I really don’t remember the first time I heard a barbershop quartet, but I’ve always been fasinated with harmony. As a kid I can remember harmonizing along with my folks as we sang on long car trips.

When a young teenager I got a new record player and went down to the record shop to get my first records. My FIRST purchase was a 10” , 33 1/3 RPM Decca record of barbershop quartets like the Bartlesville Barflies. Every year thereafter I would go to the record store and buy the barbershop album of the winning quartets for that year.

I sang in the boys glee club in junior high school and auditioned and was accepted to sing in the a cappella chorus at Montebello High School. In my senior year I sang in the elite ensemble called The Golden Keys, which consisted of four guys and eight girls.

It seemed that the girls always needed extra attention from the teacher, so the four guys formed a barbershop quartet and called ourselves “THE FOUR FELLOWS”. Our teacher (Mr. Cook) entered us in a High School Quartet Contest that was sponsored by the San Gabriel Valley Chapter of the SPEBSQSA, but for some unknown reason listed our name as “The Cookie Cutters”

We came in second next to a quartet that really didn’t sing barbershop, so our quartet was asked to sing at the installation dinner for the San Gabriel Valley Chapter held at the Green Hotel in Pasadena. That was 1957. I later had the priviledge of singing for a few of the guys who were at that dinner and who still belong to the San Gabriel Valley Chapter 40+ years later.

After high school there was college, marriage, family, job, and all the other reasons why I didn’t have time in my life to sing Berbershop. I started taking my family to the annual Whittier Chapter’s Shows every year starting in the mid 70’s. In 1983, I decided that the guys on that stage were having too much fun for me to be sitting out in the audience, so I attended their “Guest Night” a couple of weeks later, only to find that one of the members of the Whittier Choralaires was the baritone that I had sung with in “The Four Fellows”.

As it turns out, one of the other members of the Choralaires was in the same high school chorus with me and is now the bass of our quartet.(Marshall Detro) I’ve been singing with Marshall going on 21 years. Our  first   Quartet   was called “The Foggiest Notion” which sang together for 10 years. Shortly after this quartet broke-up, Marshall and I approached Dale and Chuck and ended up forming “The Winning Combination.

There’s no finer thrill than singing close barbershop harmony with three other guys. Especially when you’re all good friends and like each other’s company well enough to take extended trips to exotic places and be able to sing anywhere at the drop of a hat....

Sometimes we have to bring our own hat!!!  So give us a call!