Back on New Years' Eve, Random Choice, with Ken Ernst filling in for the absent yours' truly, did a late evening performance for residents and guests of Longview of Oakmont. And that is the only chapter quartet action I have for this reporting period. That being the case, I thought I would relate to you some history about an old time Greater Pittsburgh quartet, The Pittsburghers. In case you are one of the very few who don't know this, the Pittsburghers were International quartet champs way back in 1948. Any history of the Pittsburghers is really a history of Tom Palamone, Sr. I started by researching Bob Brandl's archives down at the Carnegie Library. Found an interesting old Pittsburgh Press article by Jerry Sharpe about Tom and the Pittsburghers.

Seems that when Tom was a youngster in the 1930's in the Larimer-Paulson neighborhood of East Liberty, he used to hang around outside a grocery store owned by Tony "Zebo" Pierro and listen to guys crooning inside with some early Barbershop style harmony. Tom loved the sound of what he was hearing and wished he could join in such singing. One day Zebo invited him in to join them and it wasn't long before Tom was their lead singer. Later, Tom took this no name, just for fun quartet, and turned it into the Allen Club Four with himself as lead, Zebo as baritone, Turp Marcanello as bass and Harry Conte as tenor. The group did club and hotel engagements and caught the attention of Maurice "Molly" Reagan, a Westinghouse engineer credited with starting the Pittsburgh Chapter.

Under Reagan's coaching, the quartet entered the national competition in Cleveland in 1946 and came in a respectable sixth. Palamone renamed the quartet the Pittsburghers, and later the Pittsburgh Four. John "Jiggs" Ward replaced Zebo at baritone and Bill Conway replaced Marcanello at bass. So these four, Conte, Palamone, Ward and Conway beat out 39 other quartets in 1948 to win the national championship.

The championship was the first in a long string of Laurels for the Pittsburghers. They made some of the district's early TV commercials - like the ones for Silvertop Beer - traveled as the house quartet on Pennsylvania's Freedom Train, entertained troops in Vietnam in 1968 and were made Honorary Kentucky Colonels in 1959 by former baseball commissioner Albert Chandler. The quartet continued to sing until 1982 when they disbanded due to failing health of the members. Incidentally, in a JAD June 1951 article in the Harmonizer, I found a photo of the Pittsburghers on the PA Freedom Train standing with "Miss Pennsylvania" and actor Jimmy Stewart. Unfortunately, the quality of the photo wasn't good enough to reproduce here.

To illustrate how busy a championship quartet is in their "champion" year, I read an Oct. 31, 1990 letter from Bill Conway to Bob Brandl in which he recapped their 1948-49 itinerary. This excerpt from that letter is illustrative; "...we flew out of Pittsburgh on Friday morning to Washington, D.C. - sang that Show and After Glow - up early on Saturday morning and flew non-stop to Chicago, Ill. - sang that Show and After Glow and up early Sunday morning to (Cont. on page 9)

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