Alex Hassilev

Alex Hassilev (July 11, 1932 – April 21, 2024) was an American folk musician, actor, and record producer born in France to a family of Russian heritage. He was a founding member of the folk trio the Limeliters and appeared on Broadway in 1958 in the play Handful of Fire. Educated at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, Hassilev was fluent in French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian, and could sing in more than a dozen languages. He was also an accomplished instrumentalist, performing on both guitar and banjo.

Following a tour of duty in the U.S. Army, Hassilev pursued acting and took a role as a singer-guitarist in the 1959 film A Bucket of Blood. In the late 1950s, he and Glenn Yarbrough became co-lessees of a club in Aspen, Colorado called the Limelite, where the two began performing together regularly. At a show at Cosmo Alley, their performances caught the attention of Lou Gottlieb, a former member of the Gateway Singers who had also written arrangements for the Kingston Trio and had recently completed a doctoral thesis on fifteenth-century cyclic masses. Gottlieb proposed that the three collaborate on demos for the Kingston Trio, contributing arrangements of traditional folk songs alongside original material. The group named themselves after the Limelite club and went on to record multiple albums and make numerous television appearances between 1961 and 1963, including a national tour with Mort Sahl in 1961 during which they performed for an audience of 125,000 across 30 cities.

Hassilev was described at the time as a dark-haired, banjo-playing baritone who moved between guitar and five-string banjo with ease, and who combined musicianship, acting ability, and linguistic fluency in his stage presence. The Limeliters survived a near-catastrophic plane crash in 1962, after which Yarbrough left the group. Ernie Sheldon filled in before the trio disbanded in 1965. The original lineup reunited to record the album Time to Gather Seeds in 1966, though critical reception was mixed.

By 1964, with the Limeliters' future uncertain, Hassilev had begun moving toward acting and singing on Broadway, describing musical comedy as a logical extension of his career. His Broadway work included his 1958 appearance in Handful of Fire. His first solo album, Alex Hassilev Man of the World, blended jazz, pop, and folk. In 1966 he returned to screen acting, playing a character named Christopher in the Get Smart episode "The Only Way to Die" and a character named Hrushevsky in the film The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.

The Limeliters undertook reunion tours throughout the 1970s. Before a 1973 concert at Tampa's McKay Auditorium, Hassilev noted that the earlier period of the group's career had been unsettling but that circumstances had since changed. He attributed the group's continued vitality to the energy they brought to the stage and to the fact that all members were trained musicians. After the 1973 tour, Lou Gottlieb, writing in the San Francisco Examiner, observed that Hassilev's work with Mike Settle and Dave Guard had produced a secure sense of musical form and clarity in their arrangements. In the early 1980s, Hassilev and Gottlieb sought to maintain the Limeliters on a more consistent basis, bringing in tenor Red Grammer to replace Yarbrough. The group performed at the Bound for Glory Sunday night folk concert series in 1985. After his time with the Limeliters concluded, Hassilev remained active in record production.