I am Bob Eggers - singer, director, arranger. I sang with and directed Yale's Society of Orpheus and Bacchus. I also sang with and directed the Yale Whiffenpoofs of 1973. I also helped the Whiffs restore their legendary Songbook - nearly 100 songs now and going strong. I am in the field every day making music, composing, arranging, playing, singing, recording, restoring old recordings, publishing music, manufacturing and selling music both on the Web and in brick and mortar operations.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
The Mayor's Emergency Fund Telethon
Let me tell you a story about the Mayor's Emergency Fund Telethon in Melrose, MA. Blue of a Kind were invited to repeat our appearance which was quite successful last year. In 2008, we sang a holiday song and a blues number, and we met the incoming pledges dollar-for-dollar while we sang. Well, a telethon is a wild and woolly thing so every dollar was matched. Why shouldn't that be that case?
This year, we decided to put up 50 of the "To the Sky" CDs as a challenge and give them away to the first 50 callers who pledged $50 or more. We knew that the offer would be taken and matched either during our singing, or soon thereafter.
What is it like being Super Stars?
The local cable station was a little reluctant to go with the offer. They thought we might not push out all 50, or we might cheapen the value of our brand. But I figured we'd raise $2500 for families in need in all of about 5 minutes if they'd go with it. So we stood our ground. It was a 50-50-50 deal - 50 CDs for the first 50 folks to pledge $50.
We sang our first song - "O Come All Ye Faithful" and it was warm and lovely, powerful and rich. The guys were in good form and terribly psyched about raising serious money with our 50-50-50 deal. After the 1st song, the MC announced there had been a single pledge against our offer. Oops...
Cut to commercial...
The station cut to some pre-recorded material. After a minute and a half, we were live again, and apparently the phones had been ringing. Real time is sometimes a bit slow... folks have to rise from chairs, relieve themselves, collect the phone, dial, talk... The Mayor was all excited about the "TOTE" board and directed us to the video screen for the current total cash raised. Well, a couple of grand had come in in about 3 minutes. Wow!
They held us on stage to sing a few more songs. We sang a Hunnukah number, "Hanerot Hallalu" to reach out to our Jewish neighbors and friends. It was equally warm and lovely, and the "TOTE" numbers continued to soar. We nailed a blues number just to add to the joy of the season, "The Tears Came Rollin' Down" and the pledges kept coming in.
They held us longer, introduced guests to stand in front of us, asked us for an encore. The dollars continued to pour in.
What is it really like to be Super Stars?
Yes, I ask the question again. My blue guys know what it's like - they got to be Super Stars tonight. You don't get to do this without sticking your necks out, putting in lots of hard work and having Faith. I had hoped to raise $2500 for the cause in a few minutes of singing. It turns out in all of about 8 minutes, we raised nearly double that. Lots of hard work to create music and fun turned into some powerful relief for families who desperately need some help. My guys know what it's like to be Super Stars. Blue of a Kind were champions tonight.
What a weekend! Don Gooding's presentation on the history of college a cappella was a perfect way to begin the weekend. He traced the explosion of college a cappella, which grew slowly and steadily its first 70 years with Yale singing serving as the birthplace and pantheon. The slow burn has turned into something of a wildfire the last 20--30 years, as the seeds were planted by Yalies and children of Yalies across the country. In 1919 there were 3 collegiate a cappella groups while today there are in excess of 1700! Most of that growth has taken place since the 1980's.
The Marathon Concert
The Woolsey hall concert saw group after group perform into the wee hours. In some ways it seemed not entirely fair to the 2009 and 2010 Whiffenpoof groups to be left to cap the show when many of the audience had not enough stamina to stay past midnight. But the parade of groups was amazing - guys stood up with their brothers and delivered their best all night long.
Record Turnout
Of the 800 or so living Whiffenpoofs, somewhere around 600 attended the weekend. Everyone was on hand for the Saturday dinner, ceremonial awards, singing and merry making. I was honored for the work preserving the almighty songbook and was publicly reminded there are only 534 more songs to engrave. I guess I have a ways to go for the Yale Medal or even the Whiffenpoof Cup. Truly it was an immense honor. A special quartet was composed for the occasion with a verse about Charlie Buck and Bob Birge and me - the songbook team. I still want that medal - I figure with something like that a fellow could wear it under his shirt. Then, if and when Mory's reopens, a fellow could open his shirt and get a free drink or two for himself and his buddies. Seems like a reasonable plan, doesn't it?
As the dinner proceeded, conductor emeritus, Sgt. Burke led us in song, but apparently there was not enough public singing. Guys stood on chairs and directed songs with their comrades, songs that swept over the hall like firestorms. Groups formed and serenaded others. Speeches were made and there was much that had to be said, but heck, why don't we just sing some more???
Meeting "The Man"
As the dinner wound down, I walked to the other end of the Commons in search of Lewis Girdler, class of 1961, who is one of the most important musical forces in Whiffdom, and in collegiate a cappella. I've mentioned him before in this blog talking about engraving music from his Bakers Dozen days as well as his seminal influence on a cappella singing. This man changed the sound and direction of this style of music in his 4 years at Yale and probably contributed to the aforementioned explosion of collegiate a cappella singing more than any other individual. His ability to architect an arrangement is legendary, but he is also known for innovation. He may be the father of vocal instrumentation so prevalent in today's a cappella since he invented the "faux string bass" that changed the character of a cappella forever. It was an idea that was "in the air" - groups were toying with some way to create an instrumented sound to express the jazzy music they loved, but it was Lew that pushed it past the tipping point and changed the sound in a way akin to dropping a lit match on gasoline.
Lewis and I have written emails over the past couple of years, exchanged CDs and such, but we had never met. I found the tables where the '60's folks were dining and began asking if anyone knew where Lewis Girdler was. Why yes, he's right here! Suddenly I was shaking his hand and looking him in the eye. I even met his lovely wife and daughter. We talked briefly and I probably blathered what a great fan I am, but at least we connected.
Lewis has arranged two new songs for the Whiffenpoofs in the past year and he's going to send them to me for engraving. Hmmm, I guess that makes it 536 songs and counting.... Clearly my work will never end as long as my eyesight holds up. But I look forward to seeing these pieces.
Here's a YouTube taste of what it was like that night in the cavernous Freshman Commons, singing the Whiffenpoof Song to conclude the festivities:
"Too Young To Say Goodbye"
On other fronts: we truly launched Jeff Klitz's stunning "Too Young To Say Goodbye". I can't say enough about this lovely composition that has a power over any old Whiff to evoke the magic bond we all share with our fellow songsters. One thing I would like to point out about this lovely arrangement - it is as harmonically rich as anything in the repertoire - plenty of color in the chords and as lovely as any of the best arrangements in our book. But there is not a single voice split. I discussed this with my '73 classmates at some length. Klitz stuck to the close harmony of our core tradition and made a song that was melodic, modern and colorful, yet completely rooted in plain old 4 part harmonizing. It's a song that's purely 21st Century, but one that is singable and will remain a joy to sing with one's buddies when coming together for reunions.
"I'll Be Seeing You"
Another stunning arrangement was introduced to everyone was one of the arrangements that stunned me when I was engraving song after song over the last two years. I wrote to Chuck Buck at the time, saying how I liked this particular piece and he replied, "Yeh, I thought you'd like that one". It's Chris Beck's, "I'll Be Seeing You". Again, this is a piece of great emotional power due in no small part to the wonderfully intense color of the chords. Here again is a piece that succeeds because the arranger is crafty enough to evoke a full color spectrum with four voices. Chris and Jeff know they don't have to spell out an entire jazz chord, splitting their voices into 6, 7 or 8 parts. One arrangement in the Whiff book actually has 9 parts divided up among 14 men. This thins the sound and without the best acoustical setting produces a muddy effect that audiences don't really appreciate, particularly in a room like Woolsey Hall. And when such songs are sung badly, they are absolutely horrid. Beck achieved a masterstroke in this arrangement. Yes, he does split the Tenor 2's in 2 measures, to great effect. These create brief , irresistible explosions applied at the very peak of the song's emotional climax.
Another striking thing about both these arrangements is they get it done in just 2 or 3 pages. In a matter of a couple of minutes, these songs introduce themselves to the audience, ingratiate themselves with a wonderful, colorful close harmony, achieve an unspeakable emotional peak and leave one feeling changed and refreshed. Some a cappella arrangements take dozens of pages to achieve anything at all and oftentimes, they never achieve anything beyond reproducing a cover of a song the singers happen to love. Many times, the audience has to devote a great deal of attention to songs they may not even know, often wondering whether they left the oven on back home. We have to remember we sing for the audience, not for ourselves. Like a team of Navy Seals, we have to insert ourselves into an alien environment, do surgical/emotional damage and get the heck out. It's why the SOBs are good - they care more about your arrest record than your vocal range!
The Return of the King
Back in 1972, my band of songsters were a rowdy lot. We defied tradition, we turned down a White House invitation, and we deposed our pitchpipe. Yes, we took a straw poll and informed him he had a vote of no confidence and asked him to step down. Why he didn't quit, I'll never know, but the man had more guts than most men you'll ever meet. He was quite well suited to the task and actually did a lot of great work with us. But like I say, we were a bunch of renegades. There were a lot of forces at work in our College and in the wider world - pressures for change and relevancy - pressures to reinvent the old-fashioned bastions of Yale and male a cappella singing. Jeff represented something of the old school and several of us hungered to create the new school. So we deposed him. When we were young and stupid we were young and stupid....
Had Jeff not had the aforementioned character and fortitude, our group would certainly have imploded. Despite our rash action, Jeff sang well with us all year and saved our group. But he has felt alienated from us ever since and has not attended reunions. The power vacuum allowed me to enjoy the prestige of becoming pitchpipe these last 10 years, once I began attending regularly myself. It was a job I loved, and after regaining practice with Blue of a Kind, I felt I brought some great experience to bear.
We've always tried to engage Jeff to "reune" with us. We missed his jolly companionship as much as his lovely voice. I'd spoken with him on several occasions in the past, even tried to round him up physically 10 years ago, but he always said he would never return.
Something softened in him for this 100th celebration and he let me and a few others know he was planning to attend. But he was very concerned how the guys would accept him. He totally deferred to me as the working pitchpipe of our group, but I suggested he take the job back. In truth, I really did not want to give up the glory and the fun. I really did not insist on driving this course of action until I spoke with our legendary Irish tenor, and Nadir, Jerry Kelley. I called Jerry simply to see if he would attend the big shindig. Jerry told me he was not healthy enough to make the trip to New Haven and he's actually outlived his doctor's prediction by 10 years at this point. So now I'm talking to a dying man and one of his wishes, he tells me, is to get Jeff back in the pitchpipe position. It took me a few days stewing on that conversation before I could put my ego aside and decide to insist Jeff retake the position of musical director of our band of songsters.
I wrote Jeff and told him he had to do it. When he balked at this, I wrote emails to several key players and asked them to accept Jeff back as pitchpipe. I actually told them, "you're good with this, right?" - and to a man they all said yes. This is a good bunch of guys, even if they were once such rebels. Encouraged, Jeff wrote to each guy and engaged discussion on his own. The process was a great healing as he reconnected with all his brothers. It took a couple months, but Jeff became convinced it would work. I began yielding the responsibility and the authority to him.
The Big Show
Jeff decided to sing 2 classic Dick Gregory arrangements - these suited our double quartet and highlighted some of our best solo talent. Popeye Seligman has a lovely tenor voice that had never been featured at one of these events, and Jeff wanted to right that wrong. I backed Jeff up with sheet music and MIDI files for the guys in the weeks ahead. Last Friday, they showed up ready to play. Jeff walked in with a solid rehearsal plan and things came together right from the start.
At the Big Show, the "Parade of Whiff Groups", we were lined up to sing after a rather spectacular group. They ended their set to screams and standing ovations with the unforgettable "Midnight Train To Georgia". My heart was in my throat as we marched onstage. It was the quintessential "tough act to follow". I could just smell "train wreck". Scarlet Ribbons has a delicate character, and a case of group nerves can just kill it. You die in the intro, and it can begin a cascade effect that permeates the whole performance. Your ego flags, and you might not recover for the next song. As we took our positions, I could just about taste it.
But Jeff took it in stride with great aplomb, introduced our set with a charming hook to reengage the audience, and once my voice showed up halfway through the first measure, I knew we were locked and loaded for success. Popeye strutted his best stuff on the solo and it was smooth and warm. The ensemble never hiccuped. We had a well oiled machine and didn't sound like a bunch of geezers without enough air. Then we strutted out the now retired chestnut, Maggie Blues and ended with a bit of a bang. Solid, solid and fun.
SOBs in the Mix
Several SOBs made substantial contributions to the success of this celebration. I'm proud that this otherwise nefarious Yale group is also a magnet for men of character, fortitude and the willingness to knuckle down and contribute time, hard work and expertise to honor, preserve and celebrate this tradition we all love. Many of us love to stand on the stage and sing, make a beautiful noise, hear the applause and be rock stars. This alone has tremendous merit and benefits the whole world, just because we're brave enough to make merry in a world that is nearly always gone completely mad. But several other SOBs were among the Centennial Awards and I feel I should mention them as well. Barry McMurtrey, '89 did most of the reunion planning and logistics. He organized a library exhibit of Whiff memorabilia that was beyond amazing. Yale Sterling Library now has a fabulous exhibition of Whiffenpoof history because of Barry. That is only the tip of what he did. Anything that happened this past weekend would not have happened had it not been for Barry. Make that the whole Centennial Year!
Lisle Leete, '81, as I mentioned before, produced a set of part-predominant practice CDs for Whiffs of all ages, so they can easily learn all the "Common Songs" we'll henceforth be able to sing whenever we come together. I mentioned the story of this amazing project in my last blog entry, and an article is being discussed now for the Yale Alumni Magazine. I will continue to push Lisle to write something for one of the prominent recording trade journals.
What guys like these do for the benefit of the SOBs as well as the Whiffenpoofs is immeasurable. They set a model of service that should be passed on for the next hundred years.
Three Years From Now
We get to do it again. We have big plans. We have recovered another lamb. We have a few other lost lambs to gather back into the fold. We're thinking of introducing a new, original arrangement to add some sparkle. In the meantime, we're discussing a plan to visit Jerry Kelley to sing with him again, if he'll have us. We're bothers. We'll always be brothers. It's something about the magic of the singing.
Finally, the big day comes. The final 100th anniversary concert looms large now on the horizon. How many men will attend? OMG, the attendance should be staggering. Men, wives, kids, girlfriends, friends, musicians, lovers of song.... The call has gone out. The Friday night concert is going to be the biggest audience I've ever sung for - Woolsey hall will be be packed to the gills! That's a couple thousand or more! Group after group will perform from through the years. At some point during the weekend, the full assembly of Whiffenpoof alumnae will regale the attendees with 15 or so songs - a chorus numbering maybe a couple hundred amazing voices!
The Big Unveiling
The 100th songbook is totally virtual and will be unveiled at this time. The 15 or so "Common Songs" from this book, the Songs of Yale and a few others classics will be "taught" to the surviving members over the next few weeks by a project whose scope is amazing and I want to talk about it. It's a story of an Internet project and a collaboration on a scale that boggles the mind. If it comes in on time, several hundred guys will be singing a bunch of new and old material together - guys from the last 50+ years of the Whiffenpoofs who have never sung together - all singing some songs they know and some songs they have never sung before.
I will touch on this process, but I suspect there will be other articles written describing it in more detail.
The Virtual Songbook
The 100 songs of the Virtual Songbook are at the core of the work. The project to produce this book spans a couple years with 4-5 men working to engrave 100 songs forming the top 100 songs of the group. There are many more songs that need remembering, but these 100 were chosen as the most momentous and representative of the group's history. Now that we're virtual, they are just the first 100 in the Virtual Songbook.
Then a few other songs are added from the Songs of Yale, from Marshall Bartholomew's other published work, and a song composed expressly for this anniversary.
The Big Collaboration - singing with the big boys from the last 50 years
The output from Finale was used to generate MIDI files that were sent to recording engineer wizard, Lisle Leete who was a Whiffenpoof in 1981 (and also an SOB, like me). He took these raw tracks, massaged tempi and fermati to make a pleasing and less mechanical performance, mapped the voices to pleasant instruments, and added a click track. These files were output to MP3 format as guide files for singers. Then, Whiffenpoofs of all ages were enlisted to take these guide files, sing along with them on home recording systems and produce WAV files using whatever recording software they had at hand, usually free software like Audacity.
The guys posted these individual track recordings, where they sounded a little like lost souls singing in a subway station, to a web site and the recording engineer collected them. He performed enhancements on the tracks - pitch correction, adding body, extending notes to eliminate ugly breaths, and made audio files of a virtual Whiffenpoof quartet/quintet/sextet that actually sounds like something. From there, he made what are called "part-predominant" tracks so each guy can listen to his part a little bit louder than the others, and learn the correct notes with the correct lyrics and a reasonably good tempo.
All this was done in a matter of months, and all by people who probably have never met one another. And now, hopefully they all will!
The Big Concert
When is the concert? Friday, October 2. New Haven, CT. Woolsey Hall. 7:30 pm or 8 pm or whenever they get it going on. It's going to roll on and on, so people will be allowed to come and go like some hippy festival.
Over the last year and a half, a small team of us has been assembling a songbook representing a selection of the most cherished 100 songs of the 100 year history of the Yale Whiffenpoofs. A couple of years ago, I had a wealth of experience typesetting songs for Blue of a Kind using Passport Encore, and I submitted some samples to audition for the job.
The Whiffenpoof Alumni Board told me they were making a hardcover edition for the Centenary celebration, which is in full swing at this moment. They also asked me how much remuneration I would require, suggesting that "none" would be the right answer. They would buy the Finale software I needed, and I hunted down a discount price. Due to the educational and historical significance of the project, I only had to submit a letter describing the project to gain the hefty discount. Sweet!
Then, I had to transfer my skills to Finale, whose typesetting paradigm was completely different from what I knew. The initial learning curve was quite steep, and working with other engravers using a rigid style sheet also added to the startup time.
This week we finished our 100 songs, typeset, proofed, edited, proofed again, edited again and etc. At times during the course of the project, an earlier manuscript was uncovered so some songs were completely redone. Every song was also proofed audibly to make sure our eyes were not fooling us.
And now the Songbook goes virtual
The Board has decided now to produce only a virtual songbook - there will not be any hardcover edition. Apparently the cost of the publishing made some Board members blanch. Throwing all the files on a web site will save a fortune.
I am not going linger over my disappointment, but let me say briefly that while a virtual songbook where members can access both sheet music and digital audio is itself a worthy project, it commemorates nothing. It has no historical moment. Members showing up for the big anniversary concert in October will get a username and a password. Nothing will "thud" on the coffee table when they return home.
Recently, I asked for statistics on the project, crunched the spreadsheet and found out how much work I'd done. I had a rough idea, but truly the project has been pretty much a blur.
The results? I engraved 88 songs, for a total of 423 pages. This may be the greatest reward of the project - knowing that we tackled something seemingly insurmountable, paced ourselves appropriately to achieve both quality and quantity and finished on time! We did it because we love this stuff, but also because of the goal to make something commemorative of the 100th.
To my family and friends who gave me the space to make something significant for the Centennial, I owe an enormous debt. Once the web site is up, I'll log in and show you what we did. ;-)
Cosi Cosa got aired out in public this month. If you have been following my ravings, you will realize how long it took from conception to reality. On June 6, I took a deep breath and joined the backing chorus for the first public rendition with Brad Peloquin soloing. You might want a listen to this one.
Every group has a reason for being; a mission. It is what charges you up to do all the work. Your mission might be to make people happy, to rock the world with phenomenal cover songs, become famous and quit the day job, or it might be to preserve a particular musical tradition.
Since our inception, Blue of a Kind has existed primarily to create something fun. Equally important to us has been lending our voices to help fundraisers, causes and to benefit folks down on their luck in our community. We sing to share a special brand of mirth, and we sing to benefit others. Having fun, making fun and doing good seems like plenty of good reasons to exist and to work so hard.
Mission forms your identity
We're refining our mission as we go along. We've become more focused on raising the performance value of our work, a natural thing for any singing group to work on. Just making the "To the Sky" CD raised our performance bar significantly, but our primary goal in making it was to create another way to raise more money for the charities we support. Becoming better and avoiding complacence have naturally become fundamental to our mission. These values carry over into all aspects of the singer's lives, into their families and on into the community.
In the last month, Blue of a Kind has appeared on a float in a parade, sung hymns graveside on Memorial Day, been covered in a feature article of the Boston Globe, appeared live on FOX25 TV and entertained a thousand folks and a few wild critters at the Zoo. So another part of our mission is also coming into greater focus: we want to sing in more cool places.
All of the above goals support one another. The better we get, the more mirth and joy we can create, the more goodwill and charity we can spread around - the more exciting the performance opportunities become. Having a coherent mission gives you better buy-in on the part of the members to work hard. At the same time, as the character of the group becomes hardened publicly along the lines of your mission, you gain more buy-in from the community to hire and enjoy you. They know who you are and what you bring to the party. They can believe in you, and they can lock in on all the wacky stuff you do in the name of fun.
With "Blue of a Kind", we're getting more and more solid opportunities to sing in cool places especially because we've communicated clearly we're a bunch of fun-loving guys who work hard to sing well, share delightful music and help folks (and even some critters) in need.
Your identity is something your audiences will cherish as much as your music.
Blue of a Kind sings the South African National Anthem, in three languages! This song, the equivalent of God Bless America, was at one time illegal to sing under aparteheid.
New Blue of a Kind Video! Here's another video of a song we have recorded on our CD, "To the Sky". Check it out.
"To the Sky" is now available on our web site. Please visit www.blueofakind.org where you can see the gorgeous cover, preview every song on the CD, and even buy it!
It's a wonderful word, tra la la la! I got to hear my new arrangement of this song sung for the first time tonight - front to back. Last fall, Polymnia Choral Society's director, Murray Kidd, asked me to arrange "Cosi Cosa" from "A Night At the Opera" for the "Pops" concert on June 6 at Memorial Hall in Melrose. Last year he asked me to arrange "Take Me Out To the Ball Game" and I stuck to what I knew - a cappella. This time, I incorporated the standard piano accompaniment from 1935 underneath the choir; why fight upstream?
Still, it was daunting taking on a piece with accompaniment. Piano is not my forte; pardon the pun. I took more than a few deep breaths sizing up this project. Once I got the piano score and began to work with it, I could see possibilities opening up.
The more they opened up, the more I stretched and began to just have fun within the medium. The singers did not have to do all the work; they were suddenly freer, in my mind, to disengage and do frivolous and fun things. In truth, they really should always be free! I have a tendency to keep every voice busy, creating harmony and singing pleasing lines. "Take Me Out To the Ball Game" was classic in this regard. The calliope starts in measure one and every voice works hard to keep the machine pumping along until the tension breaking denoument, ala Carly Simon.
It Could Mean Yes, It Could Mean No
But this was different. I began to picture our soloist, one of Boston's most outstanding voices, Brad Peloquin, pacing around the stage, gesturing wildly with an operatic chorus backing him supporting or punctuating his every line, sometimes trying to outdo him. My inner Italian spirit began to awaken and I let the three ring circus of the song take life. Yes, some parts of the song are my classic a cappella style - the choir has to sing, after all. But sometimes, they just embellish and sing more freely and do silly stuff.
Three days listening to Mario Lanza, lots of espresso lattes and trying to feel what Mr. Lanza was going for, and eventually the picture begins to come into focus. More weeks of stewing and rework, and finally a pass by the director for some suggestions and changes (it's a tenor solo for Brad Peloquin, you idiot!), more stewing and rework and then it just seemed right.
Proof Is In the Pudding
Tonight I heard some really awesome singers begin to sing it under a director who knows how to work a song. Yes, it will do; it will really do!! It will be a three ring circus that makes Brad Peloquin look like a happy, mad genius. "Cosi Cosa!! Get together and sing tra-la-la-la!" Oh, and we shall!
The Society of Orpheus and Bacchus is in their 70th year. This "Bacchanal" is nothing more than their annual anniversary party and reunion. This year's event was held last weekend and was a tremendous success. The young men have regained their footing both in song and humor. The repertoire spans many years, with diverse styles and still stays on a high choral plane. The guys sing! And they can structure a delightful weekend event that appeals to all the men who returned.
The "lost" Songbook was not lost! In past blogs I've mentioned the SOB Songbook and told a story about it going lost in 1972. At the Bacchanal last weekend, I met with my successor Orpheus from 1972, and a few other guys who knew his successor and we established the lost "Songbook" was nothing more than a rumor. Mind you, this is not a proper book we're talking about but rather a box of manuscripts. As the director changes nearly every year, the box is passed from one to the next. One of the reasons I got deeply involved in the Whiffenpoof, SOB and Bakers Dozen Songbook projects was that I had been told that the SOB songbook had gone lost after I'd passed it to my successor. This is apparently not the case. Nonetheless, I had felt some guilt over the last 10 years and I had begun working to restore the "lost" and moldering music.
So, the "lost" Songbook story is a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing! How do these stories get started? I guess there seemed to be no other reasonable explanation why the music had changed so dramatically over the years and why so many songs had gone missing. It covered a truth that archival management over the years was at best shoddy. How could this be? I don't really know. If there was no mass extinction event, then maybe pieces were savaged by the occasional homework-eating dog, blown away by a gust of wind or they were tossed out from time to time. There were no holes in the box.
Poor Record Management I've been through the Songbooks of 3 Yale groups now, so I've seen a few things. The Whiffenpoofs did a better job keeping their records, but they were not perfect. Songs went lost. The BD and the SOBs did not do quite so well. Stuff that seemed meaningful was copied, sometimes embellished and updated for better or for worse, and the originals discarded. Sometimes it was so completely "rearranged" it was simply co-opted by the editor. And, it looks as if stuff was simply pruned by guys whose heads were up their egos. What does this do to the guys who sang those songs 30 or more years ago? Nothing good.
Rule of thumb was if you arranged for the group, you donated your work and expected that if it was sung, it would be archived. Unwritten rule for the director: what is in the box at the beginning of your term should still be in the box at the end. But that is not the way it went down.
Weaving the Old with the New So now groups like the Bakers Dozen and the SOBs are turning 'round about 70 years old. In large part, their founders and older members feel alienated and forgotten. Their music has moldered away, gone lost or worse, it was discarded. Many guys from the 40's, 50's and 60's gave up returning for reunions with their groups because they don't recognize the music and the group doesn't recognize them. They can't sing the old songs with their buddies 'cause the music is missing.
We are men from many generations. We sing, love, laugh, graduate and move on. We retain our connection with an organization like a singing group through shared experience and values - in this case the singing and the fun. The group has a responsibility to innovate and compete. Every year, things change. The Old Men connect to the group through the music (which changes) and the fun (which can also change culturally). They also connect from a sense of having been there to hold the fort, keep the tradition alive and keep the group competitive in their era. These are very important values, what I call "connection vectors". We connect along these vectors and we can disconnect along these same vectors.
Disrupt these vectors, and members feel disassociated from the organization. The fact that the music changes is expected. If the culture of the fun changes significantly, guys will pull away. When the group reunites, they must find a way to affirm the contribution and the culture of all of the alumni. The group must be able to see that the guys over all the years have basically been doing the same thing. If songs from the past are lost or forgotten, it is a rough road ahead. Old Men ask: You don't know what we sang? You don't have my name on the list? You don't know what we did to make this group great?
Once disassociated, they generally don't come back.
Bringing 'em Back At the 70th Bacchanal, we had about 70 attendees. Of these, 90% were from graduating classes within the last 35 years. Virtually nobody came from the first 35 years of the group's existence. Nobody really knows why and when all your own friends are there, nobody really cares, an attitude which is very much at the root cause of the problem. The last time I went to one of these events, I saw that the culture of fun had changed so drastically that I did not identify with the group. Many of my classmates saw the same thing and vowed never to return. Last weekend, a small group of us ventured back into the water with some trepidation and saw that the culture of fun is much the same as it had been for us. It's sophomoric, wacky, edgy and obviously up-to-date, but it still looks and feels like "us." This was a pleasant surprise. Members from the 80's and 90's still cannot understand how we don't know songs arranged 10 or more years after we graduated - to them these songs seem to have existed forever. Oh well!
For the Bakers Dozen, the problem is apparently worse than for the SOBs. I have letters from some of the founders of the BD, similar letters from fellow SOBs, all saying the same thing - how they want to reconnect but their experience has taught them they are forgotten and unwanted. The SOBs are unique in having a core repertoire of seemingly timeless music by some of the most phenomenal arrangers spanning nearly the whole history of the group. The BD have this too, but it's buried deeper in the past and has lost any meaning for several generations. It will be difficult to recreate a touchstone.
At the Bacchanal concert, I was lucky to bump into the father of this year's Pitchpipe. We sat next to one another and enjoyed the program. It turns out this man, Larry, was a classmate of mine and was "rushed" by the SOBs along with me when we were Freshmen. We had a few rush lunches together in 1969. Larry joined the BD and I joined the O's and B's. We sang in competing groups for the next 3 years. Earlier in the day, his son had told me about one of those concerts which had really bugged his father. He told me not knowing it was my group and my arrangement that had achieved something that night no other act could top and which had ticked his father off. Larry is one of the top arrangers for the BD from the early 70's and his group had talent with a capital 'T'. As last weekend's Bacchanal performance proceeded, he asked me how many of the songs I recognized from my day. In truth, there were quite a few. Some of them still had the power to move people to tears, wild screams or belly laughs. Larry was amazed at this. I think by now he realizes he's connected to the SOBs for life, the last thing he ever thought would happen to him!
Put it Back In the Box! We SOBs have a big job to do - we need to reach into the first 35 years of what our forefathers did, shake trees and find anything we can and put it back in the box. We need to extend our reach, and set a table for those Old Men, so they'll come and reconnect. We need to embrace them when they return. It's a huge task, and one that won't see 100% success. My hope is that the process of reaching back over the years will reengage alumni along the connection vectors and we'll see some serious representation of the first 35 years of this group at the 75th Bacchanal in 2014.
Starting your own a cappella group: "Don't try this at home"
I've talked about the difficulty of bootstrapping your own singing group before. Bootstrapping any new organization takes faith, courage, planning and some luck. Once you've bootstrapped your singing group however, getting guys to join is not that hard. Every time you sing out, you are rock-stars. People swoon over you, women eye you. Being bold enough to stand and deliver in front of an audience is an exciting thing, electrifying singers and listeners alike. Not everyone wants to sing a cappella, but believe me, you'll have no trouble finding folks who want to try.
All you need is a guitar and a hairdo
You can sing easy stuff and people will dig it. You can try more challenging material and many folks won't realize you don't quite succeed. Your choir can go flat and still be entertaining; only singers, musicians and those with perfect pitch will know for sure. Everyone else will feel the sag in energy but not be able to tell you much more. You can intone your vowels like yokels, belabor your consonants, make ragged entrances and cuts and basically do all manner of no-no's and still people will love you. Hey, you're singing for them, right? That's not a bad thing right there. Frank Zappa used to say if you have a guitar and a hairdo, you can be a rock star.
And if that's what you want to do, then go do it and have a ball.
Singing beautifully together
But to take a bunch of wanna-be rock stars and teach them how to sing bel canto might be one of the hardest things in the world. I studied photography, and my teachers taught me the rules as well as how to break them. Word: you are a master when you break the rules to a purpose, but you're a fool if you don't know the rules to begin with. And you're really not a singer if you can't control your body to produce sounds to a desired effect.
In choral singing, the buzzword is blend - sounding as one. Primarily, that means vowels, pure vowels, as in Latin or Italian. It also means producing a clear tone by supporting your air flow, controlling your vocal mechanism through your range and engaging your resonators. You learn to sing around problems caused by the breaks in your registers and keep a mostly consistent sound. I think in our lifetime and maybe a few generations, only Pavoratti was born without a pessagio. "Singing on the pessagio is something akin to the feeling of holding two oppositely poled magnates together, constantly adjusting toward a point of balance under the threat that at any moment the two ends will slip apart." (Christian Huebner). Pavoratti apparently did not have to endure this, but the rest of us do. Less eloquently said, singing on the pessagio hurts.
Blend also means managing your consonants, to produce a sound with as little noise messing up those lovely vowels. The dreaded 's' must not hiss endlessly, dipthongs which just aren't pure vowels and constrict your sound can be moderated to something easier on the ear (and easier on the vocal mechanism), and those 'er' sounds can be opened up to 'ah' to sound appealing and ultimately, more natural.
As a group, you've really got to start and stop together or else it's just campfire singing. Get louder and softer as one to express highs and lows to impart emotional power or delicacy. Color your voices darkly or brightly together to express gravity or lightness. Do all of these things and stay on pitch, and you will move people. That's what you want to do and this is basically what is called bel canto. It requires more than a guitar and a hairdo. If you can cover these fine points, follow these rules, something "beyond the norm" will happen to your audience. You will get under their skin and move them more deeply. You will evoke tears, laughter and goosebumps.
Listen to your favorite performers and you will hear them breaking the rules, no question. But you will also begin to notice how they break the rules to a purpose, and how they honor those rules more often than not.
Mantras for the new year
How do you achieve this? As a director, you can rant and rave. To some extent, you need to do this to demonstrate that you are serious about your requirements. But the primary problem is breaking years of habituation. You will only get so far ranting and raving. I realized two things, and they have become my joint mantras for the new year:
1) Old habits die hard, but die they must! 2) The way you practice is the way you play.
Both points are quite obvious, as they should be. The first goes to the heart of setting standards and insisting that your singers adhere to them. This means using every trick in the book to bring the need for re-habituation to the fore. And where do you do this? Well, in rehearsal, of course. Why wait until you sing a concert recording and then point out the flaws? It's a useless way to learn.
Here's my new approach. Listen to those concert recordings and choose several aspects that need improvement or development. Don't choose too many - pick only 2 or 3. Notice how I only have 2 mantras for myself? Then find pieces in your repertoire that afford a rich opportunity to drill on those aspects, and work those repeatedly, getting the standards in the mouths of your singers. Yes, it has to be learned in the body - that's where habituation exists. You can't tell your folks they have to do this or that and simply expect it to happen. You can ask them what you want and they will parrot what you said. Then they'll go and sing it the way they always do. Their habituation is a more powerful force than your feeble rants. You have to re-habituate them in their mouths and in their bodies.
If you ever quit smoking or started an exercise regimen, you will know this is going to take a while. As the first mantra clearly states, old habits die hard. Habits take 6 weeks to break or to make. Write it down and put it on your 'fridge.
Translating to the playing field
In New England this year, we saw Matt Cassel take over for the injured Tom Brady. As Matt emerged as a first rate NFL QB in the early part of the season, he began to talk about adjusting to "game speed". Your singers face the same issue of "game speed" in performance as an NFL quarterback on Sunday afternoon. Cassel's skills and practice standards were always high; every coach he ever had has said so. When he had to take the field and lead the Pat's his practice discipline was sorely tested. He was able to do what you need your singers to do - translate good habits at practice into solid performance at game time. Look at my mantras again. Translate those into your way of doing business.
The kickoff concert beginning the one year celebration of the 100th took place at Woolsey Hall on January 31. I rushed to put my plans together in the last weeks, knowing I just could not miss this. The original group had formed in January of 1909, so January 31, 2009 seemed the perfect date for this concert.
What a turnout! Some 2400 people packed Woolsey Hall. It took over an hour to get everyone seated. I was unable to secure reserved seating and ended up in the 2nd balcony. In Woolsey, this is the nosebleed area. But I could see everything and Woolsey's acoustics are fantastic.
As I read over the program, I saw some of my buds, some classmates, others teammates on the Songbook project, were performing. First, the Replicants, a quintet doing a handful of the songs done by the first Whiffenpoofs. My excitement about what they would perform began to grow as I realized I had only recently been asked to engrave some very early arrangements.
Waiting for the audience to filter slowly in, I began to jabber with the lovely young undergrad sitting beside me. We had a little exchange about the upcoming performance, I got to brag about working on the almighty Songbook and how my buddies and colleagues would soon be on that stage, singing music they had probably learned from my charts. She acted interested for a bit, and then her older sister leaned over and said, "Isn't my baby sister smart? She's in the eighth grade, you know!" We all had a big laugh on that one.
Finally, the show begins
And then, it did indeed happen as I expected. My buds sang the songs I had engraved. "Old Grey Bonnet" and "When Pa" which I had engraved in the run up to this concert, and "And When the Leaves" which I had puzzled over in the Songs of Yale. It turns out these were among the very first songs the founders experimented with developing this new sound. The performance flowed through the years from 1909 to the present, through all the decades with the SLOTS and other alumni groups covering the entire breadth of the 100 year repertoire. All the songs I had engraved, and essentially had learned, note for note, part by part, verse by verse, all were poured out before me. I soaked them up as few people ever could - knowing more than any man deserves to know. It was rich.
Then the Whiffs of 2009 capped the show, and again I was blessed to know this repertoire just as intimately. But this time, I also heard the inaccuracies here and there that have crept in during years of singing from unreadable charts.
Whenever the Whiffs perform on campus, one of their singers has a job to dress outrageously - he is the group "Turkey". I had not realized this tradition which began with my 1973 group had been carried on to this day. But as the Whiffs marched on stage and I saw one guy in a costume that made it appear he was crouched inside a golden cage and being carried by a gorilla. I instantly knew what I was looking at the group's Turkey. In my group, Turkey wore white sneakers to every show, which looked pretty outrageous with white tie and tails. These days, I learned a different costume is rented for every on campus performance, and the budget numbers thousands of dollars.
Did I mention the group sang incredibly well? This is an exceptional band of Gentlemen Songsters and they brought the house down.
Singing from readable charts
In literary analysis, I had learned that when ancient texts like the Old Testament were passed along by oral tradition, passages that were complex or incomprehensible were often "glossed" over time. Scholars are able to identify these glosses through various means, one of which is comparing various transcriptions and looking for points of deviation. In any case, I could hear glossed sections in some of the music in this show. We had glosses in my time, too. There were sections of the music we just did not get or maybe could not read. We might have heard these sung in the oral tradition and sang it as we'd heard it, or in some places we invented our own glosses.
There are probably sections of some arrangements that have not been sung as they were intended since their first performance. Is any of this bad? No, not really. Often the glosses are clever inventions to fill in a gap that can't be groked by a group. But some strong and powerful intentions of the arranger are lost, and sometimes that invention is far superior to any gloss.
So our work will restore these original intentions and inventions. This is especially gratifying when I get to meet the arrangers now, shake their hands and tell them we've unearthed their original work. I met one of them at the After Glow party that evening.
Black, black, black is the color...
If you know the Whiffs, you probably know "Black Is the Color". It was arranged by the great Fritz Kinzel '58. I spotted his name tag and introduced myself. Our Songbook musicologist, Charlie joined me and we engaged Fritz in a spirited discussion of his work, of the legendary 1958 group and also discussed the stunning performance abilities of our host 2009 group. What a treat! I wanted to ask him about the strikingly modern and nearly incomprehensible chords he used in Black, and somebody brought it up before I did. Well, he said, those aren't any true chords. They are color splashes I made up. The fact that anyone can actually sing these chords is a testament to the abilities of Whiff singers over the years. Fritz is also the arranger of "Johnny One Note" and "Delia". I always loved "Johnny One Note" but did not appreciate the craft of the arrangement until I engraved it a couple months back.
My New Arrangement for the 100th
To cap the evening, I gave Pitchpipe Brian Mummert a new arrangement of mine, which I dedicated to the Whiffs on their Centennial, "Angel Eyes". I'm giving them right of first refusal on a piece I began developing a couple years ago and has evolved and been refined up to this moment. What a thrill it would be to hear the Whiffs sing another arrangement of mine, this one from the 21st century!
The 20th Century was a time of expansive growth in collegiate choral singing, and particularly in the years following the Second World War. As I continue to engrave Whiffenpoofs music from across the Century, I encounter numerous post WWII pieces that capture the very distinctive ebullience of that era.
As college singing exploded in the 20th Century, the position of choral director at great universities grew in importance and impact in the wider world. Yale's Marshall Bartholomew is conspicuous in this regard, having published two editions of the "Songs of Yale", one in 1934 and another in 1953, which became college songbooks at many universities. When the late Fenno Heath took over, he inherited this rich tradition and continued to enhance and develop it.
As Yale admitted women in the late 1960's, Fenno had his hands full creating a new repertoire for mixed chorus. Yale men had this rich and deep tradition of songs, among them songs that made great good fun college life. Luckily for everyone, Fenno Heath reworked much of the cherished repertoire for mixed chorus. A new "Songs of Yale" was brought under our beloved Fenno.
Songs Every Yalie Loves
A couple of humorous songs every Yalie knows are "We're Saving Ourselves for Yale" and "Daddy Is a Yale Man". These were songs written by Yalies about being Yalies, poking fun at their college experience and made real crowd pleasers. Both of these songs came out of the Whiffenpoof repertoire, and are among a group of songs from the post war era that got folded into the immortal core Yale repertoire. Both were written by men who were likely classmates and pals of Fenno Heath, while Marshall Bartholomew was still directing the Yale Glee Club. These songs are on my desk now.
The "Missing" Link Returns!
Robert F. "Missing" Link's "Song Fest" was among this group of music, as I mentioned before. Another piece from that manifesto, "The Old Songs" landed on my desk a couple weeks ago. Some of those songs made the Yale Songbook, some made the Whiff songbook, and some just keep floating around campus.
Sacred Texts
What is it like engraving songs with this much tradition, songs that are beloved by generations of men and women for the last 60 years? It's amazing. I get to look at versions with the original markings of the arranger, songs that were later revised when folded into the "Songs of Yale" in 1953. I also consider my work will sit on pianos of some of the best a cappella singers and arrangers the world has known.
But more than anything, it means it has to be really good. The charts have to read well, express the energy and delight of the music, solve problems for singers and describe performance nuances that would otherwise be forgotten, things I don't know but things other members of the team know from being around longer and compiling massive archives. It's a job I take quite seriously. We're hoping a lot of people will enjoy a good deal of fun singing out of this book!
We're still pushing to bring home 23 cuts on the "To the Sky" CD. Like many things in life, if one thought about the enormity of this task, one would never begin. I don't mean just the recording work. Think back with me to 2004 or 2005 for a minute....
The Blue Dream Begins
In 2004, I was still dreaming of singing in an a cappella group where I could contribute my directing skills and hear some of my arrangements sung. The dream was fuzzy and back then, my life was a mess. It was a dream I'd had for many years, but one of those "Yeah, like that's going to happen!" kind of dreams. I had a few arrangements I'd worked to completion, but no idea how I would go about forming a group or building an actual repertoire. I had been singing with Polymnia Choral Society for a couple years, and the tenors I knew were interested in starting something. But you gotta have 4 parts, and that means basses! The idea needed more momentum - I needed to believe it was possible and I needed basses!
In 2005 Saki, a friend from Polymnia Choral Society, asked me at one of the rehearsal breaks if we could get a bunch of guys to sing some a cappella stuff, and it was like a spark that hit dry tinder. Saki knew the basses and had some pull with them. Yes, he could deliver 6-8 men in "the basement". So it happened. We mounted a couple songs and made them work. People heard us and they liked it. They wanted business cards and bookings. And we had two songs....
How Much Work Is it?
So like I said at the outset, it's a huge amount of work. You start meeting every week and learning stuff. Some guys drop out, others join; things change. You try to figure out how to get 40 minutes of music memorized across 15-20 people and figure out how you're going to look like something of a show.
I went for what I call the "just add water" approach: take 18 guys who need about 18 songs. Get them from ignorance to knowledge as fast as possible - from not knowing how to entertain to being entertaining - from no repertoire to a set list - in less than no time. How do you do that? I decided to fill things out quickly with sea chanties. Why? Because the ensemble needs to learn the chorus once while one soloist has to memorize the 9 verses and then you got a song. It's manly and people will sit through it. Do that a few times over, spice it up with a few spirituals, gospel and rock/pop tunes and you got a repertoire.
Then arrange like your pants are on fire and see what holds up in rehearsal. Spice up the repertoire as fast as you can with anything that sticks. Take it one month at a time. Find a few good arrangements that suit your group at the retail outlets and work them in.
Reaching Out, Going Beyond
Then go beyond. I decided to make contact with some ringer arrangers and develop relationships to foster new work or revive lost work.
First, I made contact with Walter Latzko the arranger for The Chordettes. It was a couple years ago, and my guys needed good, secular Christmas music. I had fallen in love with Mr. Latzko's work (you know him from "Mr. Sandman" and "Lollipop, Lollipop") many years ago as a child watching The Chordettes on "The Arthur Godfrey Show". I asked him to arrange "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" which became his 979th arrangement (completed in about 2 days flat!). Later, he and I reworked it to suit my group of amateurs to an excellent result.
Then, through the Whiffenpoof Songbook project and the SOB Songbook Restoration Project, I reconnected with some incredible vocal arrangers from the last half of the 20th Century whose work had largely been mothballed or retired. These guys have been incredibly generous of their time reviewing my work, but also sharing new stuff or arrangements in their attics. A few have arranged or collaborated with me on new works.
Pants On Fire
Meanwhile, with my pants afire, I worked developing pieces I heard performed by some of my favorites artists like "Eddie From Ohio", Jim Kweskin, Geoff Muldaur, Ray Charles, Son House and The Sensational Nightingales.
After a few years of this, the repertoire becomes seriously spiced up! Over 4 years, we have laid some serious pipe. We are singing some incredible music. You will hear this on the "To the Sky" CD.
There may not be 23 cuts on the final CD. But once we boil it down, I promise you you will get a solid sense of Blue of a Kind. You'll hear the roots of this entire story on the CD, and you'll hear where we are going.
To the Sky, Alice!
There are so many hours of work put in by the guys to make this CD complete; so many dreams dreamt over many years. Visions developed, ideas realized and crystallized in long hours of drill and practice, rehearsal and performance, review and reevaluation and finally, standup time in the studio. "To the Sky" will echo the expressions of men on decks of sailing ships, men who worked railroad track, men who loved women and succeeded or loved them and lost, men who longed for freedom or for salvation, men who yearned to be with their God or with their girlfriend Under the Boardwalk. It will tell a lot of stories.
But one story it will tell is that of us becoming Blue. This is the Blue foundation - the beginning of our story, years in the making. Years.
