Tales of Waring: how it all started

[1] Shawnee Press was the company that published Waring’s popular songs in sheet music, replicating on the page the specific arrangement the Pennsylvanians had used to perform it.

[2] "Bye Bye Blues" by Fred Hamm, Dave Bennett, Bert Lown and Chauncey Gray, the ‘arrangement’ being as Dr. Lorenzo experienced it during the interview ('in the mirror'); although undoubtedly a real recording of it exists preserved among the memorabilia of the ‘Fred Waring’s America’ collection at Penn State U. in College Park, Pa.; which Fred bequeathed to his alma mater just before dying in 1984. The Collection includes practically everything Fred Waring ever recorded.

[3] ‘Tone Syllables’: a technique invented by Fred gradually, step by step, over the years, which eventually was in widespread usage largely due to his nationally respected workshops in 'the old Castle Inn' in Delaware Water Gap. It structured the vocalists singing in a group in a way that helped them to enunciate simultaneously and in such a technically correct way that the words would come out very clearly for an audience, even though sung by a great many people at once (which normally muddied the lyrics), and without any loss of tone, color, or phrasing, and without the usual distracting mess-s-s, caused by each singer singing his or her own ‘s’, let’s say, or other consonant, at a slightly different split-second from everybody else’s. Robert Shaw, the great American choral conductor of classical works, who studied under Fred Waring, said of Fred’s approach in the introduction to Virginia Waring’s book, “Erratic enunciation... simply was not tolerated.” Virginia herself, who studied piano under Nadia Boulanger at Fontainebleau in France, took five pages (219-223) to explain just a few aspects of the complex technique Fred invented. Waring believed in and was a master of ‘the sung song’, which meant that the lyrics were as all-important as the music was all-important, and both had to be heard clearly and understood and appreciated by the audience. His technique included tricks that got the words and their most important feelings heard AND UNDERSTOOD, both therefore, tricks and techniques including a cappella, rubato, and sudden changes in volume from syllable to syllable, as a way of interpreting both the words and music. The great orchestra conductors Ormandy and Toscanini, who were Fred’s golfing buddies at Shawnee, most of the time had only music to interpret for their orchestras, the Philadelphia and NBC, respectively, but both admired Waring because he had words and music BOTH to interpret and get across to an audience all of the time, and did a masterful (or maybe miraculous) job of it. For definitions of musical terms such as a cappella and rubato, see the glossary of musical terms attached to Exactly How Mrs. Nixon's Legs Saved the White House Christmas Concert.

[4] People without knowledge of 20^th century classical music performers may find it hard to appreciate what a compliment and recommendation it was when two of the greatest orchestra conductors in history, Arturo Toscanini and Eugene Ormandy, were both impressed with Fred Waring’s musicianship, even to the point of coming to Shawnee Inn and hanging out with him. Dr. Lorenzo was interviewed by KVOD, the classical music station in Denver, Colorado, in October, 2018 and said: “I was impressed that Toscanini and Ormandy were Waring fans, but after years of possessing Virginia Waring’s biography of her husband I just this summer read in it for the first time, that Georg Solti was a fan, and the triple whammy sealed the deal for me, meaning Fred’s worthiness for sanctification in classical musical heaven.” Virginia Waring, herself trained at the highest level of the classical world, said, “There was nothing esoteric about his [Fred’s] performances. They were easily understood, yet his musicianship was such that the greater the artist, the more they appreciated him. Besides Toscanini and Ormandy, the renowned conductor Georg Solti was also a fan of Fred’s. In Chicago’s Symphony Hall, Ray Sax was surprised to see Solti backstage watching a Waring performance when he was supposed to be home with a minor ailment. When quizzed, Solti said, ‘I’m never too sick to watch a Fred Waring show’.” Virginia Waring, pg. 353.