THE LETTERMEN -FEATURED ARTISTS PART 1 OF 2

in #music6 years ago

  • The Lettermen is an American male pop vocal trio.
  • Its trademark is close-harmony pop songs with light arrangements. The group started in 1959.
  • They have had two Top 10 singles (both #7), 16 Top 10 singles on the Adult Contemporary chart (including one #1), 32 consecutive Billboard Magazine chart albums, 11 gold records, and five Grammy nominations.


When I fall In Love by The Lettermen - #1

  • A Lettermen group was formed in the late 1950s by Mike Barnett, Dick Stewart and Tony Butala.

  • They auditioned for Jackie Barnett (who was chief comedy writer for the Jimmy Durante TV show) for the "Newcomers of 1928" revue.

  • It was Barnett who gave the group their name. Now as "The Lettermen", they landed the part to impersonate The Rhythm Boys, the vocal group that traveled with Paul Whiteman and his orchestra in the late 1920s, and gave Bing Crosby his initial fame.

  • The "Newcomers of 1928" revue opened on 28 February 1958 at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, Nevada and also starred Paul Whiteman, Buster Keaton, Rudy Vallée, Harry Richman, and Fifi D'Orsay.

  • They played to sell-out audiences and were held over for many weeks. Continuing with a six-week tryout at the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida, the idea continued to be a smash, with Butala being the lone consistent Letterman.

  • Barnett and Russell were replaced by Gary Clarke and Jerry Paul.

  • When the tryout ended, Butala landed a job as singer/bass player in a lounge group, "Bill Norvis and the Upstarts", with Gary Clarke.

  • After a few months, Clarke left the group and was replaced by Jim Pike.

  • Pike and Butala decided to leave the Upstarts and form a new group although they had not yet decided to use the Lettermen name.

  • Pike envisioned a group where each member was an excellent soloist as well as a great group singer.

  • Pike and Butala joined with the third Letterman, Bob Engemann, a singer that Pike had met when he attended Brigham Young University a few years earlier. (Pike and Engemann had come to Los Angeles, California, and had sung together until Engemann had to go into the California National Guard for 6 months.

  • That's why Pike joined Bill Norvis and there met Butala.) The combination of Pike, Engemann and Butala first recorded in 1960.

  • They secured a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records through Bob Engemann's older brother, Karl Engemann, who was a record producer there, and for whom Pike had earlier released a record called "Lucy D", which was not successful.

  • Karl Engemann years later became Marie Osmond's personal manager for many years.

  • Pike, Butala, and Engemann as "The Lettermen" released two singles in 1960 for Warner Bros. The A-sides were "Two Hearts" and "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring". They were not successful.

  • After Warner Bros. Karl Engemann moved on to Capitol Records as President of A&R. He got them out of their contract at Warner Bros. and made an appointment for them to see Nick Venet, a producer at Capitol, and they signed there.

  • There was another "Lettermen" group in the late 1950s and early 1960s that recorded for Liberty Records (which was a major record label at the time), an R&B group with five members, and their not-so-successful single was called "Hey Big Brain".

  • About that same time there was a third group called the Lettermen Trio, headed up by Sammy Vandenburg, who also had no record success. But the "Lettermen" of Pike, Engemann, and Butala had the first hit record, so by law they were entitled to exclusively use the "Lettermen" name.


The Way You Look Tonight

  • The Lettermen were unknown until they signed with Capitol Records in 1961. Their first single for Capitol, "The Way You Look Tonight," succeeded on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart and climbed to No. 13.
  • Their next, "When I Fall in Love," reached the Top 10 in late 1962 and hit No. 1 on AC.
  • They had several other Top 10 AC hits, such as 1965's "Theme From A Summer Place".


Theme from A Summer Place

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.30
TRX 0.12
JST 0.034
BTC 63900.40
ETH 3140.82
USDT 1.00
SBD 3.98