BARBERSHOP QUARTETS: OR, WHO WANTS TO JOIN “SPEBSQSA?”

How Four-Part Barbershop Harmony Lives On

At Kennedy’s All-American Barber Club®, we haven’t yet formed our own Barbershop Quartet (except for a cameo by one on our new radio spot, which you can listen to here). But we do have a fondness for the tradition – after all, we base our Kennedy’s barbershop franchises on the classic barbershop vibe that spawned the sensational singing tradition that continues today.

So this month we want to salute the fine folks at SPEBSQSA – the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America – who keep the harmonic magic alive.

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We’ll begin by informing you that, even though that’s the group’s legal name, they go these days by the less-challenging name of The Barbershop Harmony Society. They apparently only named themselves that original mouthful of words back in 1938 to make fun of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s alphabet soup approach to naming new government agencies. Today, we suppose, they would be “The Barbershop Czars” or something to that effect.

The Barbershop Harmony Society currently maintains the second-largest collection of sheet music, overpowered only by the Library of Congress. That collection boasts 100,000 different songs, 98,000 of which contain the words “Adeline,” “Silvery Moon” and “Gal.” Okay, we were kidding about that last part.

Actually, the amount of modern song arrangements in their library is impressive. For those of you who think Barbershop Quartets probably don’t sing any songs written after World War II, you’ll be surprised (or maybe horrified?) to find an ABBA medley in their library. Yes, somewhere, four men are actually singing “Dancing Queen” a capella.

Every July, the Society holds their own Barbershop Quarter Superbowl of sorts, an international competition to find the best of the best. The competition has its own webcast, just to prove it does know the internet exists, and you can check out the 2009 champions doing “76 Trombones” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmDGntpZC3I (yes, we realize that is not a quartet onstage. It’s more like 4000 gentlemen singing instead of 4. Apparently, they’ve loosened the rules somewhat).

As over 30,000 Americans are affiliated with this group, it’s clear that Barbershop Quartet singing is alive and here to stay. Kennedy’s All-American Barber Club® is proud to honor this tuneful tradition – and we hope one day to have our own official Kennedy’s roving band of music makers.

The plan right now is to have them only perform Metallica tunes.

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