The Highwaymen

The Highwaymen was an American 1960s "collegiate folk" group. The quintet's version of "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore", a 19th Century African-American work song, released in 1959 under the title "Michael," was a Billboard #1 hit in September 1961. The group scored another Top 20 hit in 1962 with a version of Lead Belly's "Cotton Fields". "Michael" sold over one million copies, achieving gold record status. The group originated at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where its members were undergraduates. Career As a freshman in 1958, Dave Fisher, who in high school had sung in a doo-wop group called The Academics, joined with four other Wesleyan freshman – Bob Burnett, Steve Butts, Chan Daniels, and Steve Trott – to form the Highwaymen. Fisher, who would graduate in 1962 with the university's first degree in ethnomusicology, was the quintet's arranger and lead singer. Among the folk songs Fisher arranged for The Highwaymen was an African-American spiritual or work song "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore", which had been rediscovered in an 1867 collection of slave songs by Boston songfinder and teacher Tony Saletan in 1954, and released on LP in 1957 by both The Weavers and Bob Gibson. In 1959, United Artists released a recording of the Highwaymen's version under the abbreviated title of "Michael," which slowly gained popularity and eventually reached #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart during the week of 4–11 September 1961, earning the quintet a gold record. The single also reached #1 in the UK and #4 in Germany. Later members were Gil Robbins (father of actor Tim Robbins), who joined in 1962 when Steve Trott entered Harvard Law School, and in 1991 guitarist/bassist Johann Helton. The original group stopped performing in 1964 and the members, while remaining in touch, went their separate professional ways. One attended Harvard Business School, two attended Harvard Law School, and one attended graduate school at Columbia University, then proceeded into business, law, and academia. Fisher alone stayed in the music business, and with him as musical director, the "Highwaymen" continued with Renny Temple, Roy Connors, Mose Henry, and Alan Scharf. They recorded two albums, Stop! Look! & Listen and On a New Road, and performed concerts and appeared on many television variety shows. Temple, Connors, and Henry were previously in a popular Florida folk group called the Vikings Three.