The Suntones are a barbershop

Barbershop music

Barbershop vocal harmony, as codified during the barbershop revival era , is a style of a cappella, or unaccompanied vocal music characterized by consonant four-part chords for every melody note in a predominantly homophonic texture...

 quartet

Quartet

In music, a quartet is a method of instrumentation , used to perform a musical composition, and consisting of four parts.-Western art music:...

 from Miami, Florida

Miami, Florida

Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...

, USA and the 1961 SPEBSQSA

Barbershop Harmony Society

The Barbershop Harmony Society, legally and historically named the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, Inc. , is the first of several organizations to promote and preserve barbershop music as an art form. Founded by Owen C...

 international champions. At the time it won gold, the quartet featured Gene Cokeroft as tenor

Tenor

The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

, Bob Franklin as lead

Melody

A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

, Harlan Wilson as baritone

Baritone

Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...

 and Bill Cain as bass

Bass (voice type)

A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...

.

The Suntones are notable among the barbershop community because they were one of the first quartets to perform show tunes and make use of hand-held microphone

Microphone

A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...

s.

History

After winning the 1961 SPEBSQSA championship, the Suntones became more active touring, performing and recording. In 1966, Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, a situation-comedy television series. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The...

moved his popular TV variety show to Miami and hired the Suntones to sing both as a barbershop quartet and as backing singers.

In addition to barbershop standards, the Suntones introduced many contemporary songs into their performances including medleys of songs from broadway musicals (West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof, The Sound of Music, etc.) arranged by Walter Latzko.

In 1979, Bob Franklin left the group and Drayton Justus became the new lead singer. The group's "final" performance was in early 1985 in Montclair, New Jersey, during a special tribute to arranger Walter Latzko. Bill Cain died in 2004 but Franklin later returned to join Cokeroft, Harlan Wilson and Todd Wilson (Harlan's son) on bass for limited performances.

Studio recordings

Originally released on Sunrise Records:

• A Touch of Gold (1962)
• Afterglow (1966)
• Watch What Happens (1967)
• Somewhere (1971)
• Keep America Singing (1972)
• A Touch of Old (1972)
• Fiddler (1973)
• As Time Goes By (1976)
• Where is Love (1978)
• My Fair Lady (1982)

Compilations

• Suntones (1992) AIC Masterworks Series – 1 CD
• The Complete Works (1999) AIC – 5 CD boxed set
  • Volume 1 (1962–1966)
  • Volume 2 (1967–1971)
  • Volume 3 (1972)
  • Volume 4 (1973–1976)
  • Volume 5 (1978–1982)

External links

• TheSuntones.com, The Suntones home page
• The Suntones at singers.com
• Grady Kerr The Suntones Thirty-minute audio program (mp3)
• The Suntones at AICgold.com
• Suntones recordings at AICgold.com
• Maino, Mike & Jones, Jamie ~35 min. podcast at AmericanACappella.com