The Waring Mixture

"Poems can be read or spoken, melodies can be played or whistled, but words and music were blended into song, and a song was written to be sung."

This pronouncement on choral singing is the cornerstone of the new Fred Waring summer school of music in Delaware. Last week 560 music teachers from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Hawaii and the Philippines had absorbed their lessons and were on their way back home to spread the Waring message to 1,500,000 students and concertgoers. It will not be long, Waring thinks, until practically everybody in the U.S. will be singing Waring-style.

Rhythm Antics. This year, as he celebrates his soth anniversary in show business, Fred Waring's big enthusiasm is his new career as a teacher. For a long time he and his top musicians have trooped around the country to hold classes in the Waring technique, especially as it fits choral singing. Waring, who thinks his own chorus is the best on the air, complains that he "can't understand what any other chorus in radio is singing."

Last winter, sure that the time had come to open up a school, he started converting a country club he bought four years ago at Shawnee, Del. into a schoolhouse. The protests of his neighbors at the flossy resort were drowned in a noisy rush of students ready to pay $85 for a week of Waring's lessons. What the students got was a Waring extravaganza.

At Shawnee, the courses included enunciation, programing and "how we acquire balance." Students sat in on rehearsals and broadcasts, got pointers on microphone technique, learned how to tap time properly with the feet (the heel, not the toe). They were also exposed to such Waring inspirations as Tone-Syllables, a phonetic method of lyric singing ("Mah-ee Bahn-nee lah-ee-zo-oo-vuhr thee o-oo-shun"). By the end of the eight-week semester, all the students, including eight nuns, were fairly groovy.

And Money, Too. The session also offered tips on another Waring formula: "How to learn music for money." The students at Shawnee could hardly have found a more knowing instructor. The 75 musicians and minnesingers known as Waring's Pennsylvanians have outlasted many a more popular band and are apparently imperishable. Last week, Fred was lining up a new NBC show for the fall (sponsored by General Electric).

At 47, the Waring profile is sagging slightly, but the Waring temperament is as sharp as ever. "I'm a perfectionist," explains Fred in his twangy Pennsylvania Tone-Syllables. He can make the claim as both showman and businessman. The Waring Corp. (whose Waring Mixer is a U.S. kitchen and barroom standby) is still doing nicely. So are the Waring Musical Library, the Shawnee Press (which sells the Waring choral arrangements), concert bookings, recordings. All told, the Waring enterprises gross the Maestro "at least" $2 million a year.

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