QUESTIONS:
1- What's the connection between barbershop and a famous comic strip character?
2- From the mid-1940's until about 1960, many quartets were on hit radio and TV shows. Name the most famous of these programs.
3- In addition to radio and TV shows, in what other medium were quartets frequently seen and heard?
4- Name the female quartet most associated with the transition from barbershop harmony to the pop style of harmonization in the post WW2 era.
5- Name the male quartet most associated with the transition from barbershop harmony to the pop style of harmonization in the post WW2 era.
ANSWERS:
1- In one strip, Dick Tracy was after the evil "Mumbles Quartet", which ostensibly did gigs at swank parties, but actually went to these soirees in order to steal their hosts blind. After much "vocal" objection from barbershoppers nationwide, the cartoonist, Chester Gould, scrapped the criminal quartet and it never reappeared.
2- Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny, Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, Lawrence Welk, Eddie Fisher, Ted Mack, and Robert Q. Lewis. Godfrey, a Society member, was particularly important as a supporter and promoter of barbershopping by showcasing many fine quartets on his radio and TV programs.
3- On newsreels, shown prior to feature films in movie houses all over the nation.
4- This one is a give-away, lads. It could only be the famed Chordettes of "Mr. Sandman" fame.
5- The answer to this question may surprise you; I know it surprised me - it is the Four Freshman. This foursome was important not so much for its own vocal production, which consisted of only a few pop hits, but far more so for the many prominent groups who acknowledged being significantly influenced by them, including: The Hi-Los, The Modernaires, Manhattan Transfer, The Beach Boys, The Lettermen, The Mamas and the Papas, and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. What an incredible lineup of hall-of-famers!! The antecedent to all of this creativity and innovation was a little known barbershop quartet from the early 1950 s known as Hal's Harmonizers which later morphed into the greatly influential Four Freshmen.
Extra info (for you post-doctoral students) about the Four Freshmen - Gage Averill, in his history of barbershop entitled Four Parts, No Waiting, said this: "Groups indebted to the Four Freshmen contributed some of the most attention-grabbing and distinctive harmonies in all of pop music for over two decades. Admittedly, it was often the departures from close harmony that helped to mark these arrangements as revolutionary and arresting; nonetheless, barbershop provided the foundation from which these innovations sprouted." The way in which the Freshmen innovated harmonically, according to Averill, is as follows: "The group experimented with voicing chords in various inversions and with octave displacements so as to spread the formerly close harmony out widely. The result was a very jazzy harmony, which could be described as barbershop-meets-Stan-Kenton sound."
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