Alex Hassilev, the last of the Original Limelites, has died at the age of 91

The trio's witty, urbane arrangements made him one of the leading performers of the folk music revival of the early 1960s. His gift for languages also helped.

Alex Hassilev, a multilingual and talented troubadour and the last member of the Limeliters, one of the major representatives of the folk revival of the early 1960s, died April 21 in Burbank, Calif. He was 91 years old.

His wife, Gladys Hassilev, said the cause of his death in the hospital was cancer.

Before "Beatlemania" swept over America's youth in 1964, the country fell in love with the tight harmonies and traditional arrangements of folk music - and few evoked more adoration than the Limeliters, a trio consisting of Mr. Hassilev, Glenn Yarbrough and Lou Gotlieb.

Hassilev played banjo and guitar and sang baritone, not only in English but also in French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian, all of which he was fluent in. His bandmates were equally smart: Mr. Gottlieb had a doctorate in musicology, and Mr. Yarbrough had once worked as a bouncer to pay for Greek lessons.

Casual and witty, they filled coffeehouses and college auditoriums with their repertoire, which mixed straightforward folk standards like "The Hammer Song" with daring tunes like "Have Some Madeira, M'Dear", "The Ballad of Sigmund Freud" and "Charlie the Midnight Marauder".

During their heyday, from 1960 to 1962, the Limeliters played 300 concerts a year and recorded an album every few months. Two of them, "Tonight in Person" (1960) and "The Slightly Fabulous Limeliters" (1961), reached the Billboard Top 10.