Today in History - 1938

The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, or SPEBSQSA was held at the Roof Garden of the Tulsa Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Tulsa tax attorney Owen C. Cash ran into a fellow Tulsan, investment banker Rupert I. Hall, in the lobby of the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City, stranded when a storm closed the airport. Striking up a few chords (after tipping the bellboy to find them a tenor singer), the men bemoaned the decline of that all-American institution, the barbershop quartet. Determined to stem that decline, they wrote a humorous letter to friends, stating:

"In this age of dictators and government control of everything, about the only privilege guaranteed by the Bill of Rights not in some way supervised or directed is the art of barbershop quartet singing. Without a doubt, we still have the right of peaceable assembly, which, we are advised by competent legal authority, includes quartet singing.

"The writers have, for a long time, thought that something should be done to encourage the enjoyment of this last remaining vestige of human liberty. Therefore, we have decided to hold a songfest on the roof garden of the Tulsa Club on Monday, April 11, 1938, at 6:30 p.m."