Kathy & Carol

Kathy and Carol
Origin	Vista, California, United States
Genres	Folk
Years active	c.1962-1968 occasionally since 2005
Labels	Elektra, Hazelwood
Associated acts	Carol McComb Gryphon Quintet
Website	http://www.carolmccomb.com/kathycarol.html
Members	Kathleen Larisch Carol McComb

Kathleen Larisch and Carol McComb are American singers and instrumentalists who performed together in the 1960s as Kathy and Carol. As a duo, they released an acclaimed 1965 folk song album on Elektra Records, before pursuing separate careers. They have reunited to perform together on several occasions in recent years.

Kathy Larisch and Carol McComb began singing together when in high school at Vista, California, in the early 1960s. They both played guitar and autoharp, and claimed influences from Joan Baez, Gene Autry, and Tex Ritter, among others. They worked as a duo in Southern California folk clubs, sometimes opening for the likes of Bill Monroe, Taj Mahal and Phil Ochs, and performed regularly at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. Folk musician Michael Cooney then introduced them to singer Mark Spoelstra, who in turn recommended them to Elektra producer Paul Rothchild. In mid-1964, after they had performed at the Berkeley Folk Festival, Joan Baez also recommended them to Rothchild, and he agreed to record a demo session with them. Elektra label boss Jac Holzman heard the recordings and agreed that they should make an album, which was recorded, with Rothchild producing, in the winter of 1964-65.

Their only album, Kathy & Carol, was released in April 1965. It contained mostly traditional British and American ballads, apart from one song written by Spoelstra. Paul Rothchild said of their album that it was "the most beautiful Renaissance ballad record I ever heard. It's just perfect. If you like Joan Baez, here's Joan Baez times two, with gorgeous harmony, singing purist songs like angels." Rothchild also said that the extraordinary sound of the girls' voices was due to their virginal nature and by the time they returned to record a second album this phase of their lives was over and the magic had gone. Critic Richie Unterberger stated that "what made it stand out most from similar releases of the time were the pair's extraordinary close, high, and haunting harmonies." McComb said later: "We would hear somebody like Bonnie Dobson or Joan Baez or Judy Collins do a song, and we would decide that we would want to do that song. But we never wanted to do anybody else's versions of the song. So we'd... find ourselves the best set of words we could, and we'd copy out various different melodies out of the songbooks... We would put together the best melody we could find with the best lyrics we could find, and that would be the Kathy & Carol version. We just didn't want to do it like anybody else did it."

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