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A Tribute To Travis Edmonson with Don Armstrong & Earl Edmonson

Travis Edmonson, who brought a Mexican flavor to the fertile San Francisco folk music scene of the 1950s and who, with the duo Bud and Travis, influenced Bay Area groups that lasted longer and became better known, passed away in May 2009. His nephew, Earl Edmonson, and longtime friend Don Armstrong, have composed a concert evening that truly pays tribute to Travis and his talents.

A witty and mischievous man with an irrepressibly arch style of stage patter, Mr. Edmonson was a gifted natural singer, with a bell-clear, versatile tenor capable of romantic crooning, cowboy yodeling and folksy, up-tempo harmonizing. Along with comedians like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, and musicians like the Kingston Trio, Lou Gottlieb of the Limeliters and the Smothers Brothers, Mr. Edmonson was among those who made San Francisco generally and two nightclubs particularly (the hungry i and the Purple Onion) a rebellious center of Eisenhower-era hip culture.

With Mr. Gottlieb, he was a member of the Gateway Singers, a seminal quartet. In 1958, Mr. Edmonson and another guitarist and singer, Bud Dashiell, formed the duo Bud and Travis. Over the next seven years they recorded eight albums and played innumerable concerts and club dates, and their musical virtuosity and seemingly effortless comedic teamwork not to mention their telegenic looks earned them appearances on television variety shows and even comedy series like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

In a tight-knit music scene, Bud and Travis shared stages, a gift for potent harmonizing and even individual songs with the Limeliters, the Kingston Trio and the Smothers Brothers; according to Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Edmonson claimed to have lived in the same house with Tom and Dick Smothers in San Francisco at one point, and to have been their landlord.

In performance, what distinguished Bud and Travis more than anything was Mr. Edmonsons passion for mariachi and the other Mexican musical traditions that he had absorbed as a boy in Arizona. Many Latin numbers La Bamba, for example were part of the Bud and Travis repertory, and Mr. Edmonsons own signature song, one that he considered his favorite piece of music, was Malagueña Salerosa, a folk lamentation with a tinge of both heartbreak and religious supplication.

Travis Jerome Edmonson was born on Sept. 23, 1932, in Long Beach, Calif., but he spent much of his childhood in the Arizona border town of Nogales, where his mother, Lillian, was a teacher, and his father, Everett, a social worker who also ran a grocery. Everyone in the family Travis had three older brothers played guitar, and he spent a good part of his young life in Mexican villages, chasing after the sources of the musical sounds that drifted across the border.

His parents sent him to high school in Tucson, and he later attended the University of Arizona there, studying anthropology (and also classical guitar, his first formal musical training). He never graduated, but he and a friend, Roger Smith who would later star in the television series 77 Sunset Strip and marry Ann-Margret became locally famous for serenading college girls on behalf of themselves and classmates who would hire them for the purpose.
(from The New York Times 2009)

Join us for this very special musical evening! Don and Earl may be joined by some very special guests, as well!