Erik Darling, 74; Singer-Songwriter and Folk Musician

Mr. Darling's banjo can be heard accompanying the Kossoy Sisters on the soundtrack of the 2000 film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Erik Darling was born Sept. 25, 1933, in Baltimore, where his mother's family lived, but grew up in Canandaigua, N.Y. He was divorced from television actress and director Joan Kugell Darling. He had no immediate survivors.

Much of Mr. Darling's musical education was obtained in New York's Washington Square, which during his teenage years was a focus of the burgeoning folk movement that included Seeger, Belafonte, Bob Dylan and Mary Travers.

Early on, Mr. Darling recorded an updated arrangement of "Tom Dooley" with Roger Sprung and Bob Carey as the Folksay Trio, a version the Kingston Trio later adapted to far greater popular success.

In the mid-1950s, he formed the Tunetellers, which later became the Tarriers, and included future actor Alan Arkin.

In a memoir published this year, "I'd Give My Life!," Mr. Darling recounted how the Tarriers were sometimes confused for a dog act and billed as the Terriers.

The group soon had a top-10 hit in 1956 with the calypso-influenced "Banana Boat Song," which Mr. Darling reportedly had heard from folk musician Bob Gibson in Washington Square.

Mr. Darling left the Weavers in 1962 to form the Rooftop Singers, in which he was credited with leading a 12-string guitar revival when he hit upon the idea of using the instrument that year for his version of "Walk Right In." The song had been written and recorded in 1929 by Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers and had been regarded as an essentially forgotten classic.

Mr. Darling formed the Rooftop Singers specifically to release "Walk Right In" in updated form. Recorded after a wait of weeks for the construction of the guitars, the song became Mr. Darling's biggest commercial hit.

The Rooftop Singers came to include Pat Street, one of Mr. Darling's closest friends over the years, who called him a "wonderful and imaginative" individual whose musical contributions went far beyond the two smash hit songs of the 1950s and 1960s.

He and Street collaborated on such songs as "Rainy River" and "That Ain't Love." Another song written by the two, " Child, Child," gave its name to one of Mr. Darling's solo CDs from 2000.

Some insight into Mr. Darling's upbringing, and the emotions and sentiment that informed his work, comes from the title of an instrumental piece on that 2000 release.

According to a written account by Mr. Darling, it is something that his father, a painter in oils and watercolor, would say from time to time as they sat together on the porch of their home on New York's Lake Canandaigua: "Far Through the Memory Shines the Happy Hour."