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nashvillesingersblog · 7 years

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Ken Hatton shares his insight about performing with the Bluegrass Student Union, the Louisville Thoroughbreds, his experience as a director, solo performer, and arranger, and his very candid opinions about the evolution of the music industry and the Barbershop Harmony Society.

Top photo: Ken Hatton

Bottom photo: Bluegrass Student Union 1978 International Quartet Champion of the SPEBSQSA (DBA Barbershop Harmony Society) (L to R) Ken Hatton, Allen Hatton, Dan Burgess, Rick Staab

Todd Wilson had a chance to interview Ken Hatton for our email newsletter. Todd is one of our founders and serves the Nashville Singers as Executive Director and Artistic Director.

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DISCLAIMER: Some of our readers may find Ken’s responses to a few of Todd’s questions a bit edgy. Due to the length of this interview, only a small portion was published in the Nashville Singers newsletter. Hatton’s views do not necessarily reflect the views of the Nashville Singers organization.

TW: When did you know you wanted to be a singer?

KH: It’s impossible to remember not being a singer. Granddaddy and Dad were both “song-leaders” in the Church of Christ (“Minister of Music” was considered too “uppity”), and Dad joined the Louisville #1 Chapter of SPEBSQSA, Inc. as a tenor with his high school gospel quartet, in 1951. Mom was a fair pianist and could hold a tune pretty well too. Brother Allen was born in 1954, and I came along in 1955.

The Church of Christ held that instrumental accompaniment was a sin when making a “joyful noise,” so all the worshippers sang in 4-part harmony, you know, just like that original quartet, “Matthew-Mark-Luke-and-John.” It was all we knew as toddlers, so I can’t really recall when I learned to sing harmony. It just always was. Dad taught us to use our “musical ear” to find the harmony, using the shape-notes in the hymnal. His advice was, “When the note moves up, sing higher, and when the note moves down, sing lower, until it sounds good with the melody-note.” That was how we learned to woodshed; it was a spiritual thing.

I do remember at the age of five, when I learned my first popular song. Allen was in the first grade, and I would wait for his school bus every day on the front steps. I really missed my playmate! Each afternoon, he would teach me all the things he had learned that day in school. On one of those afternoons, he sang me a song that some of his fellow first graders had heard on the radio. Within a few minutes, we were singing it in unison, and with some occasional improvised harmony. “When I was a little bitty baby, my mama would rock me in my cradle, in them ol’ cotton fields back home.” I’m not sure that’s when I knew I wanted to be a singer, but that’s when I realized that I was one.

TW: What can you tell us about growing up in the Hatton family?

KH: We were encouraged to participate in music-programs in school by our parents, and we enjoyed those activities. Perhaps talent at a given discipline affects one’s motivation (For some reason, I did not really dig long division or algebra). Allen learned to play the trumpet, and both of us took piano-lessons as youngsters. Later, our younger sisters displayed similar talents for singing, and the oldest of the three, Jo Anne, played piano. Dad was one of the original Thoroughbreds, when the chorus was formed out of the old Louisville Chapter, and Mom sang with the Kentuckiana Chapter of Sweet Adelines, Inc. (later, Sweet Adelines International). Both parents dabbled in quartet-singing from time to time, and their ensembles always sounded musical, but never seemed to stay together long enough to earn rank in competition.

Dad took Allen and me to an occasional chorus show, where we would be seated in the audience and admonished not to move. Then, we would watch the chorus rehearse for their performance, and would enjoy the show. I can recall getting an unexplainable lump in my throat whenever that chorus of men would sing with reckless abandon. The highlights of those shows were the several chapter-quartets, including the Derbytowners and (later) the Citations, both of whom were really good competing quartets. We didn’t realize that the goose-bumps and throat-lumps were being caused by the ringing of chords. The big thrill for us, as kids, was to experience the Club House Four. They were a pretty good singing District Champ quartet, but those guys really worked at entertaining. Their jokes and routines were not as “edgy” as the Brian Lynches of the world might prefer, but old folks and kids alike just couldn’t stop laughing whenever the “Club House” was on stage.

The Thoroughbreds’ Musical Director was a guy named Bill Benner, who had moved to Louisville for work, after having directed the Lake Washington Skippers to a second place finish in international competition in 1957. Over a four year period, he took the brand new Thoroughbred Chorus to 8th, 6th, 2nd and 1st place finishes, winning their first chorus championship in 1962. Soon after that competition, Bill resigned as director, though he still conducted the Sweet Ads for a while. It seems he had been so focused on barbershop that he had ignored his wife and his job, and they both sort of fired him. He needed to get paid for directing the chorus, and the 1962 T-breds didn’t like that very much. So, our family took him, in, and Dad provided him with a job at his real estate company.

The saddest part was that Bill was being considered for the Society’s Music Services Director position. The Thoroughbreds’ 42 singers had finished second in 1961 to the 160 voice Chorus of the Chesapeake, under the direction of Bob Johnson. It was revealed later that year that a certain judge was a member of the winning chorus, and he had over-scored the winners and underscored the ‘Breds. The judge was kicked out of the judging program, and the Thoroughbreds received a secret apology, which was delivered in person by the new Music Services Director – Bob Johnson! It probably was a good thing, as Bill’s tunnel vision personality might not have been a good match for that position.

Bill proved not to be much of an agent, but he sure was fun to have around the house! While he was thinking about what he was going to do with the rest of his life, and eating Mom’s home-cooked meals every night, Bill would teach us tags. The guy was a savant, carrying all four parts in his head, and could teach the whole song by rote – eight bars at a time, with no “spots (That’s what we called sheet music back then).” In fact, that’s the way Bill had had taught most of the charts to the Thoroughbreds for four years – by rote.

So, Allen and I had one of the Society’s premiere musical smart-guys in the bedroom next to ours, and we got quite an education during his year and a half long visit. It turned out that we were pretty quick studies, which was a good match for a bipolar type, like Bill. There were five us in the house at that time who could hold our parts, and it was fairly easy to sing one of Bill’s tags after very little teaching time. The first one we learned was “I Found in My Mother’s Eyes.”

Bill moved to Chicago, and none of us ever heard from him again. Jim Miller and Joe Wise had been appointed co-directors, and with the help of coach/arranger Ed Gentry, ushered in a new era of barbershop chorus singing through the Thoroughbreds. Meanwhile, Mom took Bill’s place as Musical Director of the Kentuckiana Chapter of Sweet Adelines, Inc., later directing Falls of the Ohio Chapter, Derby City Chorus and Song of Atlanta. She served as a judge in SAI contests, and sang a pretty mean baritone.

Most choruses had a rule back then that excluded men under the age of 16. The exception was that one could join at 15, if your dad was an active member. The thinking was that the members looked forward to their night out with the men (not with the women or the children). They didn’t watch their language, and if they felt like having a beer or a smoke, they didn’t have to worry about being a role-model for just that one night each week. Boy, I miss those days!

Allen and I both joined at 15, and sang in our first Chorus Contest in Atlanta, in 1972, in which the chorus placed third. We were disappointed, as the Thoroughbreds had won the championship without our help in 1962, 1966 and 1969, and were tied with Pekin, IL for the most international wins. Allen headed off to Morehead State, and back home, Rick Staab, Danny Burgess and I got our feet wet, singing with an “old” Thoroughbred named Paul Morris on tenor. Paul was 28. We sang together for about six months. Rick went away to attend Georgetown University, breaking up the group, and Allen came home to attend University of Louisville. Then, Rick surprised everybody, and came home to attend U of L as well. That’s when the final combination of the Bluegrass Student Union was formed, with Allen on tenor. Now, we had four guys about the same age, with similar skills and education.

Mom (Mary Jo Hatton) was our first coach, and refused to let us work on craft, focusing instead on singing with the right muscles. She knew we wouldn’t go back and do that grunt-work after we had earned the “cheap” points. Mom was concerned about us damaging our young voices, so she demanded that we master vocal production first – a smart move.

TW: What got you interested in barbershop harmony?

KH: One could say, “See Question #2,” and just stop there, but there is a twist. As a young teenager during the hippie-years, barbershop was associated with the establishment, and we young people had our own subculture. We were told not to trust anyone over 30, and pop music was progressing in a different direction from Tin Pan Alley and the Great American Songbook. I perceived barbershop in those days as a fun hobby for older fellows, but the quartets and choruses I had heard didn’t seem like a good fit for the musical trends I was following as a baby-boomer.

Allen and I attended our first International Convention on our parents’ coattails in 1964. Later, we attended our second one in 1968 (I was twelve), and discovered that barbershoppers had lots of pretty daughters in the “Barberteens” room, but didn’t appear to have very many sons. That turned out to be handy for us. We enjoyed attending those conventions, and sang some tags, but didn’t really pay much attention to the musical goings-on – too many distractions.

Fortunately, Mom and Dad had a library of recordings of the Society’s Top Ten quartets, as well as recordings of live shows and Long Play (LP) record-albums produced by top quartets like the Renegades, Roaring Twenties, Boston Common, Dealers Choice, Regents, Gentlemen’s Agreement, Sundowners, Sidewinders, etc.. We listened to them all, and enjoyed some more than once. But far and away, the quartet whose records I fell in love with were produced by the Sun Tones (later the “Suntones”). My headphones and I spent hundreds of hours poring over their fantastic renditions of popular songs set to barbershop, and that music convinced me that this particular a cappella style could actually be “cool.” Later, I would wait by the mailbox for each new Suntones-record, as it was released. I listened until I had accidentally memorized all four parts to all of the several “Sunspots” records that we had. That was the final piece of the puzzle. I then joined the chorus, because I simply had to.

TW: You were a member of the Thoroughbreds, considered one of the most successful barbershop choruses in history. Can you share a few of your own experiences with the T-breds?

KH: Like you guys, I could write a book. Most of my experiences would be similar to those of other long time barbershoppers, and if I started telling about funny things that happened, we would never be able to list them all. I will mention one general happening that helped create my personal mission and philosophy.

Our 120 man chorus showed its best face during competitions, but after winning each trophy, about half of the guys would take a “break” for a couple of years. We would be left with 60-70 active singers, who did the business of the chorus, week in and week out. That core of “lifers” sold the tickets and program-ads, built the scenery, commissioned and tweaked the arrangements, rehearsed the show-tunes and performed the package-shows. The rest of the guys came back only to compete.

To our director, Jim Miller, it didn’t matter how small the audience was, or whether it was a prestigious event. He spent the same energy in preparation and performance, whether we were singing for a banquet of 75 people or a stadium of 10,000. I can recall many tough shows for small audiences who were not expecting the entertainment to be some barbershop group. Jim would plan the show carefully, knowing that we would have to work hard and smart, in order to please the “tough” crowd. Then, he would rehearse us for a couple of hours before the performance, to see which key people were missing, and would change his plan accordingly, moving certain singers to different voice parts to achieve balance, and substituting some second string MCs, soloists and quartet-singers.

After a complete run-through, the chorus would hit the stage, and Jim would let the audience know with his body language and apparent effort that we wanted to please them. He would work up a sweat, and motivate us to dig in, so as to deliver the most emotional and exciting performance we could muster. We always exceeded the expectations of those tougher (smaller) audiences, and each performance made the event seem more important to them and to us than it really was.

BSU followed Jim’s example in that regard, and, with few exceptions, we exceeded the expectations too. For three decades, our quartet did a complete run-through before every performance. We found that our percentage of remembered lyrics and accurate intervals went up, while our number of seconds of dead time went down.

Music Educators generally teach singers to perform without showing any apparent effort, but that was exactly the opposite of our approach. We always wanted the audience to sense how hard we were working for them, so we made sure that all of our effort was apparent. That made our audiences feel special, which is supposed to be “the job,” isn’t it? Jim’s and our approach was one of the things that set our chorus and quartet apart from most others, who tried to hide their effort during performances, for some unknown “sophisticated” reason.

One exception? We sang for a United Nations General Assembly dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in the early 1980s, and we gave ‘em our best stuff, performing with reckless abandon. We never got more than a white gloved golf-clap from those diplomats. Our host explained that they had all been taught to be very reserved, when in the presence of each other. But our job was to make them forget their emotional training, so we failed that day. There were no whistles, shouting, hats in the air, money or room-keys on the stage, and no tears or laughter from anybody. It was miserable. Later, at the reception, the audience-members were quick with the compliments flattery, but I just wanted to crawl under a rock.

The rest of the 33 years of shows pretty much run together in my mind, because they were the same in this regard: We gave everything we had in preparation and performance, and fell across the goal line each time, totally spent and exhausted… victorious! Looking back, our experience was a lot more fulfilling than if we had taken some drugs, skipped across the stage, and tried to hide our efforts from the crowd. Thanks, Jim!

TW: What were the names of some of the quartets and quartet-singers you sang with before the Bluegrass Student Union? Compared to those quartets, what was different about the BSU?

KH: BSU was the first organized quartet of which I was a member. Years later, I sang in several other quartets; Kids at Heart, The Sensations, The Exchange, Four for the Price, Bold Venture and The Daddy-Ohs! One difference with BSU was trust. Since I knew that the other parts would always be where they were supposed to be, I was free to think about the message of the song and our emotional connection with the audience, instead of being preoccupied with a few synchronization errors, out of tune chords or horizontal tuning (song going sharp). The other main difference was the fact that BSU was all business. When the last man arrived at rehearsal or at the studio, we started singing, and we didn’t quit until the first guy had to leave. On the road, we didn’t sight-see or attend a lot of parties. We discussed future plans on the plane or in the car, had our carb-dinner together, rehearsed at the hotel, went to the venue early, set up our recordings in the lobby, dressed and made up, did our complete run-through, and gave our performance. Then, we repeated the process before the afterglow. We often listened to the show tape on the way home, and discussed improvements for the next show. Every action was designed to maximize the quality of performance. In some of those other quartets, we spent a little time more enjoying ourselves, and that was fun, too, but in a different way.

TW: What can you tell us about a few of your most memorable BSU performances?

KH: There was a sameness about our performances over the years that makes them all kind of a blur. The common denominator was the audience-reaction. We started with a short, fast, high pitched opener, designed to get the audience’s attention away from whatever had preceded us on the show. We followed with self-deprecating humor, to make them like us personally. Then, we sang a swing-tune to charm, and followed with a sincere love-ballad, for the “kill.” After that, we could sing our novelty songs, to demonstrate virtuosity, and repeat the process ad infinitum. We were never really a one-song standing ovation kind of quartet. Our approach was a selling process, designed to earn the audience’s respect and love over the course of the performance. Typically, the long or standing ovation would come at the end, as designed, and only then would we agree to perform an encore. Incidentally, you never saw BSU take cups or bottles of water on the stage. What’s up with that? Do beta-blockers dry you out?

Of course, we saw our share of far-away places and prestigious venues, but prestige and exoticness were not what made a performance memorable. Again, it was the audience. One that stands out was in Viborg, South Dakota. This community had one hotel, made of unpainted concrete blocks. There was no phone in the room, and a black and white TV was advertised at 50 cents extra per day. The venue was a high school gymnasium, and our expectations were low. Nevertheless, we prepared according to our training, and when we hit the stage, we realized there was standing room only in the place; people were hanging from the light fixtures to get a chance to see this show. We didn’t know that South Dakotans rarely got to see any kind of live entertainment. People had driven to Viborg from several hundred miles around. It was such an appreciative crowd, and we were able to deliver a solid performance because we had not taken them for granted. Carnegie Hall was nice, but this crowd was deafening!

We were invited to sing on the Saturday evening show at the Buckeye Invitational, in Columbus, Ohio, 30 years after our first performance. It was to be our second appearance at the Buckeye, which was rare, so we were excited about the opportunity, late in our long career.

We decided to dress and make up in our hotel rooms, and arrived during intermission, knowing that there would be a feature quartet before our spot as the headliner, which was traditionally the final act. The stage manager excitedly welcomed us into a dressing room, expressing surprise that we were so late, and advising that we were scheduled to open the second half of the show. I apologized, and asked, “Who is headlining?” “Max Q,” he replied (who at that time was a silver medalist).

Barbershop-etiquette calls for the International Champion to headline the show, which should have been us. It was (and is) a slap in the face for any champion to play second fiddle to a second place quartet. Of course, it was possible that the show producers were neophyte barbershoppers who didn’t know any better. However, there is no way that Max Q would not have known that tradition. They should have declined immediately, when asked to headline, but evidently, they had decided it was appropriate for them to be the stars of the show, for some reason that was more important than good manners.

We decided that the only thing to do was to remain quiet about their offense, and to simply do our “talking” with our performance, as we had been trained to do. We spent a few minutes in the dressing room, rearranged our song-order and palaver for maximum effect, and went through the curtain with big ol’ grins, about half pissed off. We opened with “Back in Business,” and the crowd went wild. We just banged every song, and there was nothing left for Max Q, but a pile of juice. In the lobby after the show, our recording table was mobbed, and theirs had four lonely guys in tuxedos holding pens, with a couple of crickets chirping, and no autographs to sign. Second again!

As we were packing up, Jeff Oxley ambled over, and said sheepishly, “I guess you guys probably should have headlined this show.” Ya think? Yeah, that one was memorable. We never told anybody about it, until this writing.

In the 80s, we did some research by surveying the various chapters. There were over 800, and about 600 of them held an annual show, with a guest quartet. If you took out the holiday weekends, on a given Saturday night, there were 15 annual chapter-shows going on in the country. All of the show-chairmen wanted a champion, a past-champion or a top ten quartet as their headliner. As one of the most popular show-quartets, we had our choice, so we conducted a survey, and began to be selective about which bids we would accept. Our goal was to maximize fun and profit. We started to perform only where the chapter had a larger crowd (good for recording sales) and a reputation of hospitality where other guest quartets were concerned (good for the fun).

We pitched in with the Citations, the Harrington Brothers and eventually the Suntones, to organize three special weekends. We approached chapters about sponsoring special shows that would feature BSU and each one of those other quartets, with only quartet-singing – no choruses. The idea went viral, and the three weekends were spectacular - so much fun! The last one was in 1991, with the Suntones. We performed on a Friday night, two shows on Saturday and one on Sunday afternoon in the southern Michigan and northern Ohio areas. What a kick to ride around for the weekend with our idols, and get to know them personally! We included a set as an octet, since we knew all of their tunes, and we traded two of our guys for two of their guys at the afterglows. It was a dream come true, and BONUS – we all became good friends.

TW: What BSU CD recording project generated the biggest sense of pride, and what about that project was different?

KH: We were proud of all of our recordings, because we took great care in the production of each one. From a young age, we knew that our quartet was finite, and hoped that people would listen to our recordings, long after we were gone. That thought was on our minds with the planning and execution of each project. Bobby Ernspiker was our recording engineer, and he was also the son of a Thoroughbred.

On the first two albums, “After Class” and “The Older the Better,” we had a largely technical approach, caring more about the accuracy of the notes, the ringing of the chords and the intelligibility of the lyrics than about the art. We were making pretty good bucks on the road, so we decided to give Bob unlimited control over the duration of sessions. Bob was our fifth set of ears, and was instrumental in capturing the best performances we could muster. Unlike other quartets, we spent six months to a year in weekly recording sessions, to do our best work. It was our perception that those albums were not perfect, but they were better than most others. We made money, although our sales were not yet commensurate with the expense and effort we had invested.

Having met Walter Latzko, we decided to do our first theme album, which would be the first one created by any barbershop quartet. We chose Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” as the theme, and set to work on Walter’s fantastic arrangements. We spent more time listening to Bobby’s guidance in the studio about emotional performance. It took a year to take the tunes from the paper to the stage, and another year to record them. This time, we spared no expense on the studio time, the costuming, choreography, graphic art and photography, in an attempt to create the best show-package and recording in the history of the Society. The result was an artistic success, but again, the sales were no better than those of any ol’ past champion.

In spite of the apparent unwillingness of the buying public to notice any difference, we were pleased with the product, and decided to look for another theme. We eventually settled on the songs of the 40s, and the idea for our “Jukebox Saturday Night” album was born. Latzko and Waesche, our two faves, collaborated on the charts, and we applied the same attention to detail (and spent the same moneys), to create the best product possible. We accelerated our attention to capturing the right mood for each song. When that recording hit the streets, the sales went through the roof. It was puzzling; perhaps the barbershoppers were tired of the Music Man theme, but excited about hearing tunes adapted to barbershop that they had not heard before. For whatever reason, this particular theme appealed to them, and Jukebox catapulted us to a new level of acclaim that left the other past champs behind. The perception was that we were progressing, improving and pushing the edge of the envelope musically, just as our great examples, the Suntones and the Buffalo Bills, had done twenty and thirty years before.

We continued that approach with a collection of tunes written by George Gershwin, whose chords and progressions had earned his songs taboo-status in previous Society competitions. But we liked them, and so did Walter (Latzko) and Ed (Waesche). The result was our album, “Here to Stay,” the first one we did not release as an LP record, but only as a CD and a cassette. The songs were more sophisticated, the arrangements were arguably better, and the performances were emotional. The singing demonstrated greater savvy, while our technical execution was just a hair less precise than that of the previous two recordings. The perception was that this was a lateral move, kind of an extension of Jukebox, and the sales were just as strong as those of the previous album.

In 1998, we introduced “LEGACY,” a 25 year collection of audio recordings in a 3-CD box set, including all five studio-albums, several previously unreleased tracks and a recording of a live show, complete with declamatory stuff between songs. In 2006, we created our final recording product, called “COMMENCEMENT,” a 2-disc set (1 CD and 1 DVD). The audio disc includes a few tracks that we were messing around with when we decided to retire for good. The video disc includes the best performance of each song that we could find on video tapes we had collected over the years.

Fans of “Here to Stay” and “Jukebox” have since gone back and checked out “Music Man,” and found it to have been under appreciated by past generations. We understand that our video of the Music Man show-package has been used by teachers at Harmony University for decades, to demonstrate showmanship, the way to put a show together, avoidance of dead time and the use of costumes, props, lighting, effective pauses and voice-over-music, to enhance a quartet’s performance. That pleases us very much. All of our tracks are available perpetually and digitally through iTunes, CDbaby.com and Pandora. We have discontinued production of all hard copy CDs, etc.

We are certainly proud of all of the products, since those five (original) releases each represented our best work at a certain stage in our development. By design, many of the songs in the second half our career had a timeless appeal that continues to pay dividends. Thanks to some good taste in song selection, great arrangers, hard work, outside-the-box engineering and professional artwork, our collections of recordings are still being purchased and listened to today. We anticipate that people will enjoy our music a century or two after we start keeping each other company at the ol’ marble orchard.

TW: The Nashville Singers had a chance to sing your arrangement of “Manly Men” a few years ago, and the audience loved it! When did you complete your first vocal arrangement? Do you remember the name of the song?

KH: Glad you liked that one, but sorry, I really don’t remember the first one. When BSU started, I was not adequately educated to sight-read. That skill was developed slowly, and by necessity, over the years. BSU was a hybrid quartet – that is to say, we were products of the woodshedding generations of the 40s, 50s and 60s, but were also affected by the work of genius-arrangers of the 70s and 80s. As a result, we did not trust some aspects of the written arrangement, and always reserved the right to woodshed our own changes. Sometimes, they were necessary, to facilitate breath-points and “covers” of pickups. Other times, they were swipes that we heard and felt, as we learned the chart. Helping to create the tune was a big part of the fun that we simply refused to give up.

Most arrangers think it is presumptuous of others to change anything about their work. That attitude is hypocritical and presumptuous in itself, since an arrangement, by definition, is composed of changes from the songwriter’s original work, who is the real (and legal) artist in question, anyway. As we experienced different arrangers, we figured out which ones had a problem with our changes, and we quietly declined any and all opportunities to sing their charts. Ed Waesche was the first to exhibit an appreciation for what he called our “musical sensibilities,” and endorsed our changes, unless we committed a form-error, which he would help us to correct. Later, Walter Latzko encouraged those same sensibilities, so we had two of the smartest geniuses in our corner, which was more than anybody else had. Those who wanted to dictate every aspect of the way we sang a song could go find their own quartet. This one was ours!

The woodshedding accelerated my learning process, and over the years, I learned to spell some of the chords, identify intervals, tell a major key from a relative minor key, make up simple key-changes, etc. Before long, I could sight-read all four parts, and would know them cold before we had our first rehearsal on a given song.

It wasn’t until 2002 that I bought my first Finale software. Friend Walter, had suffered a stroke several years prior, but was still writing arrangements daily, using his left hand to operate the mouse of a computer. The Finale system would enable me to be of assistance to him.

In his salad days, Walter could write an arrangement with his lead pencil and some blank staff-paper while on an airline flight that lasted a couple of hours. He could see the notes on the page in his head, could hear the tune being sung (also in his head), and he could write it down as fast as you or I could write a letter to Mom. That was his genius, and it explains why only a handful of our Society members were respected arrangers in those days. In no case did it take Walter longer than a few hours to hand write an arrangement of a single song.

However, the stroke had robbed him of the use of his strong writing hand and of some of his energy. On the computer, it then took Walter about twelve hours to write an arrangement. It became a two day job, so he would sometimes tire of the piece before he finished, and would send it to me for ideas from my old “musical sensibilities.” We collaborated on a lot of charts during the last years of his life, and he taught me a lot about arranging.

Lacking formal musical education, I am certainly no match for the geniuses who have that special (in their head) kind of talent. However, with the aid of the Finale program, I found that I was competent to write a chart that included some original ideas. With the computer, I could listen to my work through speakers, instead of “in my head,” and, with effort, could tweak the chart until it met my own standards as a top quartet singer.

It was a labor of love, and I was mentored by a guy whom I loved. I found that, even as my performing ability began to slow down, my strong imagination produced the same endorphin-rush, while writing, that I had enjoyed as a performer. Over the past 14 years, I have compiled a modest library of 60 or 70 charts. However, I was not the only one who discovered that Finale can take the place of those certain genius-skills. There are now more competent arrangers than there used to be, all competing for the attention of the top ten quartets and choruses. Of course, there only ten of them, right? So, my catalogue has been placed with friend Jay Giallombardo and his wife Helen, in the hope that some hot shot quartets might notice them. Some of those charts are listed on Jay’s web site, but I am not writing much these days.

Some favorite arrangements that I wrote include a medley of songs from “Paint Your Wagon,” a millennial song popularized by “Five for Fighting” called “100 Years,” and a five part solo (with barbershop chorus background) called “I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town.” My favorite collaboration with Walter is a contest-chart of a song written by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells, called “County Fair” for an obscure Disney film called “So Dear to My Heart.” We finished that one shortly before my old friend passed away. All of those tunes have matching learning tracks, which should be available from Jay. You can hear full mixes of several of them on my album, “Walter and Me,” available on iTunes and CDbaby.com. Thanks for the commercial.

TW: From 2004 to 2011, you released four recordings as a soloist. What/who inspired you down that path? How would folks purchase some of those products?

KH: In January of 2002, the phone rang, interrupting a BSU rehearsal on a Sunday evening at Thoroughbred Hall. A tiny voice said, “You don’t know me, but my name is Chilton Price, and I’ve written a song to honor the fallen firefighters from the 911 disaster. We would like for the Thoroughbreds to sing it.”

Usually, such a phone call resulted in an embarrassing experience, because I would have to tell the person that they had written a bad song. This time, such was not the case. Ms. Price faxed me her song, and on Monday, I sent it to Walter, who wrote a chart that same day. That evening, I passed it out to the chorus, and we learned in the same night. Two weeks later, we performed it for a thousand attendees of a convention of the National Association of Retired Military Officers and their bejeweled significant others, at the Grand Ballroom of the Galt House Hotel, in downtown Louisville. The place came apart.

I visited Ms. Price the following Tuesday evening, to present her with a recording of that performance, and to thank her for thinking of us. She said,” Ken, I didn’t tell you who I really was, because I wanted you to judge my song by its own merits. I have several gold records hanging on the wall in my hallway. I wrote ‘You Belong to Me’ and other hits from the 1950s. They stopped recording my music when Elvis came along, because I refused to change my writing style. But I have continued to write new songs that sound just like the Great American Songbook tunes for the last 50 years. No one with talent has ever heard them before. Would you be willing to listen to some?”

Chilton played, and I sang. I felt as if I had won the lottery. The first song made me cry, and each one was better than the last one. This was the start of a beautiful friendship that lasted 400 Tuesday nights over an eight year period, until her death at the age of 96. We catalogued her music, and wrote verses and extra lyrics together. We collaborated on new original songs. And we talked about every aspect of our lives, keeping no secrets. You guys should know by now that when you make music together, it is one of the most intimate things you can do with another person. When writing together, we had to communicate the same feeling to the listener, so we had to compare our feelings and life-experiences, in order to tell the same story. It really was one of the thrills of my life, to become friends with an accomplished songwriter, and Chilton, in particular, was a genuine person, with great wisdom and class. She taught me how to write songs.

Along the way, Chilton expressed her desire to have other artists sample her work. We were already familiar with the freshly budding careers of Michael Bublé and Josh Groban, so she was inspired to hire a pianist and record a demo-CD of original songs, with me doing the singing. We called it “Pure Price.” The project turned out well, but we were advised that new songs presented by a new singer was a tough sell. So, we went back to the studio, and recorded a CD with half original songs and half familiar songs, called “The Best Is Yet to Come.” Then, we were advised that, while piano-vocal was charming, the tunes really deserved more accompaniment. So, we went back a third time, and recorded yet another CD of half familiar and half original songs, but this time with a full 17 piece big band and a dozen string-players. The original band-charts were written by our favorite pianist, Jay Flippin, who also put together the best musicians in Louisville for the project. Man, this was a dream come true! To be the Sinatra-guy, with a studio full of hot players and the actual songwriter, smiling behind the glass. It really was heaven. We got to meet with Michael Feinstein for an afternoon, but so far, none of Chilton’s and my unpublished works have been recorded by anyone famous.

By that time, BSU had slowed down, and in December of 2006, we called it quits for good. Another singer who was working at the studio had a steady gig, fronting a big band on the Cunard cruise-ship “Queen Elizabeth II,” and needed some relief, so he could spend more time with his family. So, he got me set up to take his place on several trips for 35 days at a time over the next two years (2007-2008). That was a real learning experience. I was surprised to learn that those musicians do not rehearse. They don’t need the practice, because they can sight-read it the first time, and make it sound like some guy on the radio. The only question was, could I keep up with them?

We had several thousand passengers on the ship, and several hundred of them came on board strictly for the ballroom dancing in the ship’s famous Queen’s Room, which was designed and furnished in the style of the Titanic, from the original White Star Line. It was a classy joint, full of rich folks from several continents, who were very sensitive to the tempo required for each different kind of dance. We performed two one hour sets each evening, seven days a week, and we were not to repeat a song during any certain cruise, some of which lasted for more than two weeks. I had the opportunity to perform several hundred different songs, and I had a whole four measures to figure out the key, tempo, meter and rhythm of each one, before coming in on time and in tune.

The international montage of musicians was mostly fresh out of college, using their talents to work their way around the world, before settling down with a job and family. These guys were all pretty jaded, and showed it with their playing. Everybody was in business for himself, and not enjoying the room, the crowd or even each other. It became apparent that they had been taught by their university professors to look down their noses at the listeners and at other musicians who could not play as well. We had a trombone player who was a great sight-reader, but who was not an experienced improviser. They would “throw him the ball,” and then laugh hysterically (in full view of the audience) at his feeble attempts to play a trombone-solo.

I dressed them down pretty good during the next break. I let them know that this was unprofessional behavior, and I expected them to get a haircut, be sober, stop showing up with spotted ties and wrinkled clothes, and to act like pros, instead of amateurs. They could set me off the boat in Tahiti, and I could fly home – no problem, and they could explain the absence of the singer for the rest of the month. Then, I began to recognize horn players from the stage whenever one would distinguish himself with a solo. I gave them nicknames, like “Mr. Incredible (Ukrainian)” and “Lady-Killer (Canadian).” Before long, those guys were smiling at each other, calling out the measure-numbers and enjoying playing as an ensemble. We didn’t feature the trombone player anymore.

It was a little nerve-wracking at the start, but after three or four days, I was comfortable enough to look up from the music-stand and perform. After another few days, the music-director in charge of all the acts asked me to handle the speaking between songs. At the end of our first 17 day cruise, the passenger-evaluations gave us a score of 85 out of 100, which turned out to be the highest score ever awarded to that particular room. The musicians and the bosses were pretty doggone happy, and the band-director got a raise. All that resulted from a barbershopper – an amateur with a professional attitude – being thrown in with a bunch of professional musicians with bush-league attitudes. I found out from the band-cats that singing in tune on that ship made me an anomaly, which helped.

We made some good noise, and I learned a lot. The favorite tunes we played turned out to be a samba called Quando Quando Quando, with lyrics by Pat Boone, and a waltz-rendition of “If You Were the Only Girl in the World.” The young cats had never heard of the latter, but played it well, and told me, “Dude, you sang that tune like you wrote it!” It was fun! I was able to stick and jab – to back phrase – whenever I felt like it; much different from singing homophony with a quartet. No rehearsal was necessary.

After each performance, we had a midnight buffet, and then I would stay up all night in my cabin, writing band-charts. What was cool about that? The band would play the chart the next night, and would then give me pointers about my writing. It was a great experience, but after two years, I had enjoyed a lot of songs, and had learned everything the ship could teach me. I came home, and fronted for the Don Krekel Orchestra, a big band in Louisville, for a couple years, before retiring from solo-singing. It was a kick, but in the music biz, “you is either famous, or you is pore!” My last gig was a party for some rich folks at the Galt House on New Year’s Eve of 2015. I looked marvelous, but filled the room with mediocrity. Time to move on.

By that time, I had collaborated with Walter on some great charts, and I had written some myself that I liked, so I produced an a cappella recording, singing all four parts. I called it “Walter and Me, and it appears with my three solo recordings on iTunes and CDbaby.com, under the artist-name Kenny Ray Hatton.

TW: Can you talk about some of the choruses you have had a chance to lead over the years? What advice could you give to aspiring choral-directors?

KH: It was always a dream to someday be front-line director of the Thoroughbreds. At the same time, I had watched as the guys who followed John Wooden at UCLA and Adolph Rupp at University of Kentucky do well, but fail to come close to the records of the great ones. I did not relish the thought of following Jim Miller with the ‘Breds.

Brother Allen got his shot when Jim resigned in 1985, as co-director with Ken Buckner. Then, when Bunk left town to work for the Society in Kenosha, Allen was the man! He did well, and if you listen to the recordings, the chorus did some of its best singing ever, under his direction. But certain other choruses were getting better exponentially, and even though the T-Breds tied for first in 1990, the proverbial “coin-toss” went to Dr. Greg Lyne and his Masters of Harmony. Egos, trends and politics divided our chapter after that. Choruses have a way of assigning all the credit for a chorus’s success and all the blame for its failures to the director, neither of which is true. But directors and chorus-members know that going in, so I suppose it’s fair.

When Allen resigned in December of 1992, I was not active in the chorus, but the BOD sent guys to talk to me. I had recently started my own business, and was not prepared to discuss the matter until August of 1993. They had appointed a guy as “interim director,” while they conducted a “search.” The Board asked me to keep quiet about their approach, so they could make that guy think he was getting the job permanently, while they waited six months for me. I refused to make that promise, but I did not go out of my way to let him know. I regret that.

That’s the thing about chorus-directing that I detested – the politics. The official BOD of our beloved Thoroughbreds deceived that poor fellow, an action which was, in their minds, “in the best interests of the chapter.” I never understood how lying to a guy could ever be in the best interest of any chapter. But that’s what you get, when you put humans in charge.

A seasoned judge once wrote, “You get good marks, and win a scholarship. You finish pre-law, and get into a great law-school, where you graduate with honors, and land a job as a clerk for a Federal judge. You get on with a prestigious firm, and after several years, they make you a partner. Then, you run for circuit-judge, and win the election. Your first trial is almost over, and who makes the decision? Two retired guys, three housewives, a file clerk, a bricklayer, a schoolteacher and ditch-digger!” That’s kind of the way a barbershop chorus works. The Board of Directors searches to find the most skilled and knowledgeable person they can to be the Music Director. Then, knowing they are less qualified, they complicate your efforts with frequent attempts to micromanage. Unless you can earn enough implied authority with the troops, it is a built-in recipe for failure.

Regardless, I showed up to accept the directorate in August, and we went to the Cardinal District prelims a few weeks later. We won handily, with a group of about 70 men, and began to prepare for our annual Christmas Show, as well as the 1994 International Chorus Contest in Pittsburgh, with 92 guys on stage.

International competition was a different story. Our ranks had been decimated during the prior year by the formation of the Louisville Times Chorus by David Harrington and Mark Hale, along with a couple of dozen of our better singers. The new group had a tough audition for admission, and didn’t invite any of our “average” singers to participate. Wonder where that idea came from?

That loss of so many good singers gave us a tougher row to hoe, but we started in earnest on the fundamentals. We tackled a new Ed Waesche medley of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Billy-A-Dick” and Jule Styne’s Rat-Tat-Tat-Tat,” along with a new chart of “Till We Meet Again.” We had Sally Whitledge, of International SAI Champion “4th Edition” fame as our choreographer, and her husband, Bob, of the “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” was our bass section leader and one of our associate directors.

We worked hard, but the resulting performance was scored in the mid-80s; not up to the chorus’s reputation, nor to my standards. I was privately embarrassed by the singing, even before the scoresheets revealed a 6th place finish. Another year and two new contest songs later, our 1995 contest performance in Miami was equally embarrassing (to me), and the rank was identical (a gift, in my opinion). In the meantime, we had done a lot of exciting B-level singing on shows, and held on to most of our local following.

When Ken Buckner announced that he was moving back to Louisville, I was sure that he could lead the chorus to greater heights than I. As it turned out, the performance we gave in the 1995 fall contest was the best singing the chorus had ever given under my direction. I had my letter of resignation in my pocket, and handed it to the Chapter President immediately after we came off stage, and before the call-off. I was finally proud of a contest-performance, even before I learned that we had won, and we had beaten the second place chorus, the Louisville Times, by 20 points. I handed the baton to Bunk, and wished him well.

Three years later, in February of 1998, the chorus was struggling even harder, and I was approached by the president and one of the associate directors to again serve as front line director. When I showed up at the Board meeting to respond, both of those guys denied in my presence that they had approached me. Once again, they didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the guy who was in charge at the time. More politics – more lying.

I then announced to the Board that this idea must have come to me in a dream during the night. I would be out in the parking lot long enough to have a smoke – about four minutes, and then my offer would be withdrawn. They came out and got me to serve as director three minutes later, but explained that they had to complete their “search,” so it would be a couple of months before I would start my term. That wasted time led to a slim defeat in the fall contest at the hands of our rivals, the Louisville Times – more embarrassment. We weren’t even the best barbershop chorus in town! Still, we received a “wild card” bid to participate in the International Chorus Contest, where they finished eighth, and we finished fifth.

This time, I quickly got Brother Allen on Board, appointing him as co-director for the duration. The group improved exponentially in preparation for the 1999 chorus contest in Anaheim. We commissioned a new Waesche arrangement of the Irving Berlin tune, “Pack up Your Sins, and Go to the Devil,” and dusted off Ed’s old chart of “Over the Rainbow.” The Anaheim contest saw the Thoroughbreds return to the medals, although it was a bronze, awarded for a 5TH place finish. In the old days, it would have been disappointing, but our guys jumped for joy, as they had failed to even qualify for the dance the previous year (for the first time ever).

We seemed to have a tiger by the tail, but that’s when the wheels started to come off. Allen and I agreed to implement individual performance-accountability, and divided the chorus into two groups – one performing group and the other remedial. This was our way of competing against the “hand-picked” choruses – by focusing our teaching efforts on smaller groups and individuals where they were needed most. We had not predicted that the remedial group would be embarrassed to the extent that they would vote as a political block. The following year, we competed with fewer singers, and dropped out of the top ten choruses, and in 2001, in Nashville, finished 14th. That was it! Allen and I were pretty much out on our ear.

We left the chapter with about 30 guys, and formed the New Horizon Chorus, leaving the ‘Breds in even worse shape. We had allowed ourselves to be affected by the individual performance accountability standards which were running rampant around the Society, but our Thoroughbreds were not willing to accept them. In retrospect, we would have been smarter to have continued the path of John Henry against the steam drill. We still would not have won the championship, but we would have gone down swinging! Instead, we joined the plethora of chapters who had divided themselves in the interest of the elitist-singer. We had become what we had previously scorned. We ended up with three “also-ran” choruses, in lieu of the mighty International Champion Thoroughbreds.

In 2013, I moved to Alabama for work, and also accepted the job of Music Director of Voices of the South, in Birmingham, Alabama. We started with sores of 68%, and (several times) raised those scores to the middle 70s. We finished second in our first spring chorus contest, and three years later. We tied for second, one point out of first, in my final contest performance as a director. We sang some good shows during our three years, and the guys were kind enough to sing some of my arrangements, along with some written by my late pals, Walter and Ed, as well as two original songs written by my dear departed friend, Chilton Price and me. I retired in 2016, because some physical ailments made it difficult to perform the athletic tasks associated with conducting. Also, I had not been able to figure out how to grow the chorus. We started with 22 active, and we ended with 22 active. I thought perhaps a younger guy could do better.

What did I learn that I can share with aspiring chorus directors? I was not smart enough to figure that out. All hail Jim Miller! He used to say, “I hate when you guys whine, ‘I don’t know what to do, Jimmy.’ Maybe I’ll smack you in the balls, and then you’ll sure know what to do. You’ll say, ouch!” I wrote an e-book about Jim’s life called, “If Not for Jim,” available on Amazon and iBooks, which was released in 2012, a few months after his passing, at the age of 87. Read the book, and maybe you can get some advice from Jim. My advice is, if you don’t know what to do, stick to quartet-singing, or you might get smacked in the balls.

TW: You’ve had a chance to work with so many amazing coaches over the years. What is some of the best advice you have been given by a coach?

KH: Well… not so many. In the 70s, Jim was too busy directing and singing in the Citations to coach us as a quartet. Ed Gentry was already coaching the Citations, the Thoroughbreds and the Cardinals quartet. My mother was our first coach, as previously mentioned. Her lessons had to do with breath support and using the right muscles, which held us back at first, but raised the level at which we would perform later. We failed to qualify for International in our first two attempts, in 1974 and 1975. However, we had won the Cardinal District Championship, in the fall of 1974, a year after our formation. Back then, there just weren’t many good singing young quartets. Most good ensembles were in their thirties, forties and fifties. The hot-shots of our youth had been the Sundowners and the Grandmas Boys, who were six to ten years older than we.

The Johnny Appleseed District had scouted us at our convention, and invited us to an all-expense paid trip to the JAD spring convention, in 1975. There, we sang for the quartet contest audience, while the scores were being tallied. Let’s just say, we were having a good day. We sang almost everything we knew, and there were money and panties thrown on the stage. We got to our dressing rooms, and already had our jackets off, when the MC came to get us, and said, “They won’t stop clapping until you guys come back out here. They don’t care who won the quartet contest.”

So, we went back out, and sang the only other song we knew; the Suntones’ “Lollipops and Roses,” being sure to apologize in advance for the fact that it wasn’t suitable for the contest stage. In the judges’ pit that night was a man named Don Clause. When we left Dayton on Sunday, he was our new coach. Don was one of the writers of the category description of the new “Sound” category, and was getting ready to be C&J Chairman, which we didn’t care about. He was also the coach of the 1973 and 1974 International Champions, the Dealers Choice and the Regents. We recognized him from his picture on the back of the DC’s first album, which we did care about.

Within a year, Don had introduced us to several original Ed Waesche contest-arrangements, had us as his guests on Long Island for a weekend coaching session, had interpreted all four of our new contest songs (which we recorded), and had challenged us to master our craft, using the Society’s “green book,” a craft-manual patterned after the one Ed Gentry had written for the Thoroughbreds.

We didn’t always sing every phrase the way Don had instructed, but he never noticed that. What Don did for us was to convince us that we could master our craft, and provide a tie-breaker to keep us from arguing about how to sing each phrase. We did all of our homework within six months, having applied our new craft to the four Waesche charts, including “Midnight Rose,” and “I’ve Found My Sweetheart, Sally.” In the spring of 1976, at the ages of 20 and 21, BSU won the Cardinal prelims, and in San Francisco, in our first International Quartet Contest, we were awarded a 4th place medal. That was the biggest thrill in my quartet career, to this day. It was so unexpected by so many people, including us!

Don’s impact was the greatest, but not the only one from great coaches. He put each of us in touch with our weaknesses. Mine was pushing down low, instead of trusting my fellow singers to help create my note. Ricky’s was forgetting the dynamic plan. Danny’s challenge was to be firmer with his diction. Allen’s was to keep his falsetto tenor balanced (softer).

Our visual presentation coach was the great Ron Riegler, from the Roaring Twenties, who came in fifth to our fourth, at the San Francisco Convention. Ron taught us to move to the outside when singing louder, and move to the inside when singing softer. He taught us to do a preparatory move in the opposite direction from which we intended to move, like Jackie Gleason before he would say, “And away we go!” Sadly, Ron became gravely ill in early 1977, and passed away after the 1977 convention. We recruited my high school drama teacher, Gene Stickler, to choreograph four new tunes for the 1977 and 1978 contests. You would have sworn that Gene was Ron’s brother; they were so much alike!

The third coach was a more modest fellow, also from Cincinnati, Ed Weber. Ed was a stage presence judge, who specialized in facial expression, focal point and the fundamentals of stage presence. He taught us that it mattered where we looked in the audience during each phrase, and that our facial expression should be planned to mirror the emotion suggested by the changing message of the song. Ed taught us never to raise our hands above the waist, unless there was a planned reason for them to be up there. And don’t ever close your eyes. They are the windows to the emotions.

Our makeup guy was Joe Bruno, who taught us which stage makeup to buy, and how to apply it modestly, so that we looked normal and handsome on stage, rather than like a bunch of clowns. The makeup was a part of our ritual of preparation, which helped us to feel an aura of invincibility before we took the stage. The longhairs coming out of the universities to save us all from ourselves have since convinced our lazier members that such efforts are unnecessary. Consequently, their faces wash out in the stage lights, and we can see their expressions only by watching the big screen – when there is a big screen, that is. We miss you, Joe.

Our costume-designers included Louise Cecil, a professional, who made the brightly colored thrift-store knickerbockers that we wore during our three contest years for $143.75 – for all four them! Another was clothier and barbershopper Mike Mazucca, who designed our unique kelly green tuxedos and our rose colored (pink) tuxedos for the other two contest sets. Our last costume-designer was Dan’s wife, Cyndy Burgess, who had a degree in Home Economics from the University of Kentucky. She designed and built our Music Man costumes – the ones that appeared in the photograph, with the plumed hats and reversible jackets. We wore them on stage for many years.

TW: What are your thoughts on the evolution of the music-industry and songwriting over the course of your lifetime? Are you happy with this evolution?

KH: Well first, let me say that Irving Scrooge Berlin was a greedy SOB. Besides refusing to allow barbershop arrangements of his songs because our genre was not “legitimate,” thanks to that stuck up, crusty old curmudgeon, who never learned to read a note of music, and played piano only by ear in the key of F sharp, and thanks to his lawyers, the term of a song-copyright was extended from 50 years after the copyright started to 90 years after the death of the longest surviving collaborator. I don’t like that very much.

I am glad to see the money-people, whose only talent is to recognize and take advantage of the potential of others, finally being left out of the mix, thanks to technology. With the advent of cell-phones, video and social media, any artist can reach the public directly with his or her songs, voice and instrument, from the safety and obscurity of his bathroom or basement. He or she no longer needs cow-tow to the David Fosters and Phil Specters of the world, in order to be “discovered.” If his or her talent is special, it will now be noticed by the real judges. In the words of the late George Gershwin, “It is not the few knowing ones whose opinions make any work of art great; it is the judgment of the great mass that finally decides.”

Of course, I detest licensing agencies BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, and abhor publishers Hal Leonard and Alfred Publishing for what they have done to the undiscovered songwriter and hobby-singer/player of music, and I am embarrassed and angry that our Society is playing ball with them. By the way, BHS is both a licensing agency and a publisher. The former group of pariahs caters only to the writers of songs featured in blockbuster movies, the top 100 grossing concerts annually and of protected works that get radio, TV and internet airplay. The latter group is squeezing the rest of us out of mere participation by the high cost of permission to arrange, perform, record and promote, and our Society is helping them do it by agreeing to their terms.

Our better option is to join together to boycott all protected works, and resort to Public Domain songs and original songs copyrighted by our own members, and to make sure not to allow any of those publishers or licensing agencies (or our Society) to participate in even partial ownership of our protected works. This happened once before, you know, when ASCAP got too big for its britches in the late 1940s, and took all of its catalogue off the radio airwaves. That’s what gave birth to the country music industry and caused BMI to be formed. Perhaps such a boycott now, would birth another industry called a cappella. There are thousands of public domain songs that are very fine vehicles, and we are perfectly capable of writing our own songs that fit the style.

Meanwhile, if you want to adapt any protected work to the barbershop style represented by one of these licensing agencies or publishers, just so your quartet or chorus can sing it in a show or a contest for which you might earn no moneys in exchange, please be prepared to pay several hundred dollars to the copyright owner, just in exchange for permission. Of course, another way is to woodshed your own arrangement of a protected work, which constitutes “fair use,” under the law, as long as it is not written down. We used to all know how to do that!

TW: What personal accomplishment are you most proud of outside the world of barbershop harmony?

KH: Many people like to say they are proud of their families. I cannot take the credit for the successes of my children, and I will not take the blame for their failures. We lead the horses to the water, but it is up to them to make the choice to drink. I feel good about having done my job. They did not ask to be brought into the world. Their mother and I made that decision, and all three arrived kicking and screaming mad about it. We owed them good food, clothing, shelter, education and love. We paid our debt and provided additional things like cars and money after they were grown. Since then, it has been up to them. To their credit, they are all paying taxes, and none are drug-addicts or criminals. I am glad for their varying degrees of success, even while meeting different levels of hardship, because I love and want only good things for them. But to be “proud” would claim responsibility for their success, which I cannot do. There are people close to me who have had adult children who made wrong choices that resulted in incarceration and even death. Those children enjoyed the same benefits that mine did. If I claim credit for my own children’s success, I would be blaming other parents for the failures of their kids, which would be over-the-top inappropriate. That’s why I cringe when I see parents bragging about “pride” in their adult children’s successes, and it’s why you won’t see claims of pride in my kids’ accomplishments on my Facebook page.

That being clarified, I suppose I am proud of the fact that I work hard every day, and that I am not a burden on my family or on society. I am proud of the kind of work I do, and that makes it necessary for this answer to overlap the answers to your good question numbers 15 and 16.

TW: Barbershoppers probably know you best as the energetic performer and lead singer of the Bluegrass Student Union, the 1978 quartet champs of the SPEBSQSA, now known as the Barbershop Harmony Society. What are a few things that folks may NOT know about you?

KH: I can juggle. I discovered as a teenager that I could isolate overtones with my voice, and play tunes with the overtones while holding the same note, simply by changing my mouth opening and tongue position. I speak fluent Spanish. I have not been able to walk farther than a block and a half without resting for ten minutes since 2003. That will likely never change. I didn’t like Irving Berlin when he was alive, and now that he is dead, I still do. Oh yeah, we covered that.

I have worked as a loading dock equipment and industrial doors application-expert on and off since 1986. When I entered the industry, I was sent to a school held by our main factory, which was called KELLEY, inventor and manufacturer of the hinged lip dock leveler, a bridge between the loading dock and the trailer bed. The fellows who taught that school were the same ones who had been around since the invention of the device, in 1953. They had been the first generation of sales persons, who introduced the product to American industry, and they imparted to me their noble mission. Their product had revolutionized the safety and comfort of the loading dock worker, and, along with a later invention by a competitor (the trailer restraint), had saved the lives and limbs of countless people around the world, none of whom realized that they would have died or been maimed without it.

Most businesses provide goods and services that help people in some way. We don’t all get to be astronauts or Supreme Court Justices. Most of us make our contributions to humankind in smaller, less famous ways. On our tombstones, it won’t say, “He laid a lot of brick,” or “She counseled a lot of crazy people.” On mine, it won’t say, “He sold a lot of levelers, restraints and overhead doors, and made sure they were properly installed.” But that is exactly the thing of which I am most proud. Funny how one can attain something akin to immortality by doing a little singing, but the day in and day out saving of lives by most of us who do it goes unnoticed.

When I was a kid, I didn’t imagine growing up to be a dock leveler salesman. The job sort of found me, instead of the other way around. But I developed a keen interest in the product and in applying and installing it correctly. I found that once I embraced the noble motivation, my clients could sense that sincerity. When I get the job, lives are saved, the work area is more comfortable, the customer’s management enjoys the savings that comes with increased productivity, and my commissions take care of themselves. It’s a great business, because my degree of personal fulfillment just happens to be commensurate with the financial rewards. What a great country! I have to believe that unless you are a criminal, or you work in the liquor- or tobacco-industry, your job probably offers similar fulfillment. We are all here to serve each other, and most jobs allow you to do that. I can only hope that it brings you similar rewards.

TW: What’s the next item on your bucket list?

KH: That’s a tough question, because I have had such a great life! I had two marriages that lasted a total of 36 years, and 29 of them were pretty darned good. I loved me some women. I am now divorced and single, and life is really stress-free these days. My three kids are healthy and standing on their own six feet. I have a special relationship with my son, Mike. I always treated him as an equal; not as a child. As a result, he is now my friend, in addition to being my son, which pleases me very much. I enjoy my work, and will never retire, as long as I can walk and think. I have lived many of my dreams, helping the Thoroughbreds to earn four gold medals and some other colors too, winning quartet contests with my three “brothers,” Allen, Danny and Rick, and then going on to join the Suntones-Buffalo Bills-Boston Common-club. I got to direct the Thoroughbreds in competition on several occasions, although it didn’t turn out as well as I had envisioned. I traveled around the world a few times, and got to visit 47 states, most of them multiple times. I directed a chorus across mainland China for four 2-week trips, and coached my way across New Zealand and Australia. I learned how to arrange music, with no formal education, and I sang professionally in jazz clubs with a great accompanist. I became friends and wrote songs with a real award-winning Great American Songbook writer. I met idols, heroes, presidents and other famous people along the way, who all turned out to be regular guys, just like me. My quartet recorded some of the best-selling barbershop-recordings of all time. I recorded a big band album with 33 top musicians that sounds like it belongs on the Sirius Sinatra channel. I wrote a biography about the life of my mentor, Jim Miller. I made a barbershop recording dedicated to my other mentor, Walter Latzko. I made three recordings that honored yet another mentor, Ms. Chilton Price. I wrote original songs and arrangements, and heard them sung by others. On occasion, I even got to perform on the ‘lectric television. Hoo-wee!

I promise you that I have done everything that I wanted to do, and more. I have a few regrets, but owe no amends. There is no bucket-list, but I discovered something else that I enjoy, just this past year. You see, I moved to Alabama five years ago, for my work, and I have no “old friends” here. New friends are nice, but there is nothing like the friends with whom you share some history. I see Allen, Rick and Dan once a year, at a reunion at Allen’s lake house. I hate to think that I might see those guys only a handful (or two) more times before one of us takes a header.

I have other friends around the country, with whom I stay in touch. Still, there are others who I care about deeply, but don’t get to see anymore. Last June, I visited Marjorie Latzko at her home in Lewes Delaware, where she lives, with her daughter, Melanie and her husband and two boys. Marjorie is one of the tenors of the Chordettes, of Mr. Sandman fame, besides being Walter’s devoted wife for over 50 years and one of my dearest friends. After a great three day visit, I took the ferry across Delaware Bay, to Cape May, New Jersey, and drove to Brigantine, where I met with old friend Carol Plum. We took her parents, Ellen and Neal, out to dinner, and enjoyed reminiscing about his quartet, Sound Revival, back in the 70s and 80s.

The next morning, I met pal Jack Pinto, of Old School quartet, for breakfast, and we traveled to New York City, where we had dinner with genius arranger, judge and quartet-man Steve Delehanty and his wife, Connie, along with medalist lead singer Scott Brannon, of the Cincinnati Kids. I enjoyed spending time with these many good friends, and made a new friend, Keith Harris, the barbershopper and professional opera-singer. It took some effort and expense on my part, but this was more fun and fulfilling than going around the world. I did that already, and got paid for it – twice! It couldn’t be as much fun the third time, especially if I’m paying. But this trip was a gas, because I got to see those lovely people one more time.

So, I don’t have a bucket-list of things I want to do and experience. I just want to see my old friends one more time. So, I have already planned my trip for 2018. In February, I will see Todd and Jennifer Wilson, in Nashville, and then hop on a plane to see Holly and Brian Beck in Colorado Springs. With any luck, Bobby Gray and Terri will be available for dinner, and maybe I can sneak in a luncheon with George Davidson, Terry Heltne and Kurt Hutchison in Denver, before visiting old quartet-buddy, Vince Winans and his wife in Salt Lake City. After a couple of days, I will head for Palm Springs, California, to visit former Thoroughbred Jonathan Friedman and his wife, Annabelle, where they will introduce me to their new baby girl, who is to be born next month. Then, it’s on to Oakland, where I will spend a few days watching some of my grandkids play soccer and volleyball.

I might try to visit old pal Greg Lyne, while I am there. He always tries to tell me that the Thoroughbreds should have won that contest in 1990. I like that about him.

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