Barbershop Chords & Records

To promote close harmony--as she is sung by Saturday-night whiskey tenors and beery baritones--a device was on sale in Manhattan last week which threatened to bring Sweet Adeline within the reach of all but the tone-deaf. "Listen-n-Sing" phonograph records teach barbershop harmonizing by taking it apart.

After a Saturday-night singer decides which part he wants to sing--First Tenor, Second Tenor, First Bass, Second Bass--he plays a 75-c- disc. On one side his part in Sweet Adeline, Let Me Call You Sweetheart and In the Evening by the Moonlight is sung solo; on the other the songs are let loose by a professional quartet, in which the amateur joins.

"Listen-n-Sing" records were devised by Duncan D. Sutphen Jr., Manhattan adman and onetime Princeton glee clubber. The songs are sung by an NBC quartet, whose members felt self-conscious singing separately; the second bass quacked and cracked through five tries before he got it right. If the first records sell, sea chanties and tougher barbershop tunes like Sylvia will be recorded.

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