Bob Gibson (musician) - The Glory Years

The Glory Years

Gibson first met Albert Grossman while performing at the Offbeat Room. Grossman had an idea for a folk club on the near north side of Chicago and, in 1956, opened the Gate of Horn. In the third week after opening, Grossman booked Gibson into the club. He began a continuous performing streak that lasted eleven months. Beginning as an opener for many of the acts, by the end of his eleven-month stay, Gibson was the headliner, closing for everyone.

Grossman had a knack for finding talent. This list of performers he booked into The Gate of Horn included Josh White, Glenn Yarborough, Odetta, Joan Baez (which led to Gibson's inviting the then unknown performer to join him at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival), Hamilton Camp, and Judy Collins. Grossman had "scouted" Bob Gibson for his club, but he could not imagine the headline act that Gibson would become. Bob Gibson was on his way to becoming a legend in Chicago in the early 1960s, helped along by a talented singer and songwriter, Hamilton Camp. In 1961 their debut album was released on Elektra Records, Gibson and Camp at the Gate of Horn. A watershed album, it influenced singers from John Lennon to Gordon Lightfoot to John Denver. Lightfoot's "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" was patterned more or less opposite to Gibson and Camp's "Civil War Trilogy".