Champion Quartet Finds Perfect Harmony as the Marx Brothers

Ah! The American institution of vocal harmony and fellowship, the barbershop quartet. It is four mustachioed men wearing straw hats, black pants, white shirts and sleeve garters, hanging around a lamppost singing “Sweet Adeline”. . . .

Well, not always.

A San Fernando Valley-based quartet called The New Tradition has won the 1985 International Quartet Contest for barbershoppers by dressing up like the Marx Brothers, prancing around the stage and singing original comic songs. They sound like other barbershop quartets, but they don’t look or act like them.

Forgoes Old Standards

Usually, barbershoppers sing old standards from the turn of the century. The New Tradition uses music from “You Bet Your Life,” Groucho Marx’s 1950s television show, with new words.

This week, during their first performance in the Valley since winning the competition in Minneapolis in July, The New Tradition twice brought about 300 cheering people to their feet.

“For most quartets, barbershopping is a nice, standard performance with good singing,” said John Miller, the bass singer. “For us it’s a total theatrical performance.”

The New Tradition is part of what is said to be the world’s largest men’s singing organization, the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, or SPEBSQSA, so named in 1938 as a spoof on the multi-initialed agencies of the New Deal.

Its 40,000 members, organized into 700 local chapters, gather for weekly sing-alongs. They sing a cappella, meaning there’s no instrumental accompaniment.

The San Fernando Valley chapter, called the “Valleyaires,” has about 100 members who meet at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys.

However harmonious the sound, barbershopping is also competitive. Quartets try to outsing each other in an international tournament judged by panels of experts. Each year one group is selected champion.

The New Tradition was created 19 months ago. The four men had sung for years in choruses and quartets in the South Bay and the Valley. Miller, who lives in Woodland Hills, had sung in a championship Midwestern quartet. Tenor John Sherburn had sung in the Dapper Dan quartet at Disneyland.

“We all kind of knew of each other and were in awe of what the others had done,” said Bob Gray, the quartet’s baritone and the director of the Valleyaires. “The first time we got together we were all kind of nervous. We sang ‘I’m Alone Because I Love You,’ and it wasn’t all that good. But we felt there was potential.”

With their Marx Brothers act, they emerged as champions from an initial pool of 2,000 quartets from the United States, Canada, Britain and Sweden.

“We did all the lyrics ourselves,” Gray said, launching into a verse:

“Hooray for these fine judges. They really are curmudgeons. Let’s throw them in the dungeon. I think that judge is snoring. Hooray, hooray, hooray.”

“We broke all the rules with that act,” Miller said. “You are not supposed to use instruments, you are not supposed to talk. We spoke a joke and used a kazoo. I don’t think any group had ever poked fun at the judges in competition.”

But the group voices nothing but respect for the basic barbershop sound.

Tradition Busters

“It’s a resonance, a richness, it’s that one chord ringing, locking in, that once you hear you are hooked on barbershop,” Sherburn said.

Nonetheless, they said they will continue to be tradition busters. Plans are in the works for a ‘Star Trek’ routine, with Capt. Kirk, Spock, Scotty and Bones.

“Think of the songs we could do,” Gray said. “ ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ ‘Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder . . . ‘

“Then there’s a ‘Bonanza’ spoof,” he said, referring to the popular television series. “We could change the words of ‘Back Home Again in Indiana’ to ‘Back Home Again in Nevada.’ ”

“Of course we can sing it all pretty well, too,” joked Dan Jordan, the lead.

In less than perfect conditions at their home performance Wednesday night--inside a stuffy church hall, dressed in suits instead of costumes--The New Tradition sounded like seven or eight voices instead of four. You could almost hear a band.