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. 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." 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." The album was released shortly before the
Newport Folk Festival, where the duo performed a song by
Richard Fariña which was later released as part of the CD of the festival. They also began work to record a second LP, writing some of their own material and preparing to perform with a rock band - it is not known which one. However, in early 1966 Paul Rothchild was imprisoned on drug charges, and the album was never recorded. The pair did record for the small Folk-Legacy label, but that work was also unreleased because the duo's songs, by that time, were going beyond the traditional folk material in which the label specialised. Further material produced by Larry Murray of the band
Hearts & Flowers was not released, and the duo also recorded unreleased material with both
Linda Ronstadt and
Rusty Young, later of
Poco. In the late 1960s, the duo split up when Larisch decided to pursue a fine arts degree. ==Later careers==