(Contributed)
Peninsula Profile: Q & A Interview with Tony Butala
Tony ButalA was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and began singing professionally at the age of seven. He has never stopped singing. He was a member of the famed Mitchell Boys Choir and for the past half-century has been the one constant for The Lettermen, one of the most enduring singing trios in pop music history. The group has made numerous appearances at the Door Community Auditorium in Fish Creek and is scheduled for another return engagement in late November. It’s a return home of sorts for Butala who is a part-time resident of Door County. He sat down at his boyhood home in Sharon, PA, for a telephone interview with Door County Magazine.
Q: Tell us a little about Sharon, PA, and your life there.
A: It’s a steel town on the Ohio border. Right now I’m sitting in my grandpa’s house looking across the street at the house I grew up in. I didn’t know we were poor, because everyone who lived around us was poor. I was the eighth of 11 children. My dad worked in the mill. I’ve never worked for anyone in my life. The only other job I’ve had other than as a singer was when I inherited my brother’s paper route. When I moved out to California at age 10, I’d tell my friends that I delivered in two states. My route ran right down the state line with Pennsylvania on one side and Ohio on the other.
Q: The Mitchell Boys Choir must have offered an excellent introduction into the entertainment work?
A: As a member of the choir, I was in such movies as “War of the Worlds,” “On Moonlight Bay” with Doris Day and Gordon McCray, “White Christmas” with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney, and with Frank Sinatra on the recording of “High Hopes.” But when I turned 14, my voice had changed and I wasn’t this cute soprano anymore, I became this ugly, awkward adolescent teenager (he laughs). I stayed on and eventually became assistant choir director. But I did learn that show business is two words – show and business.
Q: How far do the roots of The Lettermen extend?
A: I also attended Hollywood Professional High School. Not to be confused with Hollywood High School. My class of 1956 included the likes of Brenda Lee, Molly Bee, Jill St. John and a little girl by the name of Conchetta Ingolia. While still in high school I started a jazz quartet with her and a couple other ex-Mitchell choirboys, called The Fourmost. After a few years she told me that she had a chance to do a television commercial and had to leave the group. She went on to be cast in a new television series “Hawaiian Eye,” changing her name to Connie Stevens. But that resulted in one of the defining moments of The Lettermen. I decided not to get another female voice, but keep the group at three guys. We now only had to split the check three ways. Besides, there are only three main notes in a chord, so you really only need three singers in a vocal group.
Q: What made you unique?
A: Our music was somewhere between big band, jazz and rock ‘n roll. Also, most groups at the time had one lead singer and two or three others singing “doo wha” in the background. I wanted three very strong soloists who not only had the ability and showmanship to perform and entertain an audience on their own, but who also could maintain the discipline needed to be group singers.
Q: Who were the original Lettermen?
A: What original Lettermen? The Lettermen name first appeared in February 1958 on the marquee of the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. I, along with Mike Barnett and Talmadge Russell performed in the record-shattering review “Newcomers of 1928.” It featured Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra. Now you have to understand that Paul was a huge star in the 1920s and 30s. Based on record sales, he was as big a star as The Beatles were 30 years later. He starred in this review featuring silent films star Buster Keaton and singer Rudy Vallee. We were the reincarnation of The Rhythm Boys, the vocal group that toured with Whiteman’s Orchestra in the 1920s. I played the part of Bing Crosby. It lasted six weeks. But for 15 minutes every night I was in a skit onstage with Buster Keaton. It was amazing at such a young age to be working with such monstrous stars. We wanted to make a recording, but we didn’t have the money to record. Paul Whiteman offered to pay for a recording session if we’d become the new Rhythm Boys. Actually, Gary Clarke and Jim Blaine were the first Lettermen to record with me.
Q: When did things start to break for you?
A: By 1960, the members of the group evolved to be Jim Pike and Bob Engemann, and we developed The Lettermen sound. If anyone left the group they’d have to sell their third, back to the group and never be able to ever again use the Lettermen name. We were originally signed by Warner Bothers and released our first singles. But in 1961, Nic Venet came on board at Capitol Records and told Capitol it needed some new blood. Our debut Capitol single record came out in 1961 entitled, “That’s My Desire.” The B-side of the record was a slow, syrupy tune called “The Way You Look Tonight.” It was originally from the movie “Swingtime” with Ginger Rodgers and Fred Astaire. There was this DJ in Detroit who had a habit of playing B-side tunes and one night he did just that with our record. The phones lit up and it became a hit with the young kids. It was a very powerful station, so when Capitol called the radio station and told them they were playing the wrong side of the record, the station told Capitol they had better turn the record over, which Capitol did, and it went up to the No. 5 position on the charts. That was a huge break, because we were now typed as a unique romantic ballad-singing group. “When I Fall in Love” came out later in the year and also reached the top of the charts.
Q: Unlike many vocal groups of that era, you not only survived but flourished with 32 consecutive top 100 albums. Why?
A: I think our sound was appealing to both youth and adults. We did campus tours, but we also appeared on shows hosted by Jack Benny, George Burns, Bob Hope and Red Skelton. If we would have stuck strictly to rock we wouldn’t have had that chance. It’s helped to produce a well-rounded career from concerts to Vegas shows, television and recording. Another important factor is that we’ve had only seven personnel changes in the past 50 years. My current partners, Donovan Tea and Mark Preston, are the longest lasting Lettermen besides me. There was a fellow I became friends with, during my days as a lounge singer in the late 50s, when I was with such groups as the “Up Starts” and the “What Notts”, he was with the Bobby Doyle Three. When we had an opening in The Lettermen, he wanted to join the group in the worst way. He asked for an audition and I granted him one, but his sound wasn’t quite right. That guy was Kenny Rogers.
Q: How do you stay fresh?
A: If you line up all 76 albums we’ve done in row and look at the cover photos, you can watch our hair grow longer and longer through 1979. We never wanted to be considered too passé or square. Every year we’d reinvent ourselves. We’d keep abreast of GQ and other trendy magazines for wardrobe style. We never considered ourselves as being an “oldies group”; we look at The Lettermen as being a 2010 entertainment package that happens to have had hits in the 1960’s and 1970’s. We’re always striving to better ourselves. I’m sitting in my Grandpa’s house now across the street from where I grew up, reminiscing of those wonderful days as kids not realizing how poor we were but how loved we were. Life to me is not a matter of making money. It’s a matter of doing the best I can, to do a good show. After every show we go out into the theater lobby to meet and sign autographs for our fans. We are usually the last ones to leave because of our conversations with those fans. It gets really personal for me, when I realize how our vocal group has made such a big impact in people’s lives. We change about 25% of our show each year. We can’t do all of the 800 songs we’ve recorded in one show, so we rotate songs from show to show and try to do those with the most appeal. We feel we’re not just there to sing songs, but to entertain our audience. I don’t believe an act should just get on stage and phone it in. We like to interact with our audience. We have the ushers take down all those “No Cameras Allowed” signs in most theaters, because we have a camera song in our show, where we actually take photographs on stage with patrons who have brought cameras. We try to treat every show we do as if it were our last show.
Q: I read in the group’s bio that you once wanted to change the group’s name?
A: In the late ‘50s when you started a vocal group and wanted to stand out in a crowd, all you had to do was use a novel name that would give your group a unique look or image. If you’re a new group in today’s world and you want to get noticed, you have to dye your hair purple, multi-pierce your face, ears and tongue, and even then you may not be different enough to get some notoriety. The Lettermen started out wearing letter sweaters to help us stand out from the other new groups. By the time the 1960’s came around we felt the Lettermen name and the sweaters became passé. But since we already had a few hits and a tremendous success, Capitol Records was reluctant to make the name change we wanted to make, but they did let us pack the lettermen sweaters away in “moth balls.”
Q: Clearly, Door County is a special place for you.
A: My home in Door County is less than ten-minutes away from the (Door Community) Auditorium. I love to perform at the Auditorium because I can walk to work. I fell in love with Door County years ago, when I first came to the area to perform at the Carlton Club in Green Bay. Carl Berndt would take me on sailboat cruises up to the county. It’s just all so beautiful. I get up to the county three or four times a year. Not as often as I’d like. Unfortunately, with my vineyards in Napa Valley, CA, my family in Southern California, my work with the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, which I founded in my home town of Sharon, PA, and over 100 concerts a year, I have to ration my trips to Door County.
Q: I have to ask you; of all your hit songs do you have a favorite?
A: It’s like asking me; of my four kids and four grandkids which one is my favorite? It’s difficult for me to do that; however, my sentimental favorite is “The Way You Look Tonight.” I remember driving to my job down the Ventura Freeway in LA in the early 1960’s as a singer/bass player in a funky lounge group, not knowing if anything was ever going to come of our experimental recording as The Lettermen. As I heard “The Way You Look Tonight” being played on the radio for the first time, and the DJ was saying it was his “pick” to be a “hit” record, I was so moved I couldn’t drive, so I managed to pull over to the side of the freeway and cried until the song was finished.
Q: What’s ahead?
A: We’re filming a Television concert special next year, which will be aired on PBS marking the 50th anniversary of our first hit recording.
Q: Anything that has annoyed you over all these years of being in the group?
A: Yes, when people still ask me “which letter are you.”
