Clifton Boyd (November 2018) 1 Harmony and Voice Leading in the Music of The Four Freshmen, 1955–19611 During the high point of their popularity in the mid-1950s, the Four Freshmen possessed a rich sound that went on to inspire many musicians of the following generation, most notably Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.2 Despite this, or perhaps because their popularity was not sustained after the cultural shift of the early 1960s, little analytic research on their music has been undertaken. In this paper, I investigate the vocal harmony and voice leading in the music of the Four Freshmen from 1955–1961, the first seven years during which they released albums. I have looked at five albums from the period: Voices in Modern (1955), Four Freshmen & Five Trombones (1956), Freshmen Favorites (1956), Voices in Love (1958), and The Freshman Year (1961; see Table 1 for the track listings of all five albums). I will begin with a discussion of three notable chords that frequently appear in their arrangements, helping to create the signature “Four Freshmen Sound.” I will then examine their voice leading techniques (in other words, the way they move from one chord to the next) in order to see how this horizontal parameter interacts with the vertical parameters of spacing and range. To this end, I have chosen three songs to analyze by tracking the pitch intervals between the voices in each chord, and between adjacent notes in the top voice. After a brief consideration of how the group’s different arrangers affected the construction of the final product, I close with an analysis of the song “Graduation Day,” comparing the Beach Boys cover to the Freshmen original. Through these techniques, I will highlight some of the exceptional features of their style, suggesting 1 This research has been sponsored by a generous grant from the Four Freshmen Music Foundation. Dave Bentley, the treasurer of the Foundation, was kind enough to let me borrow from his vast collection of Four Freshman charts, which allowed this project to extend far beyond its originally conceived scope. 2 “[T]he most profound influence on Brian Wilson’s early musical development [was] the music of the Four Freshmen.” Philip Lambert, Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds and Influences of the Beach Boys’ Founding Genius (New York: Continuum, 2007): 4. Clifton Boyd (November 2018) 2 further research about the Four Freshmen not only with respect to the Beach Boys but also to twentieth-century popular music at large. Table 1: Track Listings of Four Freshmen Albums Under Consideration Voices in Modern (1955) Four Freshmen & 5 Trombones (1956) After You Angel Eyes Over the Rainbow Love Is Just Around the Corner My Heart Stood Still Mam’selle The Nearness of You Speak Low Holiday The Last Time I Saw Paris Stormy Weather Somebody Love Me Street of Dreams You Stepped Out of a Dream We’ll Be Together Again I Remember You Circus Love Mood Indigo Love Is Here to Stay It Happened Once Before You Made Me Love You It’s a Blue World Guilty Freshmen Favorites (1956) Voices in Love (1958) Day by Day I’m Always Chasing Rainbows It Never Occurred to Me There Is No Greater Love Graduation Day Moonlight Poinciana It Could Happen to You Love Turns Winter into Spring Out of Nowhere The Day Isn’t Long Enough In the Still of the Night In This Whole Wide World I’ll Remember April Charmaine While You Are Gone Lonely Night in Paris Warm Seems Like Old Times Time Was (Duerme) Now You Know You’re All I see I Heard You Cried Last Night (and So Did I) The Freshman Year (1961) The Freshman Year Fools Rush In Where Do I Go from Here I’m Getting Sentimental over You It Happens Every Spring Show Me the Way to Get Out of This World Their Hearts Were Full of Spring If I Knew Then My Funny Valentine It’s Only a Paper Moon But Beautiful Dream Clifton Boyd (November 2018) 3 1a: 1b: 1c: "Peg chord" Inverted sixth "Money chord" w w w w w w ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ & w w bbw ‹ w Example 1: Prominent Chords in wthe Music of The Four Freshmen ∑ ∑ w ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ While there are& many stylistic traits of theirw music that associate them with other jazz vocal ‹ w groups from the 1950s, in his 1995 book Now You Know: The Story of the Four Freshmen, founding Freshman Ross Barbour writes about what he calls the Freshmen’s “peg chord,” a distinctive sound & ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ that set them apart from‹ their competitors. He states, “If you’re a student of music, it is not that difficult to communicate. We had the fifth of the chord in the top voice, the ninth in the second, the & ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ major seventh in the ‹third part and the third of the chord in the low part.”3 This description corresponds to a MM9, assuming that the root will be sounded in the double bass (see Example 1a). This is because each of& the Freshman∑ plays∑ an instrument,∑ one∑ of which∑ being the∑ double∑ bass, ∑ ∑ ∑ ‹ which carries out the bass line. This voicing can be heard in “Time Was” (0:12 “time was”). In “Love is Just Around the Corner” (0:23 “just waiting for you”), and “Day by Day” (0:30 “by far than any & ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ocean”), the chord is voiced‹ not as a MM9, but rather as subsets of a Madd6 and a mm7, respectively. While the voicing of the peg chord is not terribly difficult to locate in their repertoire, the added & ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ constraint of the chord‹ functioning within a specific harmonic context significantly limits the number of appearances. Although Barbour’s writing suggests a strong connection to particular 9 add6 harmonies (such as the& MM or the∑ M ), and perhaps∑ specific functions,∑ I suspect that∑ he would ∑ ∑ ‹ aurally associate the prototypical instance of the voicing with particular songs, solidifying its importance in his mind.4 & ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ‹ 3 Ross Barbour, Now You Know: The Story of the Four Freshmen (Lake Geneva, WI: Balboa Books, 1995): 32– 33. 4 “There wasn’t a song we sang that didn’t use the peg chord.” Now You Know, 33. This claim is far from true, especially if he is only referring to the voicing when used in a MM9 chord. Clifton Boyd (November 2018) 4 Shortly after discussing the peg chord, Barbour notes, “When the two middle parts of the peg chord go down a whole step, you’ve arrived at another distinctive Freshmen sound, an inverted sixth.”5 By this he simply means a major add6 chord in first inversion (without taking the double bass part into consideration; see Example 1b). This voicing appears in “Time Was” (0:16 “when we had”), “We’ll Be Together Again” (0:00 “Oo-oo…”), and “Guilty” (1:28 “like I do-oo”). Similarly to the peg chord, this voicing acts as a subset to other chords, in this case the mm9 and MM9. Major add6 chords are quite common in cadences for the Freshmen,6 but they often appear either with a different scale degree in the top voice, a different spacing, or with an added ninth. Former Freshmen Brian Eichenberger (active 1996–2014) is surely familiar with the two prominent chords discussed by Barbour; nonetheless, he identifies yet a different sound as being their “money chord”: the MM7. Specifically, the chord is in close position with the fifth in the bass and the seventh in the first tenor (see Example 1c).7 It is the result of lowering the baritone and bass voices of the Madd6 by a semitone. This chord can be found in “Angel Eyes” (1:12 “so drink up”), “Lonely Night in Paris” (0:15 “love of yesterday”), and “Poinciana” (2:50 “soon my love”). It is frequently part of a mm9, making it more closely related to the Madd6, which also acts as a subset for this harmony. It is notable that all three voicings feature a third (i3 or i4) in the middle, and a perfect fourth and fifth between adjacent inner and outer voices. According to Morris’ five basic spacing types, these chords can be labeled as “focused,” meaning that smaller intervals are between 5 Ibid., 33. 6 “Angel Eyes,” “Graduation Day,” and “It’s a Blue World,” among others. 7 “[The] ‘money’ chord in the frosh=>maj7 chord with 2nd inversion triad on the bottom, maj7 on top. i.e. F maj7 from the bottom up would be spelled C F A E. That thing always works.” Brian Eichenberger, e-mail message to author, October 25, 2017. Clifton Boyd (November 2018) 5 the central pitches, while larger intervals separate the extremes from their adjacent notes.8 This helps account for the thick sound that comes across in their recordings. But their vitality is also the result of singing technique: “We tried to always apply pressure to the listener with the chords, to put enough energy into the chords that it would be transmitted to the listener. In short, we sang loud!”9 To aid in this discussion of spacing, I have recorded the pitch intervals between adjacent voices in each chord of the songs “Day by Day,” “It’s a Blue World,” and “Angel Eyes.” Additionally, I have cataloged the ordered pitch intervals between adjacent notes in the top voice. From this data, the range of each chord as well as the voice leading of the lower three voices can be extrapolated. Charts created from this data can be found in the appendix. The “range breakdown” charts demonstrate that the spacing of the large majority of chords in each of these songs fall within an octave.