Alex Hassilev, a multilingual and versatile troubadour and the last original member of the Limeliters, one of the biggest acts of the early 1960s folk revival, died April 21 in Burbank, California. He was 91 years old.
His wife, Gladys Hassilev, said at the hospital that the cause of his death was cancer.
Before Beatlemania gripped America's youth in 1964, the country was in love with the tight harmonies and traditional arrangements of folk music, and Mr. Few acts were more beloved than the Limeliters, the trio comprised of Hassilev, Glenn Yarbrough, and Lou Gottlieb.
Mr. Hashirev played banjo, guitar, and sang baritone, and was fluent in French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian, as well as English. His bandmates were equally smart. Mr. Gottlieb had a doctorate in musicology, and Mr. Yarbrough once worked as a security guard to pay for Greek lessons.
Urbane and witty, they have a repertoire that mixes honest folk standards like “The Hammer Song” with brash tunes like “Have Some Madeira, M'Dear,” “The Ballad of Sigmund Freud” and “Charlie,” which can be found in coffeehouses and bars. It filled the university auditorium. “Midnight Marauder.”
At their peak, between 1960 and 1962, the Limeliters played 300 shows a year and recorded albums every few months, two of which were “Tonight in Person” (1960) and “The Slightly Fabulous Limeliters” (1961). ) achieved a record high. Billboard Top 10.
The Los Angeles Times wrote in 1961, “The Lime Ritters have a musical and verbal virtuosity superior to that of many of their contemporaries.”
Alexander Hassilev was born in Paris on June 11, 1932, the son of Leonide and Tamara (Rudd) Hassilev, Jewish immigrants from Russia. As the threat of war with Germany grew, the family moved to New York in 1939, where Hassilev worked as a civil engineer.
Alex proved to be a diligent and excellent student, successfully completing high school, serving in the military, and then entering Harvard. However, he opposed the university's Yankee elitism and transferred to the University of Chicago a year later. Even there he felt constrained by his academic life. He wanted to try his hand at acting, so he returned to New York.
He studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse, learned guitar, and immersed himself in the emerging folk culture around Greenwich Village. He had a small but memorable role as a guitarist in Roger Corman's 1959 horror comedy film “A Bucket of Blood.”
Around the same time, he met Mr. Yarborough at a party in Aspen, Colorado. Mr. Yarborough had a regular gig at a cafe called Limelite. An avid skier, Mr. Hassilev soon joined him.
With Limelite as their home base, the pair were soon appearing at venues along the West Coast. While playing at a coffeehouse in Los Angeles, they met Mr. Mr., who had recently completed his thesis on 15th-century liturgical music and was arranging songs for the Kingston Trio, another popular folk group. That caught Gottlieb's attention.
The three began improvising together, and by 1959 they were taking their act on the road. They had several nights booked at Hungry i, a popular hangout in San Francisco. When their owners were reluctant to put all three's names on the tent, they decided to call themselves the Limeliters.
The trio's success was swift. They signed with Elektra Records and released their first album in 1960. Between tours and TV appearances, they recorded a series of commercial songs, including “Things Go Better With Coke”.
But their close harmony was at odds offstage, where their constant bickering earned them the nickname the Bicker Brothers. A plane crash in Utah in 1962 left them devastated but mostly unharmed. Mr. Yarbrough left. The three officially separated in 1965.
Mr. Hassilev recorded a solo album and rekindled his interest in acting. He had several successes, including a guest appearance on the TV comedy “Get Smart” and a role in the 1966 comedy “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming!” He was transitioning into acting, and he played one of the famous Russians alongside two other folk musicians, Theodore Bikel and Alan Arkin.
However, he had difficulty breaking away from his reputation as a folk singer. He set up a studio in the basement of his West Hollywood home and worked as a record producer for several years.
His first marriage to Ginger Stanjer ended in divorce. He married Gladys Rios in 1976. In addition to her, she is survived by her son David, two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Mr. Hassilev reconvened the Limeliters several times in the late 1960s and '70s and then permanently in 1981, with Mr. Yarbrough in and out of the lineup. After Mr. Gottlieb died in 1996, Mr. Hassilev brought in new performers, many of them veterans of the 1960s folk scene. Mr. Yarbrough died in 2016.
Mr. Hassilev retired from the Limeliters in 2006, but continued to occasionally play with the Limeliters, and the band is still active today. Although they have never regained the popularity of the 1960s, they continue to perform to large and enthusiastic audiences.
Mr. Hassilev told West Virginia's The Charleston Daily Mail in 2005: “To remain popular, you have to outlive your competitors. It feels good to be involved in this field. “I feel cleansed.”