 Over the last 48 years in show business, Tony Butala has accomplished a plethora of things to write home about. Surprisingly, the only thing he would have changed if he could would have been his signature.
That’s because as the original founder of The Letterman, Butala admits that back in the late 50’s when he started the group, they chose the wrong name.
“In the early 50’s, if you started a singing group, you’d name it after a bird,” he explains. “In the mid-50’s, they were naming groups after cars. In the late 50’s groups were being named after schools. The Four Freshmen, The Four Preps, The Sophomores and Danny and the Juniors were already in existence by the time we came along. So we called ourselves The Lettermen and wore letter sweaters as a visual aid to add impact.”
“But in the 60’s, those names became passé and in 1963 I went to our record label, Capitol Records, and told them that I wanted to change our name,” he continuers. “But we already had had a few hits and tremendous success so the label was reluctant to try to market a new name. We were already known around the world by then. So I made sure that every year after that we updated our image.
While that may have meant getting rid of the sweaters, The Lettermen, who will be appearing at the Suncoast July 18-20, were still able to retain the heat generated by their fans. Today, having just recorded their 76th album, “The Lettermen Sing the Best of Broadway,” the players may have changed through the years but the quality of the group’s sound and performance, has remained the same, thanks in great part to the consistency of Butala, the lead singer whose voice has always added that breathy quality to the group’s harmony.
“I looked up to the Velvet Fog, Mel torme,” he notes. “I called myself the Velvet Smog.”
Of course, as with any successful entity, it is the very fabric of The Letterman, and the thread that is woven through the group that has led to their sustenance on the musical scene.
“In 48 years, there have only been four or five changes in the members of The Letterman,” Butala notes. “We are not a nostalgia group. We are an entertainment group. Vocally, we are three guys with the same range and same vocal timber – you can’t blend a trumpet with a tuba, so to speak. We were actually the first ‘Boy’s Band,” meaning that we were the first to look for three strong soloists who had the ability and showmanship to entertain an audience and the discipline to sing harmony together as a group. We also had to look good and be able to move. That was the vision for The Lettermen from the beginning.”
Coming up with their own sound that was between the Big Band vocal groups such as the Modernaires, Pied Pipers and Mills Brothers, and the early R&B rock groups such as the Flamingos and the Platters, the group first appeared in Las Vegas the year of their inception in 1958. At that time, The Letterman consisted of Butala, Mike Barnett and Talmadge Russell. They auditioned and got the role of the Rhythm Boys, the trio that traveled with the Paul Whitman Orchestra in the 1920’s, in a show called “Newcomers of 1928” at the Desert Inn. The show starred Paul Whitman, silent film comic Buster Keaton, singers Rudy Vallee and Harry Richmond, film star Fifi D'Orsay and the sneezing comedian Billy Gilbert. Butala played the part of Bing Crosby, who sang lead with the real Rhythm Boys.
By 1960, The Lettermen, which now consisted of Butala, Jim Pike (whose falsetto pre-dated Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons) and Bob Engemann, were signed to Warner Brothers Records and released their first singles: "Their Hearts Were Full of Spring" b/w "When" and "The Magic Sound" b/w "Two Hearts." Those first records were heard by Nic Venet, a young, creative A&R man with Capitol Records who years earlier had written a few songs with Butala. Impressed by their unique natural close harmonic blend and convinced that he could produce a hit record with them, Venet signed the group to what turned out to be a more than 25-year contract with Capitol Records.
In the summer of 1961, The Lettermen recorded their debut Capitol single. As fate would have it, the label decided to put a ballad, “The Way You Look Tonight” on the B-side of "That's My Desire," their A-side doo-wop single. Rock ‘n’ roll was the commercial sound of the day and Capitol deducted that since the B-side was slow, radio DJ’s would have to play the A-side. But listener requests put “the Way You Look Tonight” on radio play lists nationwide and the song shot to No. 13 on the Billboard charts. The Letterman followed that up with their second single, also a ballad called “When I Fall in Love,” which went to No. 7 and established them as the most romantic singing group of the 60’s.
The '60's and early '70's saw The Lettermen score over 25 chart hit singles, including "Theme From 'A Summer Place" (No. 16, 1965, from the Sandra Dee/Troy Donahue film), "Goin' Out of My Head/Can't Take My Eyes Off You" (No. 7, 1968, the first hit record ever to completely integrate two songs as one) and "Hurt So Bad (No. 12, 1969).
Their signature sound made romantic standards of songs such as "Smile," "Put Your Head On My Shoulder," "Shangri-La," "Love" and on and on.
How The Lettermen came about to begin with is an interesting story in itself.
“I was the eighth of eleven children born into a very poor Croatian family in Sharon, Pennsylvania,” Butala recounts. “All of us kids were born in the house. I had so much energy that my parents enrolled me in dance class when I was six. And because I was the only boy, I got a chance to sing in the productions the class put on. By the time I was 7, I was singing professionally for such groups as the Knights of Columbus and the Rotary Club. I also did an Al Jolson impression, black face and all. I began getting $10 as show, then $15, doing three to four shows a week, which was more than my dad made working at the steel mill.”
“By the time I was 8, I had my own radio show in Pittsburgh at KDKA, which was the first commercial radio station in the world,” he adds. “When I was 10, my mom, who was a practical nurse, went to California to help a sick cousin and took me with her. Bob Mitchell of the famed Mitchell Boys Choir was holding auditions and I went -- and got the job. Since Bob owned his own boarding house, my parents said that if I wanted to stay in California, I could. So my mom went home and I stayed. While in the choir, I appeared in such classic films as White Christmas, War of the Worlds and On Moonlight Bay I also did the voices of The Lost Boys in the Walt Disney cartoon Peter Pan.”
Butala says that when he was 14, his voice changed and he became an awkward adolescent with a cracking sound. So Mitchell sent him to Hollywood Professional School where young soon-to-be stars such as Brenda Lee and Jill St. John and Concetta Ingolia were in his graduating class. While attending the high school, Butala formed
The Fourmost, a vocal group comprised of three ex-Mitchell Boy Choir friends and his female classmate, Ingolia. In a few years, after moderate local success, Ingolia exited the group to be cast in a new TV series, "Hawaiian Eye," and chose the stage name Connie Stevens.
“When Connie left me with the three guys, that’s when I got the idea to form all all-male group,” Butala acknowledges.
The Lettermen, as mentioned previously, has undergone personnel changes over the decades. Bob Engemann left in 1967 and was replaced by Gary Pike, Jim’s brother. The group changed again a few years later after throat problems forced Jim Pike to leave. When Jim left in 1973, he was replaced by another Pike brother, Donny.
The last major change to the group came in 1984. After having interviewed more than 350 singers to form The Lettermen initially (including Kenny Rogers, who flunked the audition, according to Butala), Butala always had other singers waiting in the wings in case something happened. But wanting to bring the group into the 80’s, Butala chose 29-year-old accomplished singers and entertainers Donovan Tea and Mark Preston (who left the group for a little while and came back -- Ernie Pontiere, Bobby Poynton, Don Campeau, and Chad Nichols each had stints as members of The Lettermen while he was away). Now 53, both remain with the group today.
Through it all, the Lettermen have continued to record, averaging at least one album a year. But Butala maintains that it’s not about their singing.
“Singing is about hit records and albums,” he sums up. “We’re a 2008 entertainment package that happens to have had hits in the 60’s and 70’s. We have a reputation for entertaining. That focus has also been thee from the beginning.”
Make the Suncoast your “summer place” this coming weekend, and you’ll experience it firsthand.
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ADDITIONAL
ARTICLES
BY
BOBBIE KATZ
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The Way They Look Tonight
