Jarrett House North

Thanks to the contributions of Jeff Slutzky, the archive of information about the Virginia Glee Club of the 1990s is now nearly complete. It stands at 90 articles, including concert articles, information about tours and rolls, and information about members of the group. For an alum who was a member of the group during this formative time, the archive should stir quite a few memories. If you’re inclined, please go and check it out and leave some impressions.

Incidentally, the places where the archive comes up short is in the 1990-1991 season, and the 1999-2000 season. I believe we have concert programs at a minimum for every home concert and most of the away concerts in the other seasons.

If you do research on a topic that has useful materials in Google Books, it pays to periodically check again to see what else has turned up. Yesterday, I happened to try my customary search term (“university of virginia” “glee club”) and was pleased to find a full five editions of Corks and Curls from the late 1890s through the 1920s that had previously been unavailable, and which shed light on five Glee Club seasons which had previously been obscure. So we have:

Glee Club of 1895-1896. This Glee Club was directed by a student whose name is variously spelled F.G. Rathbun or F.G. Rathburn; the president was McLane Tilton, Jr., who was a member of O.F.C., the Thirteen Club, and the Z Society, and manager of the baseball team.

Glee Club of 1897-1898. This group was conducted by George Latham Fletcher and had John Lawrence Vick Bonney as its president. Both were in Eli Banana and the Z Society; Bonney was also captain of the baseball team and voted “most popular man in college.” Note Francis Harris Abbot in the back row; the man who would later be French professor “Monsieur Abbo'” would also conduct the Glee Club in the following season.

Glee Club of 1911-1912. This season was previously thought to have ended in failure (the group actually disbanded in the fall of the following year), so it is interesting to see a picture of the group looking hale, if not entirely cheerful. Arthur Fairfax Triplett was president that year, and the still-mysterious M.S. Remsburg was conductor. Three of the four officers who disbanded the Club in the fall of 1912 were in the group in the 1911-1912 season.

Glee Club of 1920-1921. This yearbook entry cleared up a misapprehension perpetuated by the 1921 Yellow Journal: while John Koch (Skull and Keys, Eli Banana, College Topics) was the president of the Glee Club this year, he was not its conductor. That was Nevil Henshaw, class of 1902, novelist, short story writer, and author of The Visiting Girl, written in 1907 for UVa theatrical group The Arcadians and performed by the Glee Club to no few brickbats in 1920-1921.

This yearbook also provides the first documentary evidence proving what was once conjecture: that John Albert Morrow, author of “Virginia, Hail, All Hail,” had been a member of the Glee Club (though he was not during the 1920-1921 season).

Glee Club of 1921-1922. Interestingly, no conductor is listed for the group this year (Arthur Fickenscher became conductor the following season), but the president, Frederick R. Westcott, was a graduating student that year who served in the German Club.

Finally, looking at the accomplishments of our forebears, it’s tempting to judge later generations of Glee Club officers as, to use the modern vernacular, a bunch of nons. It’s hard to imagine anyone covering all the bases of Greek, secret society, yearbook, newspaper, drama club, athletics, and Glee Club today, at least while still graduating.

I gave Jeff Slutzky, who was in the Virginia Glee Club with me starting in 1992 and continued on and off in the group throughout the 1990s, a lift back from the 140th reunion weekend last week. He had offered to lend me a set of Glee Club programs from his time in the group to scan for the archives. We listened to Glee Club recordings across about six decades and chatted for a long time. When we got into New York, he asked if I wanted to come in for a minute to go through his collection of programs.

And thus it was that I had delivered into my hands a nearly complete set of Glee Club programs from the entire 1990s–filling in all the blanks in my personal archives from the early 1990s, and carrying on through the late 1990s and the beginnings of the Bruce Tammen years. And I thought I was a packrat, until I saw Jeff’s collection, which included not only programs from tour performances but even set lists from Lawn Concerts. Well done, Jeff. I’ve been scanning the archive all week and have plenty more to go; you can watch the progress here.

Coincidentally, Jeff’s materials arrived at the same time as two other bodies of material: a set of scanned posters from the Glee Club’s capable arts administrator covering the same period, and a set of programs, tour photos, and even recordings from the late 1970s courtesy of Dr. Anthony Gal. The posters are on the wiki already, the materials from Tony Gal will follow. The great thing about this is that just as we run out of the archives that were readily available to the Glee Club, its alumni are stepping up to provide more materials. So now I’m going to start tagging materials by donor as I post them, as a way of thanking contributors to the project.

The Virginia Glee Club 140th Anniversary Weekend was last weekend, and was so wonderful that I fell behind in my work and am still catching up. But what a way to fall behind.

I drove down from Massachusetts to DC on Thursday, where I spent time at the Jefferson Memorial before catching up with my first year roommate Greg Greene. The next morning, I hopped back in the car and drove down, spending the morning and early afternoon in the Small Special Collections Library doing research before going on to the first cocktail party of the weekend.

After spending months and months building up the Virginia Glee Club history wiki, it was nothing short of astonishing to meet so many alums–and to be able to talk intelligently with them about what they did during their time in Club. We had a splendid meeting of alums in the Colonnade Club before moving on to the Glee Club concert, in which Club acquitted themselves nobly.

The concert also raised awareness of just how powerful this collection of singing alums and students could be. When Frank Albinder called alums to stage to sing the alma maters of the University (“Virginia, Hail, All Hail” and “The Good Old Song“), the 130 voices pretty much blew the roof off Old Cabell Hall. Afterwards, we all fetched up on the Corner, where we learned that the Trinity Pub (née the Greenskeeper, née Jabberwock, née many others) was too loud for some of the 90s era old timers (though not, surprisingly, for the 70s era guys). We relocated to St. Maartens, home of many an inaugural drinking experience on 21st birthdays, where at least one Club alum still had a mug hanging at the bar, and closed the night at Littlejohns, home of much late night gastric distress.

The next morning was transcendental, as Club members reunited with old (and new-to-us) directors to review repertoire, then performed on stage. Don Loach’s alumni performance of “A Shadow’s on the Sundial” was probably the most emotional, as he confessed, “The ending of that song gets me every time!” The group then repaired to the Rotunda; on the way, a group of current Club guys gathered to sing “Coney Island Baby” and other works. By the time they were at the Rotunda, they had moved on to “Loch Lomond,” in which many an alum joined in. We then took our collective 130+ voices to the portico of the Rotunda to serenade the startled onlookers with “Virginia, Hail, All Hail” and “The Good Old Song.”

The evening banquet featured more activities, including announcement of a details-pending initiative to fund scholarships for students to engage in Club’s keynote activities of musicianship, leadership, and fellowship; speeches from several including former University president John Casteen, who pointed out that Club’s custodianship and performance of the University songs including “The Good Old Song” constitute one of its most important contributions to the University; and announcement of a digital remaster of the Shadow’s on the Sundial album (available to donors). The evening concluded with many visiting various Corner bars and washing up at The White Spot.

The Glee Club has come a long way since 1899, when Corks and Curls memorably published a fake notice stating that it could “furnish funeral music on short notice.” The extended Fraternity of Talent embraces more than 2000 named alumni of the group to date, and I think that the 100+ that attended the reunion would agree that the more often all could come together, the better.