From Era When Parents, Kids Were in Tune

To gain the proper perspective on the vocal-group pop music of the 1950s, which is the subject of the Old Globe musical spoof “Forever Plaid” (opening tonight), one must appreciate the simple but profound fact that this was the last era in which parents and their teen-agers generally shared the same tastes.

Unbeknown to Americans in the years between 1950 and 1955, the future held cultural divisiveness. Around the middle of the decade, the generation gap would plant its roots in the wild, hormonally stimulating music of Bill Haley, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and Jerry Lee Lewis. More significantly, white teens would shock their parents by making idols of black artists such as Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Little Richard.

Rock would rain change on the American landscape in the form of raucous sounds, affrontive styles and exclusionary lingo. These changes would foster a national attitude shift among teens, who thereafter would dichotomize the world into the “square” (pertaining to the world of boring, unaware adults) and the “cool” (relevant to youth).

But for the time being, the rock ‘n’ roll storm was little more than a dark line on the horizon. In the frontier zone between the post-big-band vocalists and the duck-tailed rockers, teen tastes and styles were the product of an emerging, white middle class that was moving the American dream to the suburbs.

The teens of the early ‘50s hitched themselves to the momentum of postwar progress and prosperity. Unlike the greasers to come, they embraced traditional priorities: going to college, wearing a school sweater and class ring, getting a good job, getting married, living up to--and possibly even surpassing--the Good Life standards set by the Establishment. Parents’ values, roles and motivations went unquestioned: Boys wanted to be just like dad, girls just like mom.

That generational harmony translated to musical tastes, as well. With the advent of television, families watched the same shows, admired the same stars, hummed the same songs. It was a good time for innocent tunes--for perky Teresa Brewer, avuncular Tennessee Ernie Ford, suave Eddie Fisher. Cute and wholesome was the order of the day.

This was, after all, the McCarthy Era, and the asexuality of early-’50s music reflected the rampant conservatism and paranoia about corruption from external forces that pervaded every aspect of American life. People could swaddle their fears about the Cold War and the bomb in the fuzzy dreams peddled by the crooners, who sang of romantic love that was bleached and starched, idealized, abstract.

In this vacuum, teen-agers yearning for something harmless to call their own had little alternative but to adopt existing styles to their own needs. In those days, the prep years were viewed less as a life-altering experience than as a goofy phase one self-consciously passed through and finally outgrew, like a four-year stay at a Teen World theme park. For teens, the trick was to indulge in the rituals of youth without slipping off the conveyor belt that was taking them to respectable adulthood.

The vocal-group sound met all of the pertinent criteria for a generation coming of age in the Eisenhower decade. It was pop without rebellion, teen romance aspiring to grown-up notions of everlasting love, young people creating a young sound that parents could enjoy, or at least tolerate. The musical format, after all, seemed not that far removed from the tradition of earlier vocal groups such as the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers and the Andrews Sisters.

The number four would prove essential to this music. Not only did most of the popular groups consist of four members, they felt compelled to make a point of the fact.

These acts and their respective hits included the Four Freshmen (“Graduation Day”), the Four Lads (“Moments to Remember”), the Four Aces (“Love Is a Many Splendored Thing”), the Four Knights (“It’s No Sin”) and, later, the Four Preps (“26 Miles”), the Four Coins (“Shangri-La”) and the Four Lovers (“You’re the Apple of My Eye”), whose lead vocalist was Frankie Valli.

Of these vocal groups, perhaps the most important was the Four Freshmen, a quartet of college guys from Indiana who would greatly influence not only the music of the ‘50s but that of the ‘60s, as well.

The Four Freshmen, which formed in the late ‘40s, took the tightly packed harmonies of barbershop singing, spread the note- intervals out into wider voicings, and added jazz phrasing and transitions to arrive at a thoroughly “modern” sound. The group’s biggest hit, 1956’s “Graduation Day,” remains a classic of the genre.

While they boasted subtle variations in style and execution, most of the “four” groups are identified by their common traits. The singing was soft, smooth, largely devoid of vibrato to facilitate blending. The typical repertoire combined standards with new songs specifically written for the style, and almost invariably these songs portrayed love as something separate from daily reality--a miracle whose very inaccessibility made it desirable.

If the onslaught of rock ‘n’ roll spelled doom for the naive, even corny aesthetic of vocal-group pop, the innovations in group harmony the genre produced were sufficiently valid to warrant further exploration. The sound didn’t die, but instead was absorbed into emerging forms.

For example, in the early ‘60s, pop genius Brian Wilson consciously took apart the harmonies of the Four Freshmen, analyzed them, and reassembled them into what became the Beach Boys’ trademark vocal sound.

Even the folk-music boom of the early ‘60s was affected. Such button-down folk groups as the Limeliters, the Brothers Four and the New Christy Minstrels mixed the Four Freshmen sound with that of the seminal folk group the Weavers to achieve a crossover pop-folk style.

Indeed, the influence of early-’50s vocal-group pop can be heard in much more contemporary music, from the jazz-pop work of Manhattan Transfer to a cappella groups such as the Nylons and the gospel sextet, Take 6.

It’s a sound that can’t truly be revived, because it never completely went away.