Koerner, Ray and Glover met in the folk music scene around the
University of Minnesota, when Koerner and Ray were students. Their common interest in folk music and blues led them to record and perform in various configurations, in solo turns and duets, but rarely as a trio. Ray suggested that it would be more accurate to refer to them as "Koerner and/or Ray and/or Glover". Their first album,
Blues, Rags and Hollers, was released in 1963. Together they recorded two further albums for Elektra, Koerner and Ray each recorded a solo album, also for Elektra, and the three supported one another in touring. Glover wrote one of the first instructional books on how to play blues harmonica. The trio appeared at the
Newport Folk Festival, where their performance was recorded for the Vanguard Records album
Newport Folk Festival 1964: Evening Concerts III and filmed for the documentary
Festival!, released in 1967. Koerner, Ray and Glover played frequently, separately and as a group, in the
Dinkytown neighborhood of Minneapolis in the early 1960s.
Bob Dylan knew them during his days as a nascent folk musician in Dinkytown, and wrote about them in his autobiography,
Chronicles. Koerner was an early influence on Dylan, and was the first musician Dylan met in Minneapolis, at the Ten O’Clock Scholar coffeehouse. He wrote in
Chronicles that "Koerner was tall and thin with a look of perpetual amusement on his face. We hit it off right away." Koerner was a few years more experienced as a musician, and took Dylan under his wing to teach him folk and blues songs. "When he spoke he was soft-spoken, but when he sang he became a field holler shouter. Koerner was an exciting singer, and we began playing a lot together", Dylan wrote. They performed often as a duo, but each also played frequently on his own. Dylan knew Ray as a "high school kid who sang
Leadbelly and
Bo Diddley songs on a twelve-string guitar, probably the only twelve-string guitar in the entire Midwest." Dylan and Koerner also played sometimes with Glover, whose harmonica playing Dylan admired, writing that "he cupped it in his hands and played like
Sonny Terry or
Little Walter." Besides Dylan, the trio was an influence on many other musicians, including
Bonnie Raitt. In the late 1960s they often played at the Triangle Bar in the
West Bank area of Minneapolis, a popular hangout for bikers and hippies. They were also frequent performers and fixtures at the West Bank bar
Palmer's; when Koerner officially retired in 2023, he donated one of his guitars, a 12-string
Epiphone, to the bar, where it is on display in a glass case. One show with the trio at Minneapolis theater
Bryant-Lake Bowl was released as the 1996 live album
One Foot in the Groove. Koerner and Glover also released a concert album as a duo,
Live @ The 400 Bar, in 2009. The group's last surviving member, John Koerner, died on May 18, 2024, at the age of 85. ==Awards==