It all started in the back of a Menlo College accounting class, where student Bob Shane sat sleeping behind his book.
Transfer student Nick Reynolds -- fresh from the University of Arizona, a well-known party school -- figured any guy snoozing through accounting had to be cool. So he woke him up and introduced himself.
``Do you have a car that runs?'' Shane asked. ``I have a guitar.
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Reynolds did. ``And I've got some bongo drums,'' he added.
``We started singing the first day we met,'' Shane recalled Thursday, 52 years later.
For those who don't recognize the names, they went on to become the folk-phenom Kingston Trio with then-Stanford student Dave Guard. The Menlo College Class of 1956 will pay tribute to their famous classmates in the campus dining hall tonight at its 50-year reunion. Ten of the original 24 class members will attend.
Unfortunately, none of the former Kingstons will be there. Shane, Reynolds and classmate and road manager Joe Gannon, who toured the world and sold millions of records, can't make the event because it's too difficult for them to travel. Guard died of cancer in 1991.
But Alumni Director Dorothy Skala will accept the college's inaugural Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award on their behalf.
``They were just normal students,'' said Skala, who met the group when she came to work on campus as a file clerk in 1957. Even after they made it big, she said, ``they were regular people.
We were just very proud of them.''
The Kingston Trio, famous for songs such as ``Tom Dooley,'' ``Sloop John B'' and ``Greenback Dollar,'' and the inspiration for folk-rock artists from Bob Dylan to Don McLean, has been feted at the highest levels. But for Shane, 72, who lives in Phoenix, the Menlo tribute ranks right behind having a Martin guitar made in his name.
For Reynolds, 73, it's better than their two Grammys.
``A tribute from Grammy or something like that is so impersonal, it really is,'' said Reynolds, who lives in Coronado, calls himself completely retired and says today he's famous only for his sweet-and-sour stew. Menlo ``was like one big family.
This is like getting a tribute from your family and your peers.''
The day Shane and Reynolds met, they played their first unofficial gig.
``We took off to Rossotti's,'' Reynolds said of the place now known as the Alpine Inn in Portola Valley.
``We entertained out there, played and drank beer and had a good time. He knew a lot of Hawaiian and Tahitian music. I knew Mexican songs.
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In fact, the clean-cut singers in striped Oxford shirts, slacks and loafers spent their college days carousing and playing World Music before it had a name, they said.
``There was the time I got drunk and raced around the track on a motorcycle, nude,'' said Shane, who partied so much he eventually flunked out. He said he will reveal the story of how he came to hold a Menlo bachelor's degree in business only in his upcoming book for the 50th anniversary of the trio next year.
Their first paid gig was in 1957 at the Cracked Pot on El Camino Real in Redwood City, where Reynolds was tending bar. Before they knew it, they were packing in student audiences, and an advertising director for North Beach clubs came scouting. He offered them a gig to fill in for Phyllis Diller at the Purple Onion, but the group needed a name.
The Kingston Trio was born in a matter of hours, named for the calypso they liked to play. They packed the Purple Onion by sending postcards about the gig to all the Stanford fraternities and sororities. The rest, of course, needs no explanation.
Except for the clean-cut folk-singer thing. The record company wanted the Ivy League look. But the former Kingstons say they were just as much a part of the 1960s San Francisco music scene as their more edgy, political successors.
``After the show, we changed to jeans and T-shirts and hung out with the Mamas and the Papas, and the Byrds and all those guys,'' Reynolds said.
But he said the safe image had its advantages.
``Parents thought they could send their daughters,'' Reynolds quipped.
`` `Of course you and your friends can go to the concert, Martha.' Then Martha shows up four days later, not looking so good.''
Even with their war stories of rock stars, Shane and Reynolds find memories of Menlo at the top of their charts.
``It was just a magical place. All the professors knew the kids. It was smaller and very intimate,'' Reynolds said.
``Menlo was the beginning of the Kingston Trio,'' Shane added.
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