QUESTIONS:
1- In the two-decade period from the end of WWI (1918) until the establishment of the Society (1938), barbershop was eclipsed by many other types of popular music; the decline was sudden and profound. A few stalwart quartets (there were no barbershop choruses back then) soldiered on. Name the most notable of these.
2- How did the quartet alluded to in question #1 make itself known to the public?
3- In the mid-1930's, when barbershop was off the popular music radar screen, two efforts were made, i.e., organizations were established, in the state of Illinois to promote barbershop. Where else did such efforts take place?
4- State what you can about either or both of the organizations alluded to in question #3.
5- Three of the four members of a future international championship quartet sang with one of the two Illinois barbershop groups. Name the group, the quartet and the year it became the king of the barbershop hill.
ANSWERS:
1- The Maple City Four from La Porte, Indiana
2- By singing (my source did not indicate how often but fairly regularly makes sense) on Chicago radio station WLS, and by performing as the Singing Cowboys in Gene Autry and Roy Rodgers movies. If you've ever heard the Singing Cowboys in those old movies, you'll know that their harmony, although close, was not barbershop.
3- Starting in 1935 (and continuing until 1960) there were the annual NYC Parks Department Barbershop Quartet Contests. There were, however, no chapters or an organization above the chapter level established which would have been much more effective in promoting barbershop than the contests alone. Based on my study of barbershop history to date, other than the NYC contests and the two Illinois groups, no other organized attempts to promote barbershopping existed anywhere during barbershop's in the wilderness period in the 1920's and 30's. The USA is a big country and once upon a time (in what was then the not-distant-past) barbershop had been extremely popular. This persuades me to believe that it's most unlikely that attempts to relight the barbershop flame in venues other than NYC and Illinois did not occur. If you, dear reader, know of any other locations, please enlighten me and I'll be glad to publish a correction.
4- One was the "Peoria Klose Harmony Klub" founded by an ex-vaudevillian by the name of John Hanson in 1934. The PKHK eventually grew to over fifty members and became an early Society chapter. The other was the "Illinois Harmony Club" (founded around the same time as the PKHK, but my source did not indicate a specific date), which had monthly meetings in four locations (Canton, Decatur, Peoria and Springfield) in the central part of the state. In its second year of existence, however, a group of barbershop aficionados from Chicago was bused in to join the festivities; thus the city boys and their country cousins all got into the act.
5- In that first group of Chicago barbershoppers who were bused to a meeting of the Illinois Harmony Club were three-fourths of the "Misfits", the Society's first place quartet in 1945.
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