It can be hypothesized that
Harry Belafonte's career as a singer of folk songs ended with this album. Launching into a four-year drought, he would not have another exceptional album for RCA Victor until 1971's
Calypso Carnival. The theme for the album was spurred by
Belafonte's popularity on college campuses in the mid-'60s. College audiences in the '60s were to folk singers what armed forces recruits were to big band singers and comedians during World War II: sure things. The liner notes estimate that during his most recent tour,
Belafonte played to a quarter of a million American students at forty colleges.