The Lettermen’s co-founder laps up memories into six decades

Harmonies will line the horizon at 7 p.m. Saturday when The Lettermen lift their voices on stage at the Alabama Theatre in North Myrtle Beach.

On a phone call last month, Tony Butala, who co-founded the group in the late 1950s, said by handling their own vocal arrangements, “we break a lot of rules, and keep the harmonies tight.” By the end of 1961, The Letterman stopped the Earth with “The Way You Look Tonight” and “When I Fall in Love.”

Sharing the microphone with Donovan Tea, part of the trio since 1984, and Bobby Poynton (1988-95 and since 2011, also with TV and theatrical acting credits), Butala said the group’s never been about one man in front, and two behind, hence their ease to take any melody’s highs and lows in notes and change off on lead.

“We’ll just cross over,” Butala said, glad to always have three guys who share and take turns with their voices, wit and humor.

The Lettermen also have crossed paths with many luminaries through the decades. Butala brought up hearing about “Turn Around, Look At Me,” from its co-writer, Glen Campbell, then “such an unknown, brilliant guitar player” in the studio. The Lettermen recorded it in 1961, welcoming Campbell’s chops and fretwork as well, Butala said. Although not a chart hit, to which Campbell also could relate in his own effort for a single, the song became a “favorite” at the time for The Lettermen’s nightclub shows, Butala said, remembering a request from the audience at the Pittsburgh area’s former Holiday House, which included family from his hometown Sharon, Pa,, “an hour away.”

Butala said The Vogues, a Pennsylvania-native quartet best known for “Five O’Clock World,” also played Holiday House, sharing their own take on “Turn Around, Look At Me,” which he called “wonderful ... with four-part harmonies,” but that when The Lettermen returned to that venue, “people would say, ‘Hey, you’re doing The Vogues’ song.’ ”

Soon after The Lettermen first signed with Capitol Records, it joined with EMI in the United Kingdom to form the “the first worldwide record company,” Butala said, and that helped the group grow “a big international following.”

A party with such Capitol acts as Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, and The Lettermen in attendance, Butala said, welcomed into the amalagamated record label “fold” some “moptop kids” on the EMI roster who had started to command attention in Germany, and would soon score “gigantic hits.” Talking with John Lennon, Butala recalled, he was floored to be told the Fab Four “loved The Lettermen harmonies.”

The trio later recorded The Beatles’ “Yesterday,” with Butala on lead, and he said he received “a special letter” from Lennon amid the Beatles’ breakup. The late rhythm guitarist also encouraged The Lettermen to cover his composition “Love,” the first artists to do so, Butala said, from 1971.

Butala helped establish the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, a who’s who of inductees since 1998 (www.vocalgroup.org). Although a lack of funding in the joint venture prompted closure of its quarters in Sharon, along the Ohio line, near Youngstown, Butala said “all the memorabilia” is secure, and initiatives remain in mind nationwide for exhibits, along with hopes for “another induction ceremony.”

Praising his two vocal partners in this longest spanning combination, Butala also appreciates they’re being “wonderful human beings.” The journey lasting more than half-a-century also will ride back in an autobiography he said is due for release probably around the end of this year.

Seeing fans at concerts after more than five decades, Butala said, “you ought to hear” the memories shared “at the autograph table every night” after shows, such as a woman recalling a first date from 1961 with the man whom she married.

Butala flashed a sense of humor and respect in summarizing, among industry colleagues, the love-ballad-driven identity of The Lettermen, whom he said “never sang rock,”

“I tell people,” he said, “that the Beach Boys sing about hot rods and surfing, ... the Beatles sang about British Invasion music, and The Lettermen, we sing backseat music.”

“We’re the reason for more babies than any other group in the world.”

This story was originally published October 20, 2016 at 5:00 AM with the headline "The Lettermen’s co-founder laps up memories into six decades."