Lettermen’s sound stays in harmony with the times

Friday, Nov. 23, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

Who: The Lettermen

When: 7:30 tonight and Saturday

Where: South Point Showroom

Tickets: $20 to $30; 797-8055

The Lettermen may not be your cup of homogenized milk, but their harmonies have kept them working steadily for almost 50 years.

"We weren't rock 'n' roll, and sometimes that was an advantage," said 66-year-old Tony Butala, who has been performing professionally since the age of 7. "I'm writing a book now about my life. My title is 'Between Rock and a Hard Place.' "

Butala founded the pop group when he was still a teenager. He's the only one who has remained in the Lettermen since the beginning.

The beginning was in Las Vegas in 1958 when he, Mike Barnett and Talmadge Russell appeared as The Rhythm Boys in "New Comers of 1928," a Las Vegas revue that also starred such legends as Paul Whiteman, Buster Keaton, Rudy Vallee, Harry Richman, Fifi D'Orsay and Billy Gilbert.

When the revue closed a few months later, Butala kept the group together and eventually adopted the name the Lettermen.

"When you're young and want to start a group you look around at the names of those around you," Butala said. "In the early '50s the groups were named after birds - the Robins, the Penguins, the Swallows, the Crows. In the middle '50s it was automobiles - the Cadillacs, the Impalas, the Fleetwoods. In the late '50s it was schools - the Four Freshmen, Danny and the Juniors, the Four Preps, the Sophomores. So Mike Barnett's wife came up with the idea of calling us the Lettermen."

They donned letter sweaters and took to the stage, a squeaky clean group that produced great harmonies.

"I decided I was not going to try to do modern harmony, like the Four Freshman or groups like that," Butala said. "My idea was to find a sound between the big band sounds and the Platters and the Four Freshmen. That's when I developed the Lettermen sound.

"The concept was to put together the best-looking guys with the best solo voices who could move and dance."

There have been a few changes through the years, but the sound is the same. Apparently the formula works well. Butala says The Lettermen have performed 100 to 150 concerts a year for the past 47 years - weathering the disco era, country and western, rap, metal and all the other genres.

"I learned how to entertain when I was 7 years old," Butala said. "I learned how to entertain people without having a hit record. We're not a vocal group that stands up there and sings records. We are an entertainment package that just happened to have had hits in the '60s and '70s."

Before he found success with the Lettermen, Butala was a seasoned entertainer. When he was 7 he sang on "Starlets on Parade" on KDKA radio in Pittsburgh and in live performances impersonated Al Jolson, Ted Lewis and Eddie Cantor.

He became a member of the Mitchell Boys' Choir in Los Angeles in 1951, the same year he appeared in the film "On Moonlight Bay" starring Gordon MacRae and Doris Day. He also appeared in 1953's "The War of the Worlds" with Gene Barry and the 1954 classic "White Christmas" with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.

Butala did voice-over work for Walt Disney in "Peter Pan" and sang for Tommy Rettig in the Dr. Seuss classic "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T."

When he isn't busy with the Lettermen, Butala is building his dream home at his 40-acre vineyard in the Napa Valley in Northern California.

And he's involved with the Vocal Group Hall of Fame Museum, which he founded in 1998.

Butala also is actively supporting the passage of Truth in Music legislation to protect artists and groups of artists whose identities are being used by others without their consent.

"It's a consumer fraud issue," Butala said.

The Lettermen's 75th album, "The Best of Broadway," will be released early next year.