Eugene weekly., May 24, 2018, Page 13, Image 13

In 1930, The Hartford Courant wrote of an appearance
in Vienna, which it noted was “the province of Brahms,
Beethoven and Liszt,” that The Revelers “drew such a
crowd of musically seasoned Viennese that two hundred
of them had to be seated on the stage, and there was
hardly room for the young Americans to make their proper
entrances and exits.”
The music was always classically tinged. In fact, one
of The Revelers, tenor James Melton, would go on from
the group to debut in 1942 (as Tamino in Mozart’s Magic
Flute) at the Metropolitan Opera, where he would continue
to sing into the 1950s.
The Revelers also helped break down racist disdain for
jazz, which was sometimes dismissed as “Negro music.”
A 1928 review of the group’s Paris debut that ran in The
Christian Science Monitor noted that, “Many of our
countrymen, indeed, proved systematically hostile, not only
to the ideal of the [phonograph] but also to its repertory.
Jazz and Negro music was spoken of only with scorn. Now,
[The Revelers] appeared so musical, so distinguished in
writing, so ingenious in harmony, and so well thought out
in tone color, that their fame spread like a puff of powder.”
But then it all blew away. In the late 1930s The Revelers
stopped touring and cut their radio performances to one
show a week.
They went off the air altogether in 1940, Phillips says,
the year of their last known concert performance, which
was for a Rotary Club in New Jersey.
A quest for the score
Once he began listening to their recordings, Phillips
was determined to find out everything he could about The
Revelers and their output. Because of its sophistication, he
was certain the music was scored — arranged and written
down. He wanted to find the original Revelers scores.
Phillips reached out to everyone he could think of who
might have leads. He called on the Whiffenpoofs, the Yale
University a cappella group whose early roster included
Cole Porter; he checked in with the Barbershop Harmony
Society in Nashville. “Talk about a wacky organization!”
Phillips says. No one had anything.
Finally, as he was scrolling through a blog post one day
about Frank Black, an influential Revelers pianist who later
became NBC’s music director, Phillips found a note from
the son of a late member of The Revelers, baritone Hugh
Berberich.
It turned out The Revelers were re-formed in 1947 by
founding member Glenn and toured, with less success,
until 1955, when Glenn sold the name — and the music
library — to a tenor named Thomas Edwards. Edwards
kept the group alive, in a different form, until the 1970s.
The final owner of The Revelers name and library was
Berberich.
It was his son writing on the blog.
“Hello All,” the note read. “My father was a Reveler in
the late ’60s, early ’70s, and left us about nine milk crates
full of original hand-annotated Frank Black scores. I am
wondering if there is any interest out there for these. It is a
very large collection…”
Phillips sent the guy an email. “He contacted me. I
called to explain who I am. He texted me photos.
“This was the mother lode.”
Once he began
listening to
their recordings,
Phillips was
determined
to find out
everything
he could about
the Revelers and
their output.
The manuscripts, notated in pencil, are signed either by
Ed Smalle or Frank Black.
But a few things are missing.
“The vexing thing about these compositions is, there are
no piano scores, with the exception of two or three songs,”
Phillips says. He thinks the pianists, Smalle and Black, may
have improvised their parts instead of reading from scores.
A final piece of the puzzle remains to be solved. In
his research, Phillips discovered that composer George
Gershwin in 1926 or 1927 gave Black permission to adapt
his “Rhapsody in Blue,” originally written for piano and
jazz band, for — no kidding — piano and male quartet.
The Revelers performed it on radio in 1929. Variety
wrote, “Get a load of the Revelers’ version, with lyrics, of
Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsodie in Blue.’ It’s a pip. They did it on
The Palmolive Hour, last hour, and should make a peach
recording for Victor.”
Phillips found the lyrics, by jazz crooner Vaughn De
Leath (who also wrote “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”), in a
concert program from Switzerland. They include this verse:
Play me that rhapsody in blue! Please, do!
That theme has majesty sublime,
I’m carried away each time I hear them play
That plaintive strain again.
Phillips has found neither a recording nor a score of the
Gershwin piece.
“I remain hopeful that I’ll find a score for Frank Black’s
arrangement of ‘Rhapsody,’ but it’s very unlikely that a
recording exists,” he says. “An archived radio broadcast is
the only possibility.”
As it turned out, Phillips’ fellow singers in New
York Polyphony passed on the opportunity to include
The Revelers in the group’s repertoire, not sharing his
enthusiasm for their music.
But this summer, with a grant from the UO, he and
three other singers recruited from around the country will
rehearse the rediscovered music in a workshop July 11 and
12 at OPERA America’s National Opera Center in New
York.
The other musicians include Anthony Patterson, piano;
Joseph Gaines, tenor; Bryon Grohman, tenor; and Jesse
Blumberg, baritone. Phillips will sing bass.
The workshop will conclude with a performance of
selected songs for an invited audience. The performance
will be live-streamed, so you can watch from Eugene
online; see revelersproject.com for details. ■
Success and a final ‘Rhapsody’
That was during spring break in 2015. Phillips, who was
then finishing his doctorate (on, of course, The Revelers) in
North Carolina, hopped in his car to drive the 600 miles to
Connecticut, where he and Chris Berberich sat down over
one bottle of wine, and then another. Berberich pulled out
boxes of original Revelers music, all handwritten scores,
divided into parts for the different singers of the group.
Phillips found himself looking at 512 handwritten
arrangements used by the original Revelers, broken into
parts for different singers.
“Happy Feet.”
“Baby Face.”
“Birth of the Blues.”
“I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover.”
EUGENE SINGER AND
REVELERS REVIVER
CRAIG PHILLIPS
P H O T O B Y TO D D C O O P E R
eugeneweekly.com • May 24, 2018
13