Rooftop Singers

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The Rooftop Singers were an American progressive folk-singing trio in the early 1960s, best known for the hit "Walk Right In". The group was composed of Erik Darling and Bill Svanoe (vocals, guitar) with former jazz singer Lynne Taylor (vocals).

Darling put the group together in June 1962 specifically to record an updated and uptempo version of a 1929 Gus Cannon folk blues song, "Walk Right In". The trio recorded the song for Vanguard Records, with updated lyrics and an arrangement featuring paired 12-string acoustic guitars. The record became the most successful single in Vanguard's history.

In the U.S., the song was #1 for two weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in early 1963. It spent five weeks atop the Easy Listening chart, which would later become known as the Adult Contemporary chart. In addition, "Walk Right In" reached both the R&B chart (peaking at #4) as well as the country music chart (peaking at #23).  The song reached #1 in Australia on the Kent Music Report in 1963, and it made the Top 10 on the UK Singles Chart in the United Kingdom, peaking at #10. The recording sold over one million copies, gaining gold disc status.

The album that contained this song was also called Walk Right In, and was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Folk Recording category.[citation needed] The group was more influenced by ragtime, blues, and songster material than contemporaneous folk groups such as The Weavers, which Darling belonged to until just before he formed the Rooftop Singers. They were also less overtly political.

The group played at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. Vanguard released several further singles, the most successful being "Tom Cat" (#20 in May of '63). Yielding to pressure from her husband, Taylor left the trio shortly after Vanguard released the group's second album, Good Time!. Darling and Svanoe then recruited Mindy Stuart to replace her. This line-up recorded one final album, Rainy River. Patricia Street replaced Stuart shortly before the Rooftop Singers formally disbanded in 1967. Darling and Street continued working as a duo into the early seventies, recording the album The Possible Dream for Vanguard.

Lynne Taylor (born in 1928) died in 1982 at age 54, and Erik Darling died on August 3, 2008, aged 74, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, from Burkitt's lymphoma.

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"Walk Right In" is the title of a country blues song written by musician Gus Cannon and originally recorded by Cannon's Jug Stompers in 1929, released on Victor Records, catalogue 38611.

It was reissued on album in 1959 as a track on The Country Blues. A revised version of the song by the Rooftop Singers, with the writing credits allocated to group members Erik Darling and Bill Svanoe, became an international hit in 1963.

In 1962, the American folk trio the Rooftop Singers recorded a version of the song and released it as a single. The single spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in early 1963.  It spent five weeks atop the Easy Listening chart, which would later become known as the Adult Contemporary chart.  In addition, "Walk Right In" reached both the R&B chart (peaking at number four) as well as the country music chart, peaking at number 23.

The song reached number one in Australia on the Kent Music Report in 1963, and it made the Top 10 on the UK Singles Chart in the United Kingdom, peaking at number 10.  The song was included on the album Walk Right In, and was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category Best Folk Recording.

Group member Erik Darling recruited two friends to record a folk version of "Walk Right In" after hearing the original Cannon recording. Darling wanted the record to have a distinctive sound, so he and group member Bill Svanoe both played twelve string guitars on the song, although they had some difficulty in acquiring the instruments. Darling is quoted as saying that prior to the making of this record, "you couldn't buy a 12-string guitar...I ordered one from the Gibson Company, but in order to record [the song] with two 12-strings, we had to wait for the company to build a second one for Bill!" (a left-handed model).

The success of the song was a boon to Cannon, who was in his late 70s and had been forced to pawn his banjo the previous winter to pay his heating bill; he received royalties as a songwriter and saw renewed interest in his music, which led to a recording contract of his own.