Music: Chordiality in Washington - TIME

Once upon a time, back in the Gay 90s, a barbershop was a place where mustachioed blades could hang out and sing together in mellow harmony. What happened? The mudpack and the facial, the manicure, new-fangled tonics, lotions and powders, whirring electrical scalp treatments—and the barbershop quartet became a sentimental memory. Then, in 1938, a song-happy Tulsa tax attorney (and baritone) named Owen C. Cash organized the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America. Amateur singers flocked to join the society (25,000 members in 615 chapters in...

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