A staple of campfire sing songs and turgid school assemblies performed by a US vocal group from the less radical side of the (then) burgeoning sixties folk scene - there's not much to whet the appetite there, and the crushing sense of potential anti-climax carries over into the recording itself. Fair enough, it's professionally arranged and presented in a style that goes some way to scrape off the taint of generations of over enthusiastic RE teachers who knew enough chords on a guitar to urge Michael to row that boat ashore, but The Highwaymen themselves are no less smugly worthy in their earnestness and try as I might, I simply cannot listen to it without bringing Mulligan and O'Hare* to mind and breaking out into a grin. Which I'm guessing isn't what The Highwaymen had in mind, though 1961 audiences of course would have no such problem.* A Vic Reeves/Bob Mortimer creation, I'll let Wikipedia do the honours: "An unsettling and bizarre folk duo, possibly spoofing the style of Foster & Allen. Mulligan (Vic) has breasts, presumably due to an incident with hormone replacement pills, while O'Hare (Bob) has a big beard and a very short temper. Mulligan and O'Hare first met at an African style picnic in 1963. They sing songs such as "Frustrated By Weeds" and "My Rose Has Left Me," the latter about O'Hare's ex-wife Rose, a bald woman who went "to Kenya with the bloke from Allied carpets." They have released ground breaking albums, such as The Onion Ring, Moods, Coffee Break, Pancake Day and Tittybiscuits and are well known for their instrumental cover versions of popular songs."
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