The Revelers
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/Lewis_James_and_Elliot_Shaw_and_Wilfred_Glenn_as_the_Revelers_circa_1925.jpg/220px-Lewis_James_and_Elliot_Shaw_and_Wilfred_Glenn_as_the_Revelers_circa_1925.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Harrison%2C_Glenn%2C_Shaw%2C_James_as_The_Shannon_Four_circa_1918.jpg/220px-Harrison%2C_Glenn%2C_Shaw%2C_James_as_The_Shannon_Four_circa_1918.jpg)
The Revelers were an American quintet (four
All of the members had recorded individually or in various combinations. The quartet, organized in 1917, performed under the name The Shannon Four or The Shannon Quartet before changing their name to The Revelers in 1925. [1] The original Revelers were tenors Franklyn Baur and Lewis James (and occasionally Charles W. Harrison substituting when Baur or James was unavailable), baritone Elliot Shaw, bass Wilfred Glenn (who had popularized "Asleep in the Deep" on phonograph records), and pianist Ed Smalle. Smalle was replaced by Frank Black in 1926.
The Revelers (with Black at the piano) appeared in a pioneer movie musical, The Revelers (1927), filmed in Warner Bros.' sound-on-disc Vitaphone process. This one-reel short film, recently restored by The Vitaphone Project, shows the group performing "Mine," "Dinah," and "No Foolin'." Due to the limitations of the primitive sound production, the group was forced to perform the entire nine-minute set in one continuous, uninterrupted take, with the camera in a fixed position. A second short, filmed the same day with another three songs, awaits restoration.
Franklyn Baur was replaced by Frank Luther and then James Melton (later a Metropolitan Opera tenor).
Radio and recording artists
The Revelers were stars on radio and in vaudeville, as well as in the recording studio. On radio they were regulars on The Palmolive Hour (1927–31).
They had recording contracts with
Although The Revelers stayed current, making a point of including the latest popular songs and show tunes in their repertoire, their sound seemed increasingly old-fashioned. Their listening audience gravitated toward the top soloists of the early 1930s, like
James Melton's
GLENN: Say, Jim! What about that other song? That catchy one that came out in 1927.
SHAW: The one we sort of helped make popular?
JAMES: The one we recorded 20 years ago?
BLACK: And the one we rehearsed all afternoon?
(group breaks up laughing)
The final song was "I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover." The group performed it according to the vintage-1927 arrangement, complete with the vocal interpolations straying from the lyrics. The performance unwittingly underscored how dated the group had become, as the 1948 studio audience laughed at all the jazz-age gimmicks.
The Revelers were inducted into The Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999. In 2012, a CD titled "A Little Bit of Heaven" was released with 24 of their earliest electrical recordings as The Shannon Quartet.
Offshoots
The Revelers made a comeback (in name only, without Glenn) in 1956. This new male quartet made its debut at the Palace Theatre in New York. Variety noted the revival, and the group's emphasis on old songs as of yore. The new lineup ran the gamut from show tunes to sea chanteys and drinking songs.[2] The personnel: Feodore Tedick or Robert Simpson (first tenor), Thomas Edwards (second tenor), Laurence Bogue (baritone), and Edward Ansara (bass). This foursome is not to be confused with another Revelers group based in Plainfield, New Jersey; this was a mixed quartet that sang at local affairs.
Australian musicologist Frank Bristow has identified four of The Revelers (Baur, Harrison, Shaw, and Glenn) as part of the sextet The Troubadors [sic] with singers Harold Yates and Cooper Lawley.[3]
The German group
Appearances in other media
In 2014, the Revelers' recording of "When Yuba Plays the Rhumba on the Tuba" played over the end credits of Boardwalk Empire's episode 2 of season 5.[4]