| The World Needs a Melody | |
| Type: | Studio album |
| Artist: | The New Kingston Trio |
| Cover: | World Needs a Melody.jpg |
| Released: | April 1973 |
| Genre: | Folk |
| Label: | The Longines Symphonette Society |
| Next Title: | The Lost Masters 1969–1972 |
| Next Year: | 1997 |
The World Needs a Melody is an album by The New Kingston Trio, released in 1973.[1]
Two years before the release of Once Upon a Time in 1969, the Kingston Trio disbanded in 1967 following a two-week farewell engagement at San Francisco's Hungry i, the nightclub at which they had started their rise to prominence a decade earlier. John Stewart began a solo career, Nick Reynolds retired from the music business and, after a short-lived solo career, Bob Shane created a new group, The New Kingston Trio. The first configuration of this new group lasted approximately three years and consisted of Shane, Pat Horine, and Jim Connor; a second troupe including Shane, Bill Zorn, and Roger Gambill toured from 1973 to 1976 before Shane bought the rights to the Kingston Trio name outright and assembled a new group with Gambill and George Grove.
The only full-length album released by either group was The World Needs a Melody (though 25 years later FolkEra Records issued The Lost Masters 1969-1972, a compilation of previously unreleased tracks from the Shane-Horine-Connor years), and its sales were negligible. Though both troupes of the New Kingston Trio made a limited number of other recordings and several television appearances, neither generated very much interest from fans or the public at large.[2]
There were no credits included on the album packaging. The back cover consisted of a track listing and an essay and photographs titled "The Secret of Longines Symphonette" describing the process of recording LPs.