The Cumberland Trio (also known as The Gentrymen) was a popular folk-singing team of UT students Jerre Haskew, Andy Garverick, Tom Kilpatrick, and Jim Shuptrine. Shuptrine did not sing—he was the bass player, comedian, and arranger. They formed the group in late 1962 and played their first gig at Carnicus in 1963. They won first place in the 1963 National Collegiate Folk Festival and then performed on ABC’s Hootenanny in 1964 when the show was filmed at UT.
They received a great deal of national exposure and acclaim through Hootenanny and were offered a contract by RCA at the standard 2 percent royalty rate. A new record company, Recording Industries Corporation, lured them away with a 10 percent royalty rate, and they recorded an album at Gotham Studios. RIC, however, went bankrupt, and the record was never released. The folk music craze disappeared, and the group disbanded in 1965. In 1999 they found the original recording of 15 songs they had recorded under the direction of Chet Atkins and acquired the rights to the RIC material. Haskew’s wife, Barbara, revived one of the songs he had written as a birthday present and started the group on their way to a reunion concert on November 9, 2001, at the Bijou Theatre and subsequent concerts—and finally, the release of a CD. The death of a founding member brought the group’s saga to an end in fall 2013.