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Meredith Willson explains how 'The Music Man' came to be… …And why it had to include a barbershop quartet!

Meredith Willson

The Buffalo Bills were the first ones hired for "The Music Man" – "poetically and rightfully so," according to the musical's composer, Meredith Willson, in his 1959 book, "But He Doesn't Know The Territory."

In this long out-of-print book, he told in his own colorful words about how the plot, songs, stars, and Broadway production came to be, where he got some of his inspiration for the story and songs, and many of the challenges he had to overcome to bring it all to life.

He also shared his love – and knowledge – of barbershop music (he was a barbershopper, too), and how he had to ignore Broadway musical conventions to make sure his production paid homage to this American art form.

(He also used some words and spellings not common today, as well as the names of some stars whose fame since has faded in the public mind.)

In an entry dated June 1957, he recalls:

"The Buffalo Bills barbershop quartette had been signed – theirs was the first Music Man contract. And rightly so. Look here. There has never been a barbershop quartette in any Broadway show or in any motion picture. Ever. At no time. Except The Music Man. No sir. Those familiar handlebar-mustache beer-barrel guys in the sleeve garters singing 'A Bird in a Gilded Cage' with a tin-pan piano accompaniment like you saw in Strawberry Blonde, and Meet Me in St. Louis, and all the old tin-pany alley movies – those guys bear no relation whatsoever to any barbershop quartette."

(A Capitol Chordsmen note: if you saw the major Hollywood movie version, you can almost hear the above rhythm coming from the mouth of the fast-talking Prof. Harold Hill, as played in the movie by Robert Preston.)

Hill – err, Wilson – continues:

"First of all, 'Bird in a Gilded Cage' and 'St. Louie' and all such ballads are one-in-a bar waltz clogs like 'Bicycle Built for Two' are not, never have been, and never will be any good for barbershop quartette singing. The harmony on the one hand presents insufficient challenge, and the tempo on the other is too unyielding for barbershop. And as far as a tin-pan piano accompaniment goes, no barbershopper would be found dead with accompaniment.

"Barbershop quartette singing, by the way, is the only art of its kind – where performers sing for themselves and for the pleasure they get out of an evening of 'practicing', hunting for luscious chords and modulations – experimenting with this harmony and that.

"Strictly trial and error faking, which is something nobody learns. You have to be born a barbershopper. The requirements include a peculiar, particular kind of ear and soul for faking harmony.

"Symphony musicians can't necessarily do it, most opera stars can't do it. You mustn't be an individual when you sing – your voice has to be a straight-tone blending voice, not a soloistic, emotional, or trained voice of any kind. The lousiest barbershop quartette in the world, for example, would be Lauritz Melchior, Mario Lanza, Robert Merrill and Baccaloni.

"Also, the art of barbershop quartette singing is strictly an American one. You might even say it is the only true nonimitatable American music.

"Our Gershwin borrowed from Europe and was in turn borrowed from; our Charles Griffes, ditto; our Roy Harris, likewise; our Jazz greats, the same – today, ther are as many great jazz players and composers of European background as American. But not barbershop. That's an American monopoly.

"And barbershop has never been on the Broadway stage. Except in the days of vaudeville: a good barbershop quartette always stopped the show with regularity no matter who else was on the bill.

Oh the producers thought they were using barbershop quartettes in those Hollywood pictures, and in occasional Broadway shows. They sure weren't though.

"The amazing truth is that even today, in spite of the barbershop quartette societies that have contests monthly and annually and locally and regionally and every other way, to which people flock by the millions at a couple or three dollars a head (right in New York City, for instance, at Carnegie Hall, several times a year – and just try to get a ticket!) – in spite of all this the producers by and large, to say nothing of directors and agents, don't have any idea of what barbershop quartette singing is.

"That's why I put a barbershop quartette in The Music Man -- and that's why those four guys stop the show in there, any time they want to – and still almost nobody in our business really understands the difference between a barbershop quartette and some other kind. You will only get redheaded as I do about the whole matter if you're a barbershopper, which thank the Lord, I happen to be.

"So, the next time you hear three, four, or five, or ten guys over in the corner of the bar singing 'Melancholy Baby,' all carrying the air, including the guy with the low voice who, by singing the tune an octave lower thinks he's singing bass, and including your brother-in-law who does a high vibrant bulb-shattering imitation of Caruso, and including the waiter who plays a little banjo, it's not barbershop."

The two photos above show Meredith Willson leading a "Music Man" parade and as a conductor.

LISTEN TO THE BUFFALO BILLS! Click here and scroll down the page to make your selection.

Read more about the barbershoppers celebration of 2007 as the 50th anniversary of the Broadway musical's opening here.