As a freshman at
Wesleyan University in 1958, Dave Fisher, who in high school had sung in a
doo-wop group called the Academics, joined with four other freshman – Bob Burnett, Steve Butts, Chan Daniels, and
Steve Trott – to form the Highwaymen. Originally, they called themselves the Clansmen because they liked Irish and Scottish music. But they abandoned that name at the advice of their manager
Ken Greengrass, and chose "the Highwaymen" inspired by
a poem by English poet
Alfred Noyes. Fisher, who would graduate in 1962 with the university's first degree in
ethnomusicology, was the quintet's arranger and lead singer. Among the folk songs Fisher arranged for the Highwaymen was an African-American
spiritual or
work song "
Michael, Row the Boat Ashore", which had been rediscovered in
an 1867 collection of slave songs by Boston songfinder and teacher
Tony Saletan in 1954, and released on LP in 1957 by both
the Weavers and
Bob Gibson. In 1959,
United Artists released a recording of the Highwaymen's version under the abbreviated title of "Michael," which slowly gained popularity and eventually reached #1 on the
U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart during the week of 4–11 September 1961, earning the quintet a gold record. The single also reached #1 in the UK and #4 in
Germany. Later members were
Gil Robbins (father of actor
Tim Robbins), who joined in 1962 when Steve Trott entered Harvard Law School, and in 1991 guitarist/bassist Johann Helton. The original group stopped performing in 1964 and the members, while remaining in touch, went their separate professional ways. One attended
Harvard Business School, two attended
Harvard Law School, and one attended graduate school at
Columbia University, then proceeded into business, law, and academia. Fisher alone stayed in the music business, and with him as musical director, the "Highwaymen" continued with Renny Temple, Roy Connors, Mose Henry, and Alan Scharf. They recorded two albums,
Stop! Look! & Listen and
On a New Road, and performed concerts and appeared on many television variety shows. Temple, Connors, and Henry were previously in a popular Florida folk group called the Vikings Three. Alan Scharf had an earlier career as an actor which continued after the Fisher-led group disbanded. In 1967, Dave Fisher moved to Hollywood where he composed and arranged music for films and television and worked as a studio singer and musician. He wrote more than a thousand songs, many of which have been used in movie and television productions. After serving in the Army Reserve, Burnett graduated from Harvard Law School in 1967 and "went on to a long career in law and banking." Chan Daniels studied acting for several years in New York and Hollywood and later graduated from Harvard Business School and became an executive for
Capitol Records. Steve Butts received a Ph.D. in Chinese Politics from Columbia, and until retirement served as an academic administrator at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison,
Grinnell College, and
Lawrence University. He also taught baroque music performance at the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music and statistics at Columbia.
Steve Trott, after graduating from Harvard Law, became a prosecutor in the
Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. Later, he served as Associate Attorney General, the number two position in the
United States Department of Justice during the
Presidency of Ronald Reagan and in 1987 was appointed a judge of the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The original Highwaymen, minus Daniels (who died in 1975), reunited in 1987 for a concert for their 25th college reunion. From that time until the death of Dave Fisher in 2010, the original band recorded several albums and performed a dozen or so concerts a year. Their studio album from this period,
The Water Of Life A Celtic Collection (2004), was recorded and engineered by their bassist Johann Helton at JoTown Records in Boise, Idaho. Two additional CDs, in concert format,
The Highwaymen in Concert, and
When the Village Was Green, was released in 2002 and 2007. In 1990, the members of the original group sued country music's
Highwaymen, made up of
Willie Nelson,
Waylon Jennings,
Johnny Cash, and
Kris Kristofferson over their use of the name, which was inspired by a
Jimmy Webb ballad they had recorded. The suit was dropped when all parties agreed that the folk group owned the name and that the folk group would grant the nonexclusive, nontransferable license to the supergroup to use the name. The two groups then shared the stage at a 1990 concert at the
Universal Amphitheater in Hollywood. The original group last performed in August 2009 at the Guthrie Center in Massachusetts. The rock and roll magazine
Blitz described the Highwaymen's record of their 1963 concert at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the best compilation or reissue of 2009.
Blitz also named the band's album
When the Village Was Green one of the best releases of 2007. Daniels died of pneumonia on August 2, 1975, at the age of 36. Fisher died of myelofibrosis on May 7, 2010, at the age of 69. Burnett died of brain cancer on December 7, 2011, at his home in
Riverside, Rhode Island. He was 71. As of December 2011, just two of the five original members were still alive: Steve Trott and Steve Butts. ==Legacy==