Barbershop Quartet Day

Shave and a haircut... two bits!

Barbershop music is deeply rooted in African American history. Throughout the 1880s in the South, men mingled with barbers and others in the shop while waiting for their haircut. They sang and harmonized together for entertainment. This sound turned into a genre called barbershop music and continued thriving from then until the early 1900s. In 1910, a song titled ‘Play That Barbershop Chord’ was recorded and released to the public as a prime example of barbershop harmony. This art of harmonized singing was to produce a style of a cappella without the need for accompanying music. Each quartet sang songs with easy-to-understand lyrics and catchy melodies.

After 1929, barbershop music started to become less popular and even less common during The Great Depression. In 1938, two men: Rupert Hall and O.C. Cash sent out invitations for a songfest to 14 people who were encouraged to invite others. On April 11, approximately 25 men met in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and held a quartet singing competition. They continued to meet and grow in numbers, consequently creating a revival in barbershop music and founding the Society of Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, Inc. (SPEBSQSA). Thankfully, since 2004, they are more commonly known as the Barbershop Harmony Society.