OK - lots to respond to here. Starting with John's arrangement with The Trio. You are correct that he was a hired hand, not a partner in the group. I think he kind of resented that, but a gig's a gig and he was happy to land in a group that was making hits.
John actually wrote songs for The Trio before he became a member, and of course continued to write material thru the years. But John was only one of several people that were considered to take Dave Guard's place in 1961. Another contender was Roger (Jim at the time) McGuinn. But Jim/Roger was under 18 at the time and would not have been allowed to perform in some of the venues where The Trio was booked. So the job went to Stewart. But I've often wondered how different things might have been with McGuinn in that spot.
To your question about common practice of replacing members in established groups, I can only speak relative to my own experience. When I joined The Brothers Four I became an equal partner. But when I joined The Kingston Trio I worked for a percentage of the gross. Bob Shane owned the Kingston Trio name and he hired George and myself on a percentage basis. The back-up players (at the time we had Tom Green on drums, Ben Shubert on electric guitar and fiddle and Stan Kaess on bass) were paid a salary of some sort. So, the short answer to your question is - I don't know. Every group probably has their own way of handling new members.
As far as my level of influence on the repertoire, it was minimal. When I first joined The Trio, the set list was pretty much defined. We had basically two shows that didn't vary much. "Tom Dooley" was in both. But every show featured a solo slot for each of us front-line guys. Shane always did "Scotch & Soda" for his solo, but George and I had several different tunes that we'd use for our solos. I usually picked one of my original tunes.
As time went on, though, Shane issued an edict that only songs that had been recorded by The Trio over the years would be featured in the show. So no more originals. EXCEPT - I wrote a song called "Folk In A", which on the surface is about only being able to play in the key of "A". But in the chorus I'd get the whole audience to sing or shout "Folk in A!" (you get the pun, right?) and Shane loved it! So despite the policy of using only KT material, I was often ordered to play "Folk In A".
My favorite performance of that song was in a Nevada night club somewhere. We did three shows each night there and usually the third show was a little light in attendance. But one night a group of elderly women came in for the third show and Bob Shane left me on stage for my solo with the instruction to play "Folk In A." When I got to the chorus, having coaxed the audience into singing/shouting along, the group of octagenarians belted out the requested lyrics with all the vigor they could muster without having a clue as to what they were really saying. We all had a good laugh over that.
George and I started adding a duet number to the show, and we'd pick songs that were either done originally as a duet or easily adapted to just the two of us. A few of my favorites in that category were "To Morrow", "500 Miles", "Raspberries, Strawberries", "South Coast" and "Coast of California."
Bob Shane hated rehearsing, so we rarely revived any of the repertoire that involved him unless he already knew his part.
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