Elvis Presley and the ’50s-style drive-in may be dead, but in Evanston, the barbershop quartet still flourishes.
A typical practice of The Shoreliner Chorus, a group of about 30 Evanston barbershop singers, is as full of jokes as it is vocal training.
“You’re not a very good stand-in, you have too much hair,” one singer said when a younger member stepped in to replace another vocalist, who was absent.
“Everybody know where (in the music) we are?” Assistant Director Bill Remien wondered aloud later on.
“Somewhere in Evanston,” a member replied.
The Shoreliners, founded in 1945, still perform regularly — appearing at festivals throughout the summer, holding concerts and attending competitions at least once a year.
The group’s weekly Wednesday rehearsal, at the Presbyterian Home, 3131 Simpson St., is open to the public.
One recent night, the men jumped and swayed as they practiced performing to an imaginary audience. During an actual performance, red vests and dual black arm garters replace the wool knit sweaters the singers usually wear to rehearsal.
During the break in rehearsal for coffee and cookies, the chorus sometimes serenades guests with one of its five quartets.
On Valentine’s Day, some of those quartets were hired to perform serenades throughout Evanston. At the weekly Kellogg Graduate School of Management Friday social event, one Kellogg student was serenaded. The quartet was hired by the woman’s father, who was out of town for the holiday.
The singers pulled the woman aside, handed her a red rose and card, and sang “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” in the Jacobs Center. She smiled and blushed.
Though the quartet planned an entire program, she stopped them after one song. The singers joked about the “short and sweet” performance as they left.
“It’s not just the singing. (We) have a group of guys that we enjoy getting together with,” said Remien, who has been a member for 28 years but still wishes he “had gotten into it sooner.”
Some of the members have rehearsed together for almost three decades.
“The thing that keeps me coming back to (the chorus) is I feel as though these guys are my family,” said the group’s president, Joseph Schlesinger, Medill ’72, who has been a member for 26 years. “The best times in my life, the best experiences I had and the best friends I’ve made I made through barber-shopping.”
Not all of the singers have been in the chorus for decades. Paul Mimura decided to join after Sept. 11, 2001.
Mimura, 49, saw a quartet of Shoreliner singers at a farmer’s market several years ago, and one of the performers handed Mimura a flyer.
Mimura still had the group’s flier in his wallet, and he called the president shortly thereafter.
He is currently one of the Shoreliners’ youngest members. Some singers are pushing 80, Schlesinger said. But in the past, high school students have been a part of the chorus.
In addition to the singing, the group practices showmanship — like jazz hands and facial expressions — for the annual Illinois District Spring Competition. This year’s competition is in Peoria, Ill., on April 25-27.
The Shoreliner Chorus has been performing in the competition for at least as long as its longest active member can remember — at least 28 years.
“Through all the things that have beset me in life … barbershop singing has been what’s kept me sane, kept me centered,” Schlesinger said. “It’s been a tremendous joy to me over the past 26 years.”
