Friday, February 14, 2003

By MERRY FIRSCHEIN

Staff Writer

MEL EVANS / THE RECORD

The Blue Chip Barbershop Chorus rehearsing this week in Teaneck under the direction of Lou Ponte. The Teaneck group was founded in 1945.

The four tuxedo-clad men walked unannounced into a meeting at the Hospice at Bergen Community Health Care in Westwood. They stopped at the conference table and told Jill Kulbe they had a gift from her husband, Bill. And then they started to sing in perfect barbershop harmony.

The quartet, members of Teaneck’s Blue Chip Barbershop Chorus, serenaded Kulbe on Thursday afternoon with "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" and "Heart of My Heart." They presented her with a rose, two tickets to their annual concert, and a Polaroid photo to mark the occasion.

Everyone in the meeting applauded. Kulbe blushed. "This is the best," she said after the performance. "They are wonderful. It was nice to know he was thinking of me during the workday." It’s just another "singing Valentine" performance for the quartet, Arthur Gullestad, Pat Tracey, Eric Wickman, and Tony Gualtieri.

"When you see [the women] react it helps with the singing," Tracey said after the mini-concert. Kulbe was especially grateful because she and her husband are so busy. He has a new job that takes him out of state and they have not seen a lot of one another lately.

Blue Chip member Thord Johnson, who coordinated Teaneck’s singing Valentine program, said Bill Kulbe told him that he heard about singing Valentines on the radio in Maine and found the group on the Web site, www.singingvalentines.com. It’s part of a nationwide program by The Barbershop Harmony Society, the popular name for The Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, Inc.

The society was formed in 1938 in Oklahoma. Now there are more than 800 all-male chapters with more than 32,000 members in the United States and Canada. Women can join the Sweet Adelines.

The Teaneck group, which is sending out two foursomes this year, was formed in June 1945. The group has 45 members, 35 of whom are active.

The men come mostly from Bergen County; a few are from Essex County and a few from Rockland County, N.Y., said Mark Axelrod, the group’s development vice president. The group has performed singing Valentines for six years. Current Blue Chippers range in age from 30 to 83, Axelrod said; one guy is "on hiatus" because, at 18 years old, he’s away at college.

Men join and then find they can’t stop singing. Rollie Neal became a Blue Chip member in 1960. And some men have a family history of barbershopping; Dane Marble is a third-generation singer.

Rehearsals, every Wednesday at 7:45 p.m. in the Rodda Center in Teaneck, are a mix of zingy one-liners and serious music-making. Lou Ponte, who has been directing the group for nine years and has been singing barbershop for 32, stands in the front, exhorting his 30 charges to make "pretty music." A man in the second row gently blows the pitch, there’s a collective gathering of breath and focus, and then the harmony of "Those Old Songs" fills the room. "Nice and pretty now," Ponte called out Wednesday night. Men, who just moments before were joking around, stood up straight, arms at their sides, with all eyes on Ponte as he led them through Irving Berlin’s "You Keep Coming Back Like a Song." The Blue Chips perform at parades, hospitals, and nursing homes.

Their big annual concert is the first weekend of November at Northern Valley Regional High School in Demarest. The group also competes in local and regional contests. Barbershopping appeals on many levels, said Blue Chippers. For some, it’s the camaraderie.

"It’s a guy’s night out," said Dom Santucci, relaxing after the evening’s rehearsal.

And of course there’s the love of the music. Like blues, gospel, and jazz, barbershop music is an indigenous form of American music.

Axelrod searched for the right words to describe how he feels when he sings.

"When you get a chord to ring it’s like being inside a bell that’s pealing," he said.

Merry Firschein’s e-mail address is firschein@northjersey.com