Hootenanny Singers
| Hootenanny Singers | |
|---|---|
From left to right: Hansi Schwarz, Johan Karlberg, Björn Ulvaeus and Tonny Roth.
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| Background information | |
| Also known as | Westbay Singers, The Northern Lights, The Hooten Singers |
| Origin | Västervik, Sweden |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 1961–1975 |
| Labels | |
| Associated acts | |
| Past members |
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The Hootenanny Singers were a popular folk group from Sweden, founded in 1961. The group included Björn Ulvaeus, who later was a member of ABBA. Other bandmembers were Johan Karlberg, Tony Rooth and Hansi Schwarz. The group was named "The Northern Lights" for an American-released LP in 1966.
In 1964, they debuted on the Swedish TV-show, Hylands Hörna with locally famous Swedish poet Dan Andersson's Jag väntar vid min mila (translated as "I'm Waiting at the Charcoal Kiln"). The song "Gabrielle" became an international hit song in 1964, translated and performed by the group in Swedish, German, Finnish, Italian, Dutch, and English. However they extracted the tune from the Russian song, "May There Always Be Sunshine" by Arkady Ostrovsky, who was never credited because of political reasons.
They were famous for the amount of touring of the Swedish outdoor concert venues and had numerous hit singles on the Svensktoppen chart. Their biggest hit was "Omkring tiggarn från Luossa", which broke the record by spending 52 weeks on Svensktoppen between 26 November 1972 and 18 November 1973. Johan Karlberg dropped out of the band in the late 1960s to take over his father's business. He died in 1992. Hansi Schwarz was also the leader of the Västervik folk ballad festival for many years. He died in 2013. To date, Tonny Rooth and Björn Ulvaeus are the two surviving members of the original line-up of the band. Some of tracks on the 1969 album, "På tre man hand" were released as solo singles by Björn Ulvaeus.
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