The peerless Jack Pitzer of the Alexandria Harmonizers has published an outstanding remembrance of the fabled chapter.
Looking WAY Back During Our 65th Anniversary Year (The Alexandria Harmonizers Chorus – Our Roots) traces seven decades of barbershop excellence in music, fraternity and leadership. It is a model for chapters wishing to record and share their own history during our Society's 75th Anniversary.
It all began right in the same hall where we meet today – 1605 Cameron Street. The Alexandria Chapter of SPEBSQSA, Inc., (Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America) was chartered June 19, 1948. You’ll hear us referred to as part of the Barbershop Harmony Society, since the public understands that better, but legally we’re still SPEBSQSA – or “The Society” for short. We began to be called the Alexandria Harmonizers after an Alexandria Gazette article used the term to describe the new group in town that was having a concert. Soon after we were founded, the marketing gurus coined the phrase “George Washington Sang Here,” and we had it on our name tags and chapter signs. (It was a play on the popular gag in the Alexandria/Mt. Vernon area “George Washington Slept Here!”)
Read the entire piece on the The Harmoblog, which, by the way, includes a weekly report of everything that happened in the chapter meeting and life that week. Jack follows in the literary tradition of the legendary Wilbur Sparks, past president of SPEBSQSA and a charter member of the Society's Hall of Fame.