Darling next joined
the Weavers as
Pete Seeger's replacement and stayed with the group for a little over four years, leaving in 1962 to form
the Rooftop Singers. Slyly updating and rearranging Gus Cannon's "Walk Right In," which
Cannon's Jug Stompers originally recorded in 1929, Darling and
the Rooftop Singers took the new version to the top of the charts in 1963. Never one to seek the limelight, Darling continued to record and work in the folk and emerging Americana vein, even flirting with a kind of desert country sound with his group Border Town (which also included members Sid Hausman and Lynn Lucas), which released the solid Border Town at Midnight album in 1994. Always an elegant singer and instrumentalist, Darling never lost his ability to rearrange traditional material into new forms that carried the past even as they were subtly updated to handle the present. Darling died on August 3, 2008, in Chapel Hill, NC, from complications due to lymphoma. ~ Steve Leggett, Rovi