Barbershop history

In a recent off-list discussion between Daniel Wolf and I, the history of
Barbershop was briefly explored. In the process, I dug up a SPEBSQSA
handbook, and found a story that I thought some here might find interesting...

"_Was barbershop harmony actually sung in barbershops?_

Certainly -- and on street corners (it was sometimes called "curbstone"
harmony) and at social functions and in parlors. Its roots are not just
the white, Middle-America of Norman Rockwell's famous painting. Rather,
barbershop is a "melting pot" product of African-American musical devices,
European hymn-singing culture, and an American tradition of recreational
music.

Immigrants to the new world brought with them a musical repertoire that
included hymns, psalms, and folk songs. These simple songs were often sung
in four parts with the meldoy set in the second-lowest voice. Minstrel
shows of the mid-1800's often consisted of white singers in blackface (and
later black singers themselves) performing songs and sketches based on a
romanticized vision of plantation life. As the minstrel show was
supplanted by the equally popular vaudeville, the tradition of
close-harmony quartets remained, often as a "four act" combining music with
ethnic comedy that would be scandalous by modern standards.

The "barbershop" style of music is first associated with black southern
quartets of the 1870's, such as "The American Four" and "The Hamtown
Students". The African influence is particularly notable in the
improvisational nature of the harmonization, and the flexing of melody to
produce harmonies in "swipes" and "snakes". Black quartets "cracking a
chord" were commonplace at places like Joe Sarpy's Cut Rate Shaving Parlor
in St. Louis, or in Jacksonville, Florida, where, black historian James
Weldon Johnson writes, "every barbershop seemed to have its own quartet".

The first written use of the word "barbershop" when referring to
harmonizing came in 1910, with the publication of the song, "Play That
Barbershop Chord" -- evidence that the term was in common parlance by that
time.

_O.C. Cash & Rupert Hall_

While travelling to Kansas City on business, Tulsa tax attorney O.C. Cash
happened to meet fellow Tulsan Rupert Hall in the lobby of the Muehlebach
Hotel. The men fell to talking and discovered they shared a mutual love of
vocal harmony. Together they bemoaned the decline of that all-American
institution, the barbershop quartet, and decided to stem that decline.

Signing their names as "Rupert Hall, Royal Keeper of the Minor Keys, and
O.C. Cash, Third Temporary Assistant Vice Chairman," of the "Society for
the Preservation and Propagation of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in the
United States [sic], the two invited their friends to a songfest on the
roof garden of the Tulsa Club, on April 11, 1938.

Twenty-six men attended that first meeting, and returned the following week
with more friends. About 150 men attended the third meeting, and the grand
sounds from harmony they raised on the rooftop created quite a stir. A
traffic jam formed outside the hotel. While police tried to straighten out
the problem, a reporter of the local newspaper heard the singing, sensed a
great story, and joined the meeting.

O.C. Cash bluffed his way through the interview, saying his organization
was national in scope, with branches in St. Louis, Kansas City, and
elsewhere. He neglected to mention that these "branches" were just a few
scattered friends who enjoyed harmonizing, but knew nothing of Cash's new
club.

Cash's flair for publicity, combined with the unusual name (the ridiculous
initials poked fun at the alphabet soup of New Deal programs), made an
irresistable story for the news wire services, which spread it coast to
coast. Cash's "branches" started receiving puzzling calls from men
interested in joining the barbershop society. Soon, groups were meeting
throughout North America to sing barbershop harmony.

_The Early Years_

Operating out of living rooms and garages, the Society was an informal
affair in its first years. Memberships could be had by writing to Cash and
Hall and requesting a certificate, which the founders financed out of their
own pockets. The first formal convention, held in Tulsa in June of 1939,
brought together 150 men from 17 cities for a weekend of harmonizing and a
contest to crown the "World Champion Quartet" -- a distinction won by the
Bartlesville Barflies of Oklahoma.

The Society grew rapidly in the post-war years, in 1945 doubling in size
from 4,000 to 8,200 members in 200 chapters. By 1957, the Society had
grown to 26,000 members in 625 chapters, and an aggressive "Expansion
Program" was initiated to provide educational services and purchase a
permanent home for the Society's administrative staff. A mansion in
Kenosha, Wisconsin, became the new base of operations. SPEBSQSA had come
of age."

-Carl

"In this age of dictators and government control of everything, about the
only privilege guaranteed by the Bill of Rights not in some way supervised
or directed is the art of barbershop quartet singing. Without a doubt, we
still have the right of peaceable assembly which, we are advised by
competent legal authority, includes quartet singing.

The writers have, for a long time, thought that something should be done to
encourage the enjoyment of this last remaining vestige of human liberty."

-- O.C. Cash and Rupert Hall