African Americans and Barbershop Harmony
Context and History
A style of four-part harmony, called “barbershop”, was widely practiced and developed by African Americans in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries both as professional and recreational music. The precise beginnings of this type of singing are difficult to pinpoint but scholars are confident that it arose in America and was inspired by Tyrolean singing troupes that toured the country in the 1840s. (Averill, 2003) This triggered various American harmony ensembles, both White and Black, that sang in various formations (trios, quartets, quintets) some of which were mixed gender. An early African American ensemble of this type, one that achieved notable success, was the family of Alexander C. Luca (b. 1805) consisting of his four sons, his wife, and his sister. The Luca Family began singing around 1848, toured New England and the mid-Atlantic states in the early 1850s, and sang for 5,000 people in 1853 at a benefit concert for the Anti-Slavery Society. (Averill, 2003) This vocal tradition soon evolved to become primarily a quartet style, highly popular among People of Color both as amateur and professional singing. This tradition of community-based quartets was perhaps further fed by quartets from the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who became popular in the 1870s. In the last three decades we have become increasingly aware of the prominent role African Americans played in the beginnings of barbershop harmony.
It is not exactly clear when and how the term “barbershop” came to be commonly used to denote this style of harmony. Some have related it to “barber’s music” of Elizabethan England, where, back to Shakespeare’s time, barber shops were equipped with musical instruments and patrons engaged in spontaneous music making. But the music of that day bore little resemblance to the rich close harmony of barbershop as it came to be in America. Perhaps only the name barbershop was transported to American shores, along with the practice of music making in the barber’s shop. From before the Civil War, up until the early 20th century, most American barbers were African American, and the shop was a place where quartet activity flourished; this may have given rise to “barbershop” as a descriptor for the harmony, as well as the association of the music with African Americans. It is well-known however, that the music was practiced in many other environments: street corners, saloons, fields, homes. Another point to be made is that the term “barbershop” was not always used; the first reference we have is from 1892, but newspaper references going back to 1866 describe Black quartet singing that is almost certainly what we would recognize as “barbershop”.
“Barber-shop harmonies’ gave a tremendous vogue to male quartet singing, first on the minstrel stage, then in vaudeville; and soon white young men, where four or more gathered together, tried themselves at ‘harmonizing.”James Weldon JohnsonComposer
James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938; co-founder of the NAACP and composer of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”) wrote that when he was a small boy there were excellent Black quartets entertaining in the hotels in his hometown of Jacksonville, Florida. He reported that the big resort hotels boasted at least two quartets made up of singing waiters. He asserts that "at a time when a white barber was virtually unknown in the south, every barbershop had a quartet.” (Johnson J. W., 1929) Johnson himself sang in quartets, as a youth and as a college student at Atlanta University in the 1890s. At age 15 he was singing with his 13-year-old brother “competing" with other quartets. What Johnson meant by “competing” is unclear. Most likely there was no formal competition, but rather quartets of young men each trying to prove that they could best sing four-part harmony and “ring” the chords. He states: “Indeed it may be said that all male Negro youth of the United States is divided into quartets.” This pervasiveness was observed three decades earlier; a well-known vaudevillian named Billy McClain recalled that when he was in Kansas City in the late 1880s "about every four dark faces you met was a quartet.” (Abbott, 1992) Similarly, Lawrence C. Jones, founder of the Piney Woods School, stated “any four colored boys are a quartet.” Later, in 1910, New Orleanian Laddie Melton recalled, “It was typical, almost, for any three or four Negroes to get together and say, ‘Let’s crack up a chord! Let’s hit a note!’” (Brothers, 2006).
Indeed, quartet activity was pervasive in the African American communities across the United States, to the point of constituting nothing less than a “Black national pastime”, according to historian Lynn Abbott, who adds: “At the heart of this all-absorbing quartet activity was a spontaneous and highly infectious approach to harmonizing, or ‘cracking up a chord’.” (Abbott, 1992) This improvisational approach to finding harmony is portrayed in James Weldon Johnson’s description of a woodshedding session: “I have witnessed . . . these explorations in the field of harmony and the scenes of hilarity and backslapping when a new and rich chord was discovered. There would be demands for repetitions and cries of, ‘Hold it! Hold it!’ until it was firmly mastered. And well it was, for some of these chords were so new and strange that, like Sullivan’s Lost Chord, they would have never been found again except for the celerity in which they were recaptured.” Johnson seems to be concerned that the African American contribution to the origins of barbershop quartet harmony would be forgotten, for he goes on to say: “It may sound like an extravagant claim, but it is, nevertheless a fact that the "barber-shop chord" is the foundation of the close harmony method adopted by American musicians in making arrangements for male voices .... ‘Barber-shop harmonies’ gave a tremendous vogue to male quartet singing, first on the minstrel stage, then in vaudeville; and soon white young men, where four or more gathered together, tried themselves at ‘harmonizing.’” (Johnson J. W., 1925) One might wonder what songs these avid harmonizers were singing. Repertoire examples from 19th century quartet singing are unknown since recordings don’t exist; our best guess is they took known melodies, perhaps slave songs, Steven Foster songs, or popular songs of the day and dressed them up with their improvised harmonies.
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Specific attributes: Ensemble, Improvisation, Harmony, Arrangement, Voice, Voice, Daily Life, Slavery, Community, EntertainmentBarbershop harmony began incorporating circle-of-fifths harmony, using the seventh chord (sometimes even referred to as the “barbershop seventh”) to propel the harmony around the circle. In doing so barbershop harmonizers adopted - and perhaps even invented on American shores - the practice here referred to as the “descending semitone,” a term used by jazz historian Vic Hobson. (Hobson, 2018) This occurs when harmony follows the circle-of-fifths from a seventh chord to another seventh chord, instead of to a major or minor triad, which typically happens in European classical music. An example would be a D7 progressing to a G7, where the tenor sings F#, the third of the D7 chord, and instead of resolving upward to G, descends to F-natural, the seventh of the G7 chord. Similarly, the baritone might be C, the seventh of the D7 chord, moving to B, the third of the G7 chord. This voice leading became a staple in early jazz but was previously employed by Scott Joplin, W. C. Handy, and certainly barbershop harmonizers. It should be said that this practice is the main harmonic characteristic that differentiates barbershop/jazz harmony from that of blues, which typically uses only chords rooted on I, IV, and V, a vocabulary that does not afford opportunity for secondary dominants.
Many great African American musicians sang barbershop harmony, and their music drew from its influence. One early practitioner was composer Scott Joplin (1868-1917), who sang in a quartet as a boy in Texarkana and continued working with such groups at least until 1904. The crowning accomplishment of his life was the epic opera Treemonisha, which records the musical practices of Black rural America. The opera includes a quartet of farm workers singing "We Will Rest Awhile," and the arrangement comprises typical barbershop voicings, chords, and progressions. Of this, author Edward A. Berlin writes “In Joplin’s day it had not yet been forgotten that close-harmony quartet singing was characteristic of Black culture, both as religious expression and as a secular entertainment.” (Berlin, 1994)
The great W.C. Handy, “Father of the Blues” and distinguished songwriter, also sang barbershop. Around 1888, W. C. Handy was singing tenor in a quartet which gathered in a Florence, Alabama barbershop “for the trying out of new swipes.” They often serenaded their sweethearts with love songs. Handy says “the white bloods overheard and took to hiring them to serenade the white girls.” Handy also states that at age 14 he wrote a women’s quartet arrangement of “Come Kiss Me Annie Darling” for his girlfriend, which indicates that African American women were also engaging in quartet singing. (Handy, Father Of the Blues, 1941) (This coincides with our knowledge of significant quartet activity among women’s and mixed gender quartets in the era 1890 to 1920. (Döhl, 2014) Handy recalls in his autobiography that when his quartet, called the Lauzetta Quartet, heard about the upcoming 1892 World’s Fair in Chicago they hopped a freight train and were on their way, hoping to sing at the fair. Handy spends several pages recounting episodes along the way, finding opportunities to sing for cash. Their hopes were dashed when they reached Chicago only to learn the fair had been postponed a year. At that point they decided to go to St. Louis only to find there were no jobs to be had, as many other quartets had come there to find work in the Panic of 1893. He subsequently went home and worked for a Black minstrel troupe, where he trained a quartet when it was decided the show needed one. (Handy, Father Of the Blues, 1941)
The great African American concert tenor Roland Hayes told of having a quartet, called the Silver-Toned Quartet, when he was around 15 years of age in Chattanooga. They began as a “curbstone quartet” but graduated to singing for coins at the railway station when trains arrived or departed, and along avenues where wealthy people sat out on their verandas. Hayes recalls that their harmonies were improvised, and that some chords were “illegitimate,” which likely means they didn’t adhere to the classical harmonic patterns he later learned in his professional life. (Abbott, 1992)
In New Orleans amateur quartet activity abounded among young men who would eventually be part of the early 20th century jazz explosion that changed the face of popular music worldwide. Trumpeter Lee Collins, who eventually played with Louis Armstrong, Joe “King” Oliver, and Jelly Roll Morton, recalled the quartet scene: “... there used to be lots of guys around New Orleans who could sing real good. They got up quartets—my Aunt Esther's husband was the head of many a one—and would go around to some of their friends' homes to sing and eat and drink beer.... That was some of the most beautiful singing you would ever hope to hear. After everyone was drunk, the last song would always be their old favorite, ‘Sweet Adeline.’” (Brothers, 2006)
Jelly Roll Morton, famous pioneer jazz musician from New Orleans, also was a practitioner in his youth. Recalling his barbershop quartet, he said “The boys had some beautiful harmony they sang. And, of course, we got together and made all kinds of crazy ideas of the harmony, which made it beautiful and made it impossible for anybody to jump in and sing.” Similarly, Sidney Bechet, American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer, was an avid harmonizer. He recalled: “It was Bunk Johnson who was the first to make me acquainted with Louis Armstrong. Bunk told me about this quartet Louis was singing in. ‘Sidney,’ he said, ‘I want you to hear a little quartet, how they sing and harmonize.’ He knew I was crazy about singing harmony.” (Bunk Johnson was a famous New Orleans trumpeter whose style influenced other musicians in the early days of jazz.) Johnny Dodds, clarinetist in Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five in the 1920s, sang high tenor in his family quartet growing up in Waveland, Mississippi. The famous trombonist Kid Ory grew up in nearby LaPlace, LA, where he and his friends vocalized to make music in lieu of playing instruments they did not possess. He called his group a “humming band”. (Brothers, 2006)
Which brings us to Louis Armstrong himself, who today is widely viewed as having a seminal influence in jazz, arguably the most important figure in its early development. Born and raised in New Orleans, Louis was a product of the city’s vibrant music community. Armstrong sang in a quartet as a youth, singing for tips on the streets of New Orleans. His quartet developed a significant reputation. They would march along Rampart Street two by two, with lead and tenor in front, baritone and bass behind. On New Year’s Eve 1912 the quartet was out singing and collecting pennies when, at the corner of Rampart and Perdido, Louis fired a gun in the air and was arrested. He spent the next year and a half at the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys, a sentence that turned out to be beneficial for Louis, as the home had a band, and it was there he learned to play the cornet. However, on his release in June of 1914 his quartet activity resumed. (Brothers, 2006)
In interviews in later life, he repeatedly mentioned his quartet experience and how it profoundly influenced his musical development. He recalled the names of the young men with whom he sang and identified which part they sang (tenor – Louis Armstrong, lead – Little Mack, baritone – James “Happy” Bolton, bass – “Big Nose” Sidney) and specific songs they sang. Two songs he mentioned were “My Brazilian Beauty”, whose correct title has been identified as “Down On the Amazon”, and “O Mister Moon”, an unpublished song that worked its way into quartet lore in subsequent decades. (Bergreen, 1998) It should be noted that both of these songs have melodies that are easily accommodated by ear harmonies that follow the circle of fifths employing “descending semitones” as defined above. When asked how his jazz ensemble found the notes to play their harmony, he replied, “… no problem. If you’d sing in a quartet, you ordinarily get your harmony, if you sing baritone, you sing tenor, and I’m gonna sing the lead, you bass. Do you understand?” (Armstrong, 1960) It is interesting and significant that Armstrong employs the terms “tenor”, “lead”, “baritone”, and “bass” to denote the four parts rather than the more formal “Tenor I”, “Tenor II”, “Bass I”, and “Bass II” used by white scholars such as Geoffrey O’Hara in their writings about barbershop. This makes it apparent that the parts in his quartet sang the true barbershop roles, with a lead singing the melody and a tenor harmonizing above, a bass below, and a baritone completing the harmony. Though Armstrong's life has been the subject of intense study, the influence of his quartet singing on his musical development has been largely ignored by researchers and biographers. Lynn Abbott laments, "A ... source of wonder is why, as often as Armstrong brought up the subject, did jazzologists consistently neglect to investigate his 'little quartet' on its own terms, as a vocal jazz band with a specific repertoire, sound, source of inspiration, and sphere of influence.” He goes on to say, “Still, the collected references to Louis Armstrong's quartet-singing activity offer something of an overview of the informal ‘barbershop harmony’ that was ringing through the grassroots communities of Black New Orleans, and all of Black America, during the early 1900s.” (Abbott, 1992) Similarly, jazz historian Vic Hobson comments: “Researchers have shown surprisingly little interest in Armstrong’s early years singing with a quartet. Despite Armstrong saying time and time again how important this was to his musical development, little effort has been made to explore in any detail what he sang, how he sang, or how his singing related to his cornet playing.” (Hobson, 2018) In any case, the quartet experience of Armstrong and other musicians who would later become famous is a testament to the ubiquity of barbershop harmony in the African American community.
Given the importance of the quartet experience in the early lives of such New Orleans jazz giants as Bechet, Morton, Dodds, Ory, and Armstrong, one is led to conclude that quartet harmony had a profound impact on the jazz that emerged there in the early 20th century. Indeed, Armstrong spoke directly of that influence and claimed to be a “singer who plays, not a player who sings”, furthermore stating “Singing was more in my blood than the trumpet.” and “I figure singing and playing is the same.” It is clear the African American harmonizers had developed a rich chord vocabulary and a well-developed set of musical embellishments such as lead-ins, back time, echoes, swipes, and patter well before the advent of jazz.
The existence of professional quartets, or at least foursomes that were paid at least in part to sing, goes well beyond the singing waiters recalled by James Weldon Johnson. A prime venue for quartets, Black and white, was the vaudeville circuit traveling entertainment troupes that featured a variety of entertainment. As with many aspects of society, it was segregated from its beginning in the early 1880s. Black vaudeville was a vigorous separate circuit based on performances that came out of the movement and style of African Americans. These acts were unique on the vaudeville scene because the performers brought in different experiences that the white performers could not convey. Quartets such as Chicago’s Giant Quartette, the Excelsior Quartette, and the Walker Quartette were almost always part of the entertainment package. These quartets sometimes had coaches, or “trainers,” who also sometimes wrote arrangements for them. In 1893 the Unique Quartette became one of the first ensembles to record in the fledgling industry, and the first African American quartet whose voices are captured for posterity. (Brooks, 2005)
The barbershop quartets that performed on the vaudeville stages sang in an improvised style rich in striking harmony and creative embellishment. Not everyone loved this music, and some believed it to be low music that was demeaning to the Black race. One such person was a Chicago-based African American critic whose pen name was Tom the Tattler, who in 1900 wrote in the Indianapolis Freeman: “A noticeable advancement along the lines of the profession is the passing of the barbershop quartette with its barbershop harmony. It doesn’t take much of an effort of memory to recall when all quartettes sang their own self-made harmonies, with their oft-recurring ‘minors,’ diminished sevenths and other embellishments. This barbershop harmony, although pleasing to the average ear, and not altogether displeasing to the cultivated ear, is nothing more or less than a musical slang. It violates—at times ruthlessly— the exacting rules and properties of music. All forms, phrases and progressions of music go down before it. What does [sic] the barbershop exponents of harmony care for such delicacies as the forbidden progressions of perfect fifths and octaves? What do they care about chord progression in its correct form? Their chief aim is to so twist and distort a melody that it can be expressed in so-called ‘minors’ and diminished chords. The melody is literally made to fit their small stock of slang chords, instead of the chords being built around the melody.” (Tattler, 1900) Ironically, while hoping to delegitimize improvised barbershop harmony, Tom the Tattler’s unfriendly description unwittingly identified the spontaneous, unstructured, unconstrained characteristics of the style that made it appealing at that time and continues to do so today, largely due to the African American contribution to its improvisational roots.
Yet the free-wheeling nature of barbershop harmony was well-received in other reviews. A 1905 review in the New York World on the previous night’s performance at Hammerstein Victoria Theatre stated: “The songs, which were written by Will Marion Cook, the colored composer, all had the plantation swing. ‘Barbershop’ harmony and broken measures were mingled in fantastic confusion. The audience could not get enough of the specialty, and it proved to be one of the best numbers that Oscar Hammerstein has ever offered.” (Abbott, 1992)
Barbershop harmony infused the university jubilee ensembles, which were heretofore mixed voice choirs. By the turn of the century many of these groups also featured male quartets such as the Fisk Jubilee Quartette, which incorporated the spicy harmony of barbershop into spirituals such as "Golden Slippers.” The quartet’s 1909 recording of this song features the “cracked up chord” on the repeating phrase “yes, my Lord,” sung with a bold fermata on “Lord.” This infusion of barbershop quartet singing into music programs at Black universities helped to project the quartet practice and tradition among Blacks into the 20th century, when white quartets largely appropriated it in the entertainment industry and helped to spawn the gospel quartet explosion in the 1930s.
When the recording industry was born in the late 1800s almost all recording artists, often male quartets, were white. Not all, however: As previously mentioned, one of the earliest recordings made, from 1893, is an African American quartet, the Unique Quartet, singing “Mama’s Black Baby Boy,” a song that was published in 1886. This quartet came from the South to make their way in New York City, working as hotel porters and singing waiters. (Brooks, 2005) Other Black quartets, singing essentially barbershop harmony, continued to record through the early 20th century.
The African American practice of quartetting continued into the 20th century even as the popularity of quartet singing grew amongst white Americans. Many sources point to the fact that quartet harmonizing was still largely associated with the African American. One example is the 1912 song "When Johnson’s Quartet Harmonize," written by no less a composer than Irving Berlin. The song clearly places Black quartets as the source of barbershop harmony. The sheet music cover depicts an African American quartet, and the lyrics celebrate the virtuosity of the quartet's harmonizing, expressing true admiration of the music ("No one found their equal yet, To go out and try to get Men who sing like that Quartette, Impossible.”) with an absence of racial stereotyping. Another song from the tin pan alley era was called “Play That Barbershop Chord,” from 1910. The song is not about a quartet, but rather a piano player in a rathskeller, Mr. Jefferson Lord, who is approached by a lady requesting him to “play that barbershop chord”. It is clear the characters in the scene are Black, supporting the thesis that barbershop was identified with African Americans at that time.
Evidence of the lingering tradition among Blacks can be heard in the recordings of such groups as the Southern Negro Quartet, “I’m Just Wild About Moonshine” (1921 recording) and the Norfolk Jazz Quartet (1919-1940) “Just A Dream of You,” the latter being, in reality, a barbershop quartet.
In 1935 the city of New York began sponsoring barbershop quartet contests in its parks. Many of the competitors in these events were African American quartets. The winner of the 1941 contest was the Grand Central Red Caps, comprising four Black singing train porters. This occurred three years after the formation of the Barbershop Harmony Society, then called the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America (SPEBSQSA), an organization formed, as its name suggests, to carry on the barbershop tradition. The previous year, 1940 saw the Society’s convention combined with the New York parks contest. It so happened that that particular year there were no African American competitors, so the race issue was not raised. However, the next year when the Red Caps won the prize, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia wanted to send the Red Caps to compete in SPEBSQSA’s national contest in St. Louis, but he was rebuffed on the grounds that the Society was an all-white organization. This tragic turn of events would officially exclude African Americans from organized barbershop activity until 1963, when the whites-only policy was quietly rescinded, by which time interest in the music from African Americans was mostly gone. In 1947 a women’s barbershop organization, Sweet Adelines, was formed, as SPEBSQSA was all-male as well as all-white (despite that existence of numerous women’s and mixed-gender quartets in the decades before the Society’s existence). Though Sweet Adelines’ bylaws did not restrict race initially, in the 1950s an all-white policy was instituted, causing some members to split away and form Harmony, Inc., an inclusive organization from its outset. In 1967 Sweet Adelines dropped their whites-only restriction. Only in recent years have the Barbershop Harmony Society and Sweet Adelines aggressively renounced their exclusionary past and attempted to diversify their membership. In 2017, before a plenary audience at the BHS International Convention in Las Vegas, the four members of the Grand Central Red Caps were given honorary posthumous membership in the Society. For each it was proclaimed: “excluded in 1941, embraced today.” Sweet Adelines has made a similar proclamation and instituted strict rules banning the use of racist lyrics in their contests.
Contemporary neighboring styles
In the 19th and early 20th centuries barbershop harmony became thoroughly woven into the fabric of musical Americana. An important goal of this treatise is to illuminate the important and illustrious role African Americans played in the roots and development of this treasured American style of music. There are several musical styles of largely African American origins with which barbershop harmony is related and intertwined, some of which have been discussed above. We will elaborate on these neighboring or derivative styles below, acknowledging that it is not always easy to determine if barbershop was the causal link, or if there is reciprocal influence, with other contemporaneous styles.
JUBILEE QUARTETS
One such style is the jubilee quartet tradition, exemplified by the Fisk Jubilee Quartette, which represented African American universities such as Fisk, Tuskegee Institute, and Hampton Institute: “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “I Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray.” This typically has the four parts of the barbershop style, namely, a lead (second tenor) on an inside voice singing the melody, a tenor (first tenor) harmonizing above, a bass (second bass) on the low foundational notes, and a baritone (first bass) filling out the harmony. These quartets were typically male quartets, but not always: the Virginia Jubilee Singers was a female quartet that organized around 1889 and toured Europe and South Africa. In the 19th century jubilee harmony tended to be rather triadic with a limited variety of roots, whereas barbershop harmony commonly was freely sprinkled with what the African American barbershop harmonizers called “swipes” and “snakes.” “Swipes” usually refers to one or more singers moving to another note by portamento to create a different chord. “Snakes” refers to the exotic “cracked up” chords the singers discovered by improvisation, usually a chord involving four distinct note classes (e.g., a seventh chord) or a chord rooted on a tonic other than I, IV, and V of the key (e.g., II, VI, or flat-VI). However, in the early 20th century jubilee quartets began injecting their music with barbershop harmony, one of the influencers being John W. Work II, tenor of the Fisk Jubilee Quartette, who in describing the spontaneous manner in which arrangements were worked out, said: “…small groups of students [would] get together to ‘harmonize’ or ‘chord.’ Here…new and striking combinations of tones are sometimes struck…The plan here is to combine natural, spontaneous melody with natural, spontaneous harmony. The result has been a most natural kind of satisfaction.” This very closely aligns with descriptions of barbershop harmonizers improvising their self-made harmonies. The adoption of barbershop harmonies further popularized jubilee quartets and caused their singing style to be adopted by southern church quartets. This in turn led to the proliferation of African American gospel quartets.
GOSPEL QUARTET SINGING
The African American gospel quartet came full bloom in the 1930s. These quartets borrowed from the barbershop quartet the four parts – tenor, lead, baritone, bass – with the melody generally carried by the lead and the tenor harmonizing above. This is one of barbershop’s characteristic features. These quartets often sang a cappella, though not exclusively, and they often adorned their songs with the spicy swipes and snakes that came from barbershop harmony. Early gospel singers, such as Thomas Johnson Jr., born 1912, who sang tenor in the gospel quartet, The Harmonizing Four (organized 1927), attributed their harmony to their barbershop roots. Johnson, who grew up singing barbershop harmony in barbershops and on street corners in Richmond, Virginia, asserted “[barbershop] was a Black tradition.” These quartets became extremely popular with African Americans and eventually replaced the barbershop quartet as a centerpiece of African American harmonizing, especially after the exclusion of Black singers by SPEBSQSA, formed in 1938. Popular gospel quartets of this age include the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet, the Morris Brown Quartet, The Fairfield Four, The Southernaires, the Golden Gate Quartet, The Jubalaires, and later the Breath of Life Quartet.
BLUES
Another largely African American style with clear inter-relationship with barbershop is blues. We have discussed previously W.C. Handy’s early experiences with barbershop harmony. Barbershop and blues have a significant harmonic commonality that only existed in those two styles before jazz. That is the use of the seventh chord (or augmented sixth chord) rooted on scale tone IV of the key, e.g., F7 in the key of C. This appears in essentially all blues songs that adhere to its traditional 12-bar structure that utilizes I, IV7, and V7, a form later adopted by rock and roll. While I and V7 are “diatonic” chords, meaning they lie in the major scale, the IV7 requires an accidental to affect its seventh (E-flat in the key of C). This is perhaps the earliest occurring “blue note,” as it is often tuned lower than the tempered scale would render it if sung by a human voice or an instrument that allows pitches to be bent. In both barbershop and blues the IV7 appears frequently in cadences that go V7 to IV7 to I. It is undoubtedly an example of a “snake” or “cracked up chord” relished by harmonizers on the street corner or in the field. As both blues and barbershop harmony emerged sometime around 1870, likely from African American spirituals and slave songs, it is impossible to determine which influenced the other; most likely they derive from a common source. In any case they are intimately entwined. It is worth mentioning that Handy’s song “Got No More Home Dan Dog”, which he says he collected in 1892-3 in Evansville, IN, is scored for a quartet in his 1926 collection Blues: An Anthology. (Handy, Blues: An Anthology, 1926) Although this appeared some 33 years after the song was written, it is the earliest known transcription of blues as performed by a quartet.
INSTRUMENTAL JAZZ
In the case of jazz, we have strong evidence that barbershop harmonizing had a formative influence on its early development. As we have previously noted in detail, numerous great African American jazz musicians sang barbershop harmony and their music drew from its influence, including Jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Bunk Johnson, Louis Armstrong, and Johnny Dodds. We have noted previously how Armstrong repeatedly cited his early quartet activity as a prime influence on his later jazz playing. Two songs Armstrong specifically mentioned that his quartet sang are “O Mister Moon” and “Down on the Amazon.” (Bergreen, 1998) A cursory examination of these melodies reveals their implied harmony exudes secondary dominant chords resolving around the circle-of-fifths (discussed earlier). Largely under Armstrong’s pioneering influence, these basic chord progressions made their way into the jazz that sprang forth and consolidated in the 1920s. It is clear from what Armstrong said that the jazz musicians improvised their parts in a manner similar to harmonizing in a quartet. This makes it likely that barbershop had a profound influence on the development of jazz in New Orleans - the cradle of jazz - and likely other places as well. Early jazz recordings reflect the clear connection with barbershop harmony. A striking example is Armstrong’s 1928 recording of “Beau Koo Jack.”
VOCAL JAZZ
The barbershop quartet spawned the rise of later vocal groups of various types. Early on was the Norfolk Jazz Quartet (1919-1940) from Virginia, which was essentially a barbershop quartet that adopted rhythmic swing, backbeat, and accentuation into their musical delivery. A little later came the famous Mills Brothers, who began as a quartet. Their father, John Hutchinson Mills, was a barber from Piqua, Ohio, with his own shop and a barbershop quartet. He taught his boys to harmonize in the barbershop style and when they were 8-12 years old, sons Herbert, Donald, Harry, and John Jr. formed a quartet that expanded from traditional barbershop harmony into jazz vocals and instrumental imitation. In 1936 bass John Jr. died during a tour of England and John Sr. stepped in as bass for a while, but then the other three continued as a trio until 1982, producing huge hits like “Glow Worm” and “Opus One.” This trio represented a configuration growing out of the barbershop style where the top three parts sing basically barbershop harmony without the bass, maintaining that characterizing feature that places the melody in the second tenor voice, not on the top. Another group that sang in this vocal configuration was the Boswell Sisters from New Orleans, who became extremely popular coast to coast in the early 1930s. Though a white female trio, they were heavily influenced by the singing of African Americans in New Orleans. This group enhanced the basic barbershop harmonies and progressions with rhythmic syncopations, push beats, phantom beats, and instrumental effects. They were a prototype for the Andrews Sisters, who rose to popularity a decade later. Their animated vocal stylization was also a significant influence on Ella Fitzgerald in the formative years of the development of her singing style. A notable group that should be mentioned is The Chordettes, who actually began as a barbershop quartet.
Yet another vocal outgrowth of barbershop harmony was the emergence of vocal quartets that sang smooth jazz close harmony, usually with accompaniment, and usually with the melody sung by the top voice. A typical example is the Four Freshmen, which came about after brothers Ross and Don Barbour sang in a barbershop quartet in 1948 at Butler University in Indianapolis. They morphed into a jazz ensemble and were hugely successful in the 1950s, with such hits as “It’s A Blue World.” Other groups in this general mold include The Pied Pipers, The Modernaires, The Mel-Tones, The Hi-Lo’s, and The Arbors.
Yet another branch off the barbershop tree is represented by vocal groups, mostly quartets, that went in the direction of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, soul, and doo wop. The earliest of these most likely was the Ink Spots, who gained international fame in the 1930s and 1940s. Later came The Persuasions, formed in 1962 singing in Brooklyn under tree lights and in subway corridors. They were a defining influence on doo wop, followed by The Nylons, and Rockapella.
Bibliography
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