VINTAGE AUDIO: O.C. Cash recounts the first meeting in Tulsa, OK

VINTAGE AUDIO: O.C. Cash recounts the first meeting in Tulsa, OK

Superman and the rocket from planet Krypton… Newton’s apple and the theory of gravity… O.C. , Rupert, and the rooftop of the Tulsa Club… every monumental discovery needs a great origin story, and so it is with barbershop harmony.

National Barbershop Quartet Day commemorates the birth of the organized barbershop movement on April 11, 1938, when 26 men gathered together at at the invitation of Rupert Hall , the “Royal Keeper of the Minor Keys,” and O.C. Cash, “Third Assistant Temporary Vice Chairman” for a songfest.

Subsequent gatherings snowballed, leading to the founding of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, now known as the Barbershop Harmony Society. Organizations for women sprang up soon after, and in the following decades, a worldwide network of harmony singing societies spanned generations and tens of thousands of singers.

Listen to O.C. Cash's first-hand account of the very first meeting.