{"id":95,"date":"2005-08-04T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-04T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=95"},"modified":"2005-08-04T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-04T08:05:00","slug":"the_perennial_freshmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2005\/08\/the_perennial_freshmen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perennial Freshmen"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Four Freshmen were winning 1950s Down Beat<\/em> polls as the top vocal group and their recordings were ubiquitous on radios and juke boxes, I was more impressed by their contemporaries, the Hi-Los. The Hi-Los\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 mix of voices was richer and more varied, their arrangements more harmonically daring, and the group always sounded as if they were enjoying themselves. I found much of the original Four Freshmens\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 work lugubrious.
\nWell, the Hi-Los are no more, but thank heaven for recordings. I have been listening to the brilliant The Hi-Los And All That Jazz<\/em> since it came out in 1959. I keep hearing new things in their performance of its brilliant Clare Fischer arrangements. Jack Sheldon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eight-bar trumpet solo on the bridge of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Then I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll Be Tired of You\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is embedded in my psyche. Inexcusably, Columbia has allowed The Hi-Los And All That Jazz<\/em> to go out of print, but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Then I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll Be Tired of You\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is included in this compilation<\/a>.
\nThe Four Freshmen roll on. The original members were Hal Kratzsch, Bob Flanigan and the brothers Ross and Bob Barbour. Kratzsch was succeeded by Ken Errair in 1953 and then Ken Albers in 1956. Flanigan, the last of them, retired in 1992, but the group has continued through a variety of incarnations. It seems to me that the current edition is the best of all, including the original. The new Freshman are Brian Eichenberger, Curtis Calderon, Vince Johnson and Bob Ferreira. Over the past two or three years, they have evolved, retaining the vocal matrix of the Barbour-Flanigan-Kratsch group, adding impressive instrumental musicianship and degrees of subtlety in their new album, The Four Freshmen In Session<\/a><\/em>. Eichenberger, the lead singer, is a more than capable guitarist. Johnson chooses good notes in his bass lines and adds trombone to the textures of the instrumental ensemble. Calderon comes as the real surprise. He is a superb soloist, lyrical on flugelhorn in an intriguing arrangment of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My One and Only Love,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d articulating crisply in the high register on trumpet in a seven-bar solo on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s All Right With Me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d then ending the piece softly muted over voices in a coda.
\nI might quarrel with a diction decision or two in the ensemble singing\u00e2\u20ac\u201doccasional over-emphasis on consonants (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153meaD<\/strong>ow,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ShaD<\/strong>ows\u00e2\u20ac\u009d)\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand with the laconic whistling on a couple of tracks. But, all in all, I find myself enjoying this CD more than I ever thought I would enjoy a Four Freshmen album. They deserve accolades for helping to keep alive the wonderful Bill Carey-Carl Fischer song, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve Changed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Whoever has the vocal solo on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If I Only Had A Brain\u00e2\u20ac\u009d captures the spirit of the song better than anyone since Ray Bolger in The Wizard of Oz<\/em>.
\nIf you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to compare the original Four Freshmen with the new group, Mosaic has issued a box set<\/a> of their fifties Capitol recordings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Four Freshmen were winning 1950s Down Beat polls as the top vocal group and their recordings were ubiquitous on radios and juke boxes, I was more impressed by their contemporaries, the Hi-Los. The Hi-Los\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 mix of voices was richer and more varied, their arrangements more harmonically daring, and the group always sounded as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-95","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}