Copyrighting Your Work

In the past few months I copyrighted quite a number of my arrangements, 55 to be exact! Today, you can do this on the Internet by visiting http://www.copyright.gov/, and creating an account for yourself. Before you begin, prepare all of your music so you'll be ready to submit it at the end of the application process. I'll describe this further below.

You can copyright only the arrangement, declaring very clearly you take no credit for the melody or the lyrics. Through the process, the application forms make this all very clear. Be sure you are taking credit for original work on your end, not a recasting of someone else's work. If you adapt another person's work and change 20%, 30% or even 80% of it, it's really not original.

You'll need nothing more than PDF files of the sheet music. Be sure to include a copyright notice on the first page of every song before making your PDF files. Basically you sign up with copyright.gov and tell them what you want to copyright. If you have a number of songs, you can copyright a "book" for one low fee. You list all the songs in the book, and once the whole set is defined, make a payment using a credit card for the $35 handling fee, and upload each song at the end. Leave yourself plenty of time for this task, and don't worry too much about the sometimes cryptic questions. Humans receive and process all your information on the other end, and they're really quite good at figuring it all out.

Then what?

You wait. When you think you've waited enough, wait some more. There's a lot that has to go on on the Government side, and there is also a long queue of requests. So be patient and do not doubt. If something is screwy with your application, they will contact you and straighten it out. This is not like buying stuff at Amazon.com. In a few weeks or more, you'll receive confirmation by regular mail with your official copyright numbers for your stuff. It's not exactly suitable for framing, but it's pretty cool.

So what next?

More arranging and getting more of my stuff "out there". I am actively marketing my stuff to various choirs. This year, I expect to hear one of my new arrangements sung by the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus, and I am very excited about that! I sent it off speculatively to the new music director, Paul Leo, last spring, and he liked it a lot. We had a little discussion about arranging. He was looking ahead to his new role and wondering how he would rise to the occasion. As Orpheus, he is expected to introduce new, original material and keep the group moving forward creatively. Every director wants to contribute one or more new pieces of work, and they want them to become favorites for years to come.

Tools and Tricks

As I told Paul, I heard Deke Sharon is developing a book on a cappella arranging. I see there's another well reviewed book, "The Collegiate A Cappella Arranging Manual" by Anna Callahan. The Barbershop Harmony Society also publishes an incredible 450 page "Barbershop Arranging Manual" on the topic. References like these need to be within reach while you work.

But one of my main tools, as I told the new SOB director, is my MP3 player. First I hunt around for songs of interest to me. I suggest casting a wide net in the early stage. I buy a slew of versions of any interesting songs, and I load up my MP3 player with them. You can use your smart phone as I do (Palm Pre) or iPod or iPod Touch. It's great to have something pretty rugged, because the next step is to set aside a time to listen and for me that means while working out at the gym.

The goal is to play the list over and over, day in and day out, for 30-60 minutes a day while your mind has nothing else to do but let it sink in. When I was a student of Thich Nhat Hanh, I learned something called "deep listening", and this practice comes in handy here. You let the songs inhabit your mindspace, bounce around inside your subconscious, and eventually your ideas about how you "hear" each song begin to coalesce. Eventually, you can conceive your treatment of one of these songs from start to finish. This is not the same as knowing every note and rest; it is most likely a very broad brush conception with some parts in greater focus than others. But at some moment on the treadmill it will hit you as a complete concept after which you will find the momentum to direct 100% of your attention to realizing the concept with black dots, stems, rests and all sorts of other bits of ink on paper.

In Search Of...

Restoring the musical archives of the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus has led me on a journey into the past, back to the earliest moments of the organization. Very little is known today by most alumni or current members. The mists of time have been cast over the events of nearly 75 years ago, as the story has been told and retold like a parlor game of Chinese Whispers.

We recently conducted an interview with our founder, Irving Walradt, class of 1941. Irving still has all his wits about him. The words he used were simple enough, but we did not grasp what he was saying. It was so different from the myth we'd created, so different from the projections of our reality that we could not hear his message.

History Made Every Day

After more research, more discussion, unearthing some photographs and a few more stories, the mist has begun to clear and now we're beginning to get it. Not all of us, mind you: We've told another story to ourselves for so long we may not be able to supplant the myth with the reality.

We have member rosters going back to the class of 1940, and we considered those men sang with the group in the year or so previous to graduating. In my day, we had an oral history that pinned the group's founding to 1939. Today, the group's oral history has backed that up to 1938. But Irving told us a story that made it look more like 1940, although he said there was an informal group singing with our name the previous year. But, he said they would never have endured without him founding the group to, in his words, "last forever".

Where Did We Begin?

So, what to make of this? Perhaps the group had been around as an informal organization when along comes our "founder" to establish some order that carries us to the present day. Isn't this just a man saying he added essential structure while clearly another kind of founding, of equal importance, had preceded his contribution? Didn't Irving just join those guys and augment what was already there? When was the moment of inception? Was there such a moment, or did we begin in a more organic and evolutionary way?

That's where we were after reading the extensive interview with Irving. After all, he told us the men we listed as our first members were singing together the previous year, but asserted it was he who had really founded the group. Reading his interview, we assumed that the group already existed in 1939, a story consistent with our shared myth, and along he comes, the first true Orpheus/Pitchpipe and sets a structure in place.

It Didn't Happen Like You Said

But it turns out that's not what happened at all. Over the last few months I've been digging into the deep past, reading histories, pumping the alumni for stories and photos and generally shaking trees to see what fruit falls out of them. As part of that process, I wrote to Irving at his home to request any old photos he might have of himself or the group. For weeks I'd heard nothing.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a day off to visit New Haven and archive some Whiffenpoof music in the Whiff Alumni office in Mory's and met Barry McMurtrey, SOB alum of the class of 1988, for lunch. Barry works at Yale's Sterling Library. As we waited for our meal, Barry showed me the "oldest known photograph of the SOBs". It was extraordinary, of extremely high quality, with 4 guys looking very dapper, and quite hip, singing a song in the open sun next to a 50 pound bag of oranges hanging on a hook. Barry told me he'd been given the photograph by Bill Oler, founder of the modern Spizzwinks and class of 1945, whose elder brother Wesley appeared at far left in the photo. Bill Oler had told Barry it was the oldest known photograph of the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus and had been taken on the historic Glee Club trip to South America.

The photograph had a sort of cover page wrapped around it, printed with the words Yale Glee Club Spring Trip of 1940, and noted the names of the men in the photo, calling them the Orpheus and Bacchus Association, also abbreviated, "OBA". We both knew of the historic trip to South America, and here was a shot in some tropical climate with what must have been the original name of our group: the OBA rather than the SOBs.

Who Are These People?

In it we saw what we wanted to see: four of our guys, maybe the very first guys Irving had described, singing informally together before he came along, before the group's name was "improved". Barry promised to scan the photo and send it to me. But after I returned to Boston, he wrote me that the names of two of the men were not in our official roster and so he no longer knew what the picture represented. We were suddenly very confused. I mean, hadn't Irving joined these guys the following year and formalized the organization? Barry was asking the right question: How come we didn't know who these guys were?

The OBA Quartet

I convinced Barry to send me the photo so I could send it to Irving and ask him to explain things to us. Once I got it, I checked in Tim DeWerff's "Louder Yet the Chorus Raise", a history of the Yale Glee Club to see whether these names were in the rosters Tim included in the appendices. Sure enough, all four men appeared in the roster for 1940. I thought, "it's merely an oversight - just add the names to our roster and move on".

The next morning I was at the gym and ran into a friend of mine from Polymnia and we started talking. Somehow the conversation turned to his father and he mentioned he was reading his father's journal from his trip with the Yale Glee Club to South America in 1941. Wow, I said, I was just looking at a photo from that trip and probably your dad knew these guys! But something stirred in my brain - the photo was marked as 1940 and my friend had said 1941. When I got home I check in DeWerff's book once more and saw the SA tour was in the summer of 1941. These were two different trips!

What Year Is It?

Then I looked closely at the Glee Club rosters in DeWerffs appendix, listed neatly year by year: 1939, 1940, 1941... and noticed that any given name only appeared in one list. The veil was slowly lifting from my eyes as I realized the Glee Club was run like college sports in those days. There was a Freshman Glee Club, then the Apollo (Junior Varsity) Glee Club and finally the Varsity Glee Club. Basically you had to rise up in the system to make it into the Varsity Glee Club, typically as a senior. Aha! These guys were all class of 1940, and they were all in that list. Irving was class of 1941 and appeared in the next list. Slowly the fog lifts a bit more...

A few days later I received Irving's reply to my request for photos. It came in a large manila envelope and included a two page, typewritten letter and an 8x10 B&W photograph of 8 men in white tie and tails. In the letter, Irving repeats his founder's story again and describes the 8 men as the first SOBs. Those other guys before "us" might have been SOBs, but that stood for you-know-what. His group was made up of seniors, juniors and sophomores, and had received their name "Sons of Orpheus and Bacchus" from the great Marshall Bartholomew himself.

Dawn Over Marblehead

Now my eyes opened fully and the light came shooting in. For a year or maybe more a bunch of seniors in the Varsity Glee Club had formed a pickup group and had some fun singing on the Glee Club tours. Perhaps they operated under the working name of Orpheus and Bacchus Association, a name inspired by their love of drinking and singing or maybe had been loosely given them by Barty.

But these guys graduate each year and are gone. Maybe a new pickup group repeats the following year or maybe it fades into oblivion. That's how the OBA was working, and that's who is depicted in the photo Barry had gotten from Bill Oler.

But Irving is admitted the Varsity Glee Club in the fall of 1940, and because he was not tapped for the Whiffenpoofs, has decided to start his own a cappella group. He picks guys from the underclassmen in the Apollo Glee Club so they will have longevity, puts together some cool arrangements for them, among them "Pretty Girl" and "Old Gray Bonnet". Marshall Bartholomew is thrilled and dubs the group "Sons of Orpheus and Bacchus". It is an historic moment. Up until this time, the Whiffenpoofs and senior pickup groups like the OBA perform break out numbers or sing to entertain one another on Glee Club tours. Now an a cappella group including undergraduates is included in the fun. Barty often invited the SOBs to tour with the Glee Club for the rest of his tenure. And "Pretty Girl" is still sung to this day to close every SOB concert.

The first SOB's

Irving chooses his voices with care, but also sizes up his lieutenants and establishes a leadership succession. It turns out to be enough to last forever.

The Whiffenpoof Blue Book

One last note before I sign off. As you know, I do archive work for the Whiffenpoofs. Many years before I got involved, the first archivist for the Whiffenpoofs was the aforementioned Bill Oler, 1945. One of the things Bill did, in addition to re-founding the modern Spizzwinks, was gather up all the music the Whiffenpoofs were singing and put it together into a book that came to be known as the Whiffenpoof Blue Book (WBB). In the process, he consulted with his older brother Wesley, from the OBA, and probably got manuscripts from him as well. Wesley and Bill were not able to establish who had arranged many of the songs; sometimes Wesley was able to tell him. There are notes on several of the WBB manuscripts to substantiate what I'm saying. But to this day most are still "Arrangement: WBB" meaning, "we don't know", including such songs as "Pretty Girl" and "Old Gray Bonnet".

In the interview with Irving, we also collected some of the first songs sung by the SOBs, including Irving's arrangements of "Pretty Girl" and "Old Gray Bonnet" and added them to our archives. These two songs are also in the Whiffenpoof archives, part of the WBB. In a court of law, under oath, I'd have to testify Irving Walradt '41, could well deserve the credit for arranging both of them.

Arranging 101, Semester 2: A Case Study

Back in 1954 or 1955, one of the great musical directors of the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus, whose first name is Pete, arranged a classic piece the group sang for the next 20 or 30 years. We're not sure whether Pete made a chart of the song - if he did it was lost well before 1958 when another great director, first name of Chan, was singing it. It appears to have been passed on entirely by oral tradition. I sang this song with the O's & B's in the early 70's and I could swear we had charts for it, but nobody has yet located a copy. I went looking for records of this arrangement recently, and luckily we found something.

It turns out one of the O's & B's from the 90's made a project after graduation to pull together the ragged archives and bring some order to the chaos. He noticed the music for this particular song was missing, and contacted Chan to ask him to work up a sketch. This sketch is what was found a few weeks ago, and was sent to me.

So What's the Song?

Oh, yeah - almost forgot.... The song is a medley of two great American classics. First, "Sweet Sue" by Will Harris and Victor Young. The second is "Honeysuckle Rose" by the great Fats Waller with lyrics by Andy Razaf. Pete found a way to combine these, creating a duet by combining the two songs at once, what is generally called a fugue. Fugues are never easy to construct, but they are absolutely delightful to the ear. So our lost piece is remarkable in this respect, making it even more worthy of attention.

Chan's sketch represents to a great extent how his group had learned the song via oral tradition. If you've sung in an informal group like the SOBs, you will know this means they singers have improvised their parts over the years. Often times, the original complicated ideas are lost. There are really two reasons why these things get munged. First, the more complicated ideas are often hard to sing. The singers struggle with these sections, get them wrong, and they end up turned to mud or into something that sounds more familiar to their ears. Second, they may get altered by design, to firm up the core of the original concept in a way the singers can latch onto. They get rearranged, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

I'm not going to get into how singers wing it through these difficult sections. It's a complicated, non-directed, organic process that rarely produces a remarkable or stable result. But arrangers who introduce their work to singers and identify these sticky wickets need to react quickly to redesign them before they are transmogrified to perpetual mud.

Chan's sketch also represents an extension of the arrangement beyond the way it was sung by his group in 1958 or so, because Chan is always working on solving problems and he's always learning new tricks.

Restoring 101

If you have such a sketch and some old recordings, as I also did, you can begin the work of restoring a piece like Sweet Sue/Honeysuckle Rose, and begin to see all of these dynamics at work. You also a learn a little bit of history on the way. I have a 1954 recording with Pete and his group singing the song. I also have a 1961 recording of Chan and his guys singing a somewhat different rendition. In addition, I have my own experience singing it in 1970.

First, I started with Chan's sketch and punched it up to a full-fledged manuscript. Then I compared it very closely to the recording his group had made, looking for embellishments and changes he'd added due to his basic creative nature. Essentially, this turned the clock back from the 1990's back through 1970 when I sang the song, all the way back to 1958.

Then, I took that version and tried to line it up with the recording of Pete's group singing in 1954. I stripped away embellishments of a few years, reverse engineered a few things and arrived a very good guess at Pete's original construction. Yes, nothing more than a good guess, in spite of having a decent recording.

The Rosetta Stone?

You think it would be, but in truth, the 1954 recording is not the decoding ring we seek. Why? Because Pete was darn clever and the guys just could not sing what he'd put together. In the recording, they fudge the tricky parts, which come out like pure mud. Pete was not able to get these passages under control. Look, in those days the charts were all prepared by hand, and the singers' copies were also recopied by hand. True, Xerox copiers were invented in 1938, but not available for sale until 1958. So arrangers stuck to what they written and were not able to react quickly as one might do today.

So along comes Chan in the summer of 1958, and he transcribes pretty much the entire repertoire, including pieces only in the oral tradition. One reason he's able to do so is the College has copiers! Let's look at two of those tricky spots, and see what Chan was able to do to get the mud out of them in 1958.

Dissecting Clever Rearranging

There's nothing better than concrete examples! I'll be using examples set in the key of F below. Since the key signature is clipped from the images, don't forget the B is flat by default!

First, measure 41 and following, where the ensemble sings, "Don't buy sugar". You'll see first what Pete was trying to do, something I've guessed at from the muddy section of the recording. Reminder, we're in the key of B flat here:

You can see the progression he uses is:

F/C - Em7b5/D - Ddim7 - Adim/C.

This is my best guess, mind you because there is no manuscript, and the singers are winging it all over the map. Now, take a look at Chan's rework of this passage:

Chan takes this section, extracts the key voice leading ideas, alters them slightly to strengthen them and harden up the chords. What do I mean by hardening up the chords? Look at those chord names above and you'll see there are quite a few modifiers and qualifiers to express a couple of the chords. These are Chan's chords in the same passage:

F7/C - Cm7 - Ddim7 - F7

First of all, the simplification of the 2nd chord to Cm7 helps, and Chan gets that Pete's summation chord, the Adim/C is really an F7, so he firms that up. The sequence is cleaner, the voice lines less tricky and more definite. This makes it easier for the singers to audiate their lines, and to follow the less ambiguous chord progression. Take note of something interesting: on the piano, both passages sound almost equally good.

Just a couple of bars later, there's another muddy passage on the 1954 recording, at measure 46 and following, where the ensemble sings, "You're his sugar." This, is my best guess at Pete's 1954 version:

Note, we're still in B flat, and Pete's chord progression there is G - D7 - Edim7 - G7/D.

Now, look at Chan's rework of this passage to bring it into better focus:

Chan's chords are not that different: G - D7 - F#7 - G7. But the third chord is quite different and has less modifiers - it's less ambiguous and works to clarify the harmonic sequence. And the summation chord is a solid G7, with a real rather than an impled G, and without the 5th in the bass. The main thing it allows is for the bass line to trace the roots of more definitive chords as it ascends. This anchors the singers in the unfolding harmonics.

Again, notice that on the piano, both voicings sound almost equally good. Chan has grasped something about these two passage that solves the observed problems singing them.

Spiff it Up

So today you have a computer, rather than pencil and paper, and not only is it easy to make copies for your singers, it's also easy to rework a section that's too clever for words, and can't easily be sung. Take advantage of this technology and make your adjustments early on, before your singers turn things to mud and invent some less than acceptable accommodation that will never sound right.

The Joys of Restoration

Every once in a while, something really amazing happens. I engrave a lot of old music that's been kept in moldering folders, shoeboxes and the like. It's music that's been passed on for ages. Some of it is too old to sing today, some of it is racist and doesn't deserve to be sung by anyone, and some of it is downright historical, but much of it is nearly unintelligible. And the facts about who created it and when are lost. That's where I come in.

What's In the Shoebox?

Several weeks ago I acquired a new shoebox-worth from someone's attic. One of the SOB alums from the class of 1951 did some digging and found some sheet music going back over 60 years. When I say sheet music, I am talking about hand-copied manuscripts that had been xerox copied numerous times and then have sat in someone's attic for 50+ years. This is not the stuff you buy from Hal Leonard or SheetMusic.com.

You look at this music and the staff lines are all but missing. Sharps cannot be distinguished from flats or naturals. Sometimes it looks more like spots on a cow than actual music. Over the past 6 years I have learned a lot of tricks to restore music like this, and find out who created it.

Today, I worked on a song I had seen in the SOB shoebox in 1971 called, "De Wind Blow Ober Mah Shoulder". The manuscript had a frightening appearance even then - the scrawl of the copyist gave me the shakes, and the breakdown caused by xeroxing only added to the overall creepiness. Trying to parse the notes was nigh unto impossible, so I turned the page and moved on to the next song. In 1971, this piece had already become inaccessible.

Now I approach a scan from someone else's shoebox of the same old song. In the meantime, I have engraved hundreds of other songs in poor condition going back 40, 50 and 60 years or more. I might not want to consider singing this song, but I want to know how it sounded and preserve that for future generations.

Old Songs: Some Better Left Dead

Among the recent find, one of the racist songs was attributed to someone named Goodale, but I could find no mention of him in the SOB records. We also got a couple of arrangements done by Horace Taft, an SOB musical director from class of 1950. Taft had been tapped by the Whiffenpoofs and turned them down. He'd also been on the Manhattan Project before returning to Yale, and was Dean of Davenport College when I was a freshman, although we did not meet. Taft was classmates with other musical geniuses at Yale, including Herb Payson and Edwin Wolff. These guys were among the most prolific arrangers and directors the Yale a cappella groups have ever seen, and their music is still performed down to this day.

One of the Taft songs had his name on it, and the other did not. But it had his signature all over every measure of the music. After going through hundreds of songs note for note, you get so you can recognize the marks of the arranger. But I ramble. But why? Because the interconnections are what I am really talking about. That's why I could recognize the second song as another Taft arrangement.

Ok, back to ground. "De Wind Blow Ober Mah Shoulder". I decided to search the Web using plain English. Bingo - I found the song.

De Wind Blow Ober Mah Shoulder: Found!

Ok, I found it, but this is a song that is nearly lost to the whole world. I found exactly one reference to the song, but it was enough. It was sung at The Orpheus Club of Philadelphia in 2009 to honor Bruce Eglinton Montgomery, director of the Penn Glee Club starting in 1956 who had passed on in 2008, and a counterpart and friend of Marshall Bartholomew of the Yale Glee Club. In his early days at Yale Bartholomew, also known as 'Barty", had visited a lot of chapels in the South looking for spirituals and gospel music, and had collected one song that was a favorite of Montgomery's, and you've guessed which one, haven't you? It's about the wind blowing....

This manuscript was copied by Robert F. "Missing" Link into a handmade songbook called "Songfest", which somehow ended up in the SOB archives many years before I went to Yale. A similar songbook was assembled by Bill Oler, also an SOB, for the Whiffenpoofs that has come to be known as "The Whiffenpoof Blue Book". Many songs from both books are in both repertoires of the two groups, and many are also in the "Songs of Yale".

In the top, right corner of this manuscript is a notation, "arr. by Barty", which we could not read very clearly and up until today had thought said 'Borty'. Today, the light came on and now we know whence this song came. So I share it with you.

Armed with this realization, I scoured my "Songs of Yale" books (various editions), but did not find the song published in any. However, I did find documentation of previous Yale Glee Club directors, and Barty's predecessor was one G. Frank Goodale. Remember the racist song I mentioned earlier? This is the Goodale who arranged it. It is a meaningless camp song, the equivalent of "One little, two little, three little Indians", and appeared in "Songs of Yale" in 1906, called "Three Little Darkies". The title is the worst part of it, so if you read that and survived, you're good. But the good news is we got the song nailed down right to the attribution, because of interconnections. It may not be worth singing anymore, but it's worth documenting.

Getting Over the Shivers

This song that gave me the shivers in 1971 is important in its own way. It's a song you won't find anywhere - it's one of those songs that is not sung by anyone anymore and it's pretty much dead and gone. But I restored it today and heard it and it is beautiful!

Society of Orpheus and Bacchus mini-reunion

This past weekend, 25 alums of the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus gathered on hallowed soil in New Haven to sing, eat, drink, play some golf and reconnect with each other. We swapped stories, met spouses, had laughs and we sang. Oddly, we had done virtually none of this for the last 35 years or so. A few years ago, the group held a reunion to celebrate its 70th anniversary. A few of us looked around the room and noticed how there were almost no attendees who had graduated before the mid '70's. And we planned to do something about it.

I spoke to several of "missing" guys and many said they'd never return. They had seen the group at one time or another 10, 20 or 30 years ago and decided they did not belong with these people. The identification vectors had been broken. Some didn't like the performance values of the group. Some found the humor offensive. Some observed the kids were not "like us". And some found they couldn't sing the old songs with these guys. The music had changed. There were new songs, of course. But many of the old songs had been reworked and the guys could not close their eyes and sing them from beginning to end. There were too many speed bumps!

One of my old pals known affectionately as Kow decided to forge ahead and plan an event just for this lost generation. Maybe we couldn't reach back to the 40's and 50's, but at least we might collect the guys we knew, sing the old songs as we had learned them and through that reestablish a connection with the group.

We cloistered ourselves at first - sang together with restored musical arrangements, something I have been working on the past several years. We were able to interest several of the group's most significant arrangers to come and conduct "master class" rehearsals with the guys. You see me pictured above at the new Mory's with two of my great heros, Dave Bass and Chan Everett who ran these rehearsals. We dined together, swapped tales and songs and even entertained the patrons at Mory's as we used to as undergraduates. Cups were passed. Some magic began to kick in.

Singing as One

We had a more in-depth master class rehearsal the second day and really started to sing like something of a unit. Dynamics were happening, the chords were truing up, the sound was producing goose bumps. At dinner that evening, we sang between courses and this time the songs sounded more solid, more developed. We even tried a few songs we had not rehearsed and pulled off at least one song I did not dream possible. We were singing again!

Reconnecting

Then we took our stuff to meet the young men of the current group. We met at the SOB house where many of them live, circled up in the backyard, eyeballed each other for a bit and then started swapping tunes. Eventually, we sang some together. The young men met some of their idols and legends of the past. They got to shake hands with some of the best arrangers and most clever jokers of the groups history and hear some songs they did not know existed. The old guys got regaled by some stunning voices singing both old songs and new, and suddenly it all seemed really cool. We met a couple of the guys we'll be seeing on TV this fall on the next NBC "Sing Off" series. We had Sam Weisman, producer of that show singing baritone on our team. These guys are stars, but first of all they are just good kids who love to sing, just like us. We all realized how much singing connected us to good friends and fun, making it possible to handle the stress of Yale and the demands of life. We all felt like we belonged together. We found the connection to the living tradition that had been broken for many of us.

The Party's Over: A New Century Begins!

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.

The Final Exam

The Century Project closes in on the final exam

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.

The 70th Bacchanal of the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus

Celebrating 70 Years of Music and Fun

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.

~Bob

"To the Sky" is coming!

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.

Bob

More Attribution Mysteries

The Whodunnit plot rethickens

Believe it or not, the story continues, and maybe Robert "Missing" Link is indeed the missing link in the evolutionary process of "(That Slippery) Slide Trombone". Robert recently wrote me, saying,

I should have told you that I knew Bill Oler when he was a freshman and I 

was a senior; I assume that he's the reason that Song Fest got into the 

Whiff repertory. Also, a many years friend of mine is Brower McClintock, 

'40, a founding member of O&Bs. If it's in the O&B repertory, I assume that 

Brower got it there.

So the trail has not gone cold. Oler, Brower.... Connections and all part of the evolutionary process.... By the way, Mr. Link was made an honorary Whiffenpoof in 1947, as I said before, but is also an honorary O&B. Connections....

Connections... and another Whodunnit

Another fun whodunnit story surrounds the classic Whiff arrangement, "I'll Take Romance". I engraved this long time favorite many months ago from a manuscript that was marginally readable. Before and after screenshots of a few measures this piece can be found on our home page, Acappellanation.com. Of side interest, this note: there is an error in that screenshot that has since been corrected in the actual engraving.

But I digress, don't I? During some months last Summer after making that engraving, I also engraved another half dozen or so arrangements by the same Whiff arranger, but these from his undergrad years in the Bakers Dozen. This arranger is Lewis Girdler, known for "MacNamara's Band" as well as "When Sunny Gets Blue", among other gems. I wrote about him before as the man I believe introduced the faux string bass line in a cappella singing. This humble genius probably turned the a cappella singing world on it's ear in the late 1950's and opened the door to some of the expression we have seen flourish in our genre ever since. That's another investigation....

I'm still digressing, but it's a story! Well, I attributed the arrangement to him because I could make out his name in the top, right corner where it emerged from a black cloud caused by too many xerox generations. I also recognized the handwriting, but so many of the works I engraved had been recopied by others hands making this evidence less credible. However the style of the arrangement, it's voicings, pace and rhythms all sounded like classic Girdler, so I had no reason to doubt it was his.

Arranged by "Unknown"!

Nonetheless months after I submitted it, our lead editor and musicologist bounced it back to me saying to change the arranger to "Unknown". I looked at the original xerox (interesting combination of words there). Girdler's name was clearly legible at the top and I was baffled. Perhaps the black cloud from which it emerged had said, "copied by", but the rest of the evidence suggested otherwise.

Luckily, I had come to know Mr. Girlder while doing the Bakers Dozen engravings, and I sent him a copy of the copy asking, "What about it?". Yes, he replied, and thanked me for sending the manuscript so he could say for certain. It turns out our lead editor had asked Lewis about 10 years ago at some Whiff function if he'd arranged "Romance" and well, he wasn't sure he had. So rather than take credit for what might be someone else's work, he said, "No." Remember what I said about humble? Besides, Mr. Girlder's contribution to both the Whiff and Bakers Dozen repertoires is vast and this is but one sweet "Romance" that slipped his mind. ;-)

Once Mr. Girdler recognized his own hand writing, we'd solved this whodunnit. Luckily, he's still matriculating along with the rest of us, otherwise this piece might have remained forever "Unknown".

Dick Peaslee's Garden of Earthly Delights on Broadway now!

Quick note before I depart: Dick Peaslee, another Whiff and Bakers Dozen arranger I've mentioned in earlier blogs, has a new musical on Broadway, called "Garden of Earthly Delights". Click on the name to visit the web page about it. The man is a powerhouse. I am currently engraving another bunch of his works from the 50's that he'd saved away in his attic and there are some great songs there! 

 

Bob