to record the traditional "The House of the Rising Sun."

Yarbrough moved to Aspen, Colorado, and ran a club, the Limelite, and formed a folk group with Alex Hassilev and Louis Gottlieb. They released their first album, Limeliters, on Holzman's Elektra label in 1960.[1] He left the Limeliters for a solo career in the mid-1960s. His most popular single, and the one for which he is most well-known today is "Baby the Rain Must Fall" (the theme tune from the film of the same name), which entered the Cashbox chart on March 27, 1965 and reached #12 pop and #2 easy listening. According to Chartmasters of Covington, Louisiana, the song was one of the all time top 100 of the year.[citation needed]

Among other career highlights, Yarbrough provided vocals for the Rankin/Bass Productions animated versions of The Hobbit (1977) singing songs such as The Greatest Adventure, The Road Goes Ever On as well as The Return of the King (1980) singing "Frodo of the Nine Fingers" in addition to singing the title song in the 1966 holiday classic, The Christmas That Almost Wasn't. Yarbrough also performed Utah Composer Michael McLean's Forgotten Carols, creating a CD of the show as well as taking it on the road to local audiences in the 1990s.

Glenn Yarbrough was also an accomplished sailor who owned and lived aboard three different sailboats: Armorel, all teak and still in operation; Jubilee, which Yarbrough helped build, taking three years; and the Brass Dolphin a Chinese junk design, and has, according to Yarbrough, sailed around the world except for the Indian Ocean.

Yarbrough lost his ability to sing due to complications from throat surgery at the age of 80. In his last year or so of life, he suffered from dementia and was cared for by his daughter Holly in Nashville, Tennessee. Holly recorded the album "Annie Get Your Gun" with her father in 1997.

Yarbrough died from complications of dementia in Nashville, Tennessee at the age of 86. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.