Real Men Don't Sing Solo

What Is Barbershop?

When you think of barbershop quartets the image easily comes to mind of four handlebar-mustached white men in straw hats and striped vests singing "Sweet Adeline" in four-part harmony, or it could be the 1936 Norman Rockwell painting on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, or maybe it's the barbershop quartet in the Music Man.

The roots of barbershop actually date back to singing by African Americans in the late 19th century, as has been documented in several different articles including Historical Roots of Barbershop by Jim Henry.

The term 'barbershop' comes from the fact that it was a social gathering place for men around the turn of the century and so also was a good place for singers to congregate and create their own harmonies around common melody lines of the day.

Barbershop quartets soon became associated with white performers when the recorded version of the music became widely distributed. Gage Averill in "Four Parts, No Waiting: A Social History of American Barbershop Harmony"
(Oxford University Press, Inc., 2003) states, "Thomas Edison's early phonograms spread to parlors around the country, "but they needed content," Averill says. "So they actively sought out groups to record. You couldn't bring an orchestra... or a chorus into the early studios. They were cramped and you had to sing right into the horn (microphone). So it favored small groups and these quartets were just perfect."

By the end of the 19th century, phonogram companies presented competing quartets, Averill says. "And those quartets -- the ones that they were really promoting -- were by and large white quartets. And it was the promotion of these groups and their dissemination everywhere in North America and beyond that really fixed the identity of barbershop in a white context."

In addition, scholars incorrectly traced barbershop's origin to England. Library of Congress musicologist Wayne Shirley says the misperception started in the 1930s, when an influential historian, Percy Skoals, was misled by an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Shirley explains: "There was an Elizabethan phrase about 'barber's music,' music that was made in barbershops, and so (Skoals) decided that the barbershop quartet came basically from England. And unfortunately it's just not true. Barber's music, which simply meant the kind of stuff you hear when there are a couple of lutes around and people are getting haircuts and passing the time by singing rather badly, is not barbershop."

This A Cappella singing was largely an aural tradition and the music was not put on paper until the early 20th century. Barbershop harmony, by today's definition, revolves around the use of the major minor 7th chord - a chord which naturally resolves to a tonic center a fifth below. This creates an easy way for the ear to 'hear' complex harmonies and resolve them without having written music. With a given melody line the harmonies go out to a given chord, then using the circle of fifths find their way back to the tonic.

A great representation of this can be heard on this example by the Gas House Gang.

Other Barbershop Resources

The Barbershop Jukebox - Harmony on Demand

A multimedia presentation by David Wright on the evolution of barbershop style

• The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America

• The Gas House Gang

• Sweet Adelines International