Take a Boy Like Me

They are folk singers, it seems, and there are undeniably ten of them--the sporty, clean New Christy Minstrels. By the traditions of their trade, ten folk singers are nine too many, and when they all sing out together at their full-throated best, ten are ten too many. But in less than a year, they have become the surest thing in polyunsaturated folk music since the Kingston Trio.

The Christys' music may be cotton candy, but their all-night sucker audience is already immense and still growing greedily. Their latest record album has sold 100,000 copies in a month, and this week they begin a three-week engagement at Manhattan's libidinous Latin Quarter, thereby reinforcing the direct appeal of near nudity with the mysterious charm of their grins and guitars. Such popularity is the personal creation of Founder, Leader and Guardian Randy Sparks, who at 29 has developed a keen ear for the lowest common denominator of public taste, uses it with the good sense of a born hustler. "What we try for," he says with conviction, "is middle-of-the-road fun music."

Hewed to Taste. Sparks's ambitions make him a traitor to the serious seekers of the ethnic. But Sparks makes no apologies. "I can sing just as ethnically as they can," he says, "and so can all of us. But we hew to the public taste because the public pays our salaries."

Sparks used a rigid, take-a-boy-like-me standard to pick his singers. "You get so many nuts in folk music," he says, "that when I chose our people, I made it a point to shy away from questionable people. I looked for the all-American boy or girl who had no political complaints and no sexual problems anybody would be interested in." To assemble his troupe he ran through 29 singers, including a few who resigned for technical reasons--such as the inability to read music.

Bland Mix. Sparks planned the Christys merely as a recording group, but Columbia Records demanded they stay together fulltime and build an "in-person vitality" and an audience. Starting off with a week's engagement at Hollywood's Troubadour Cafe last July, they did so well that they stayed for three months, with crowds jamming the entrance and queuing up around the block.

Onstage, the Christys are one of the healthiest spectacles imaginable. They trot out from the wings, line up playfully, start right feet tapping in heavy unison, and burst into song. Their music is a bland mix of broad harmonies, familiar tunes, corny humor and just enough of the folk music spirit to cash in on the most avid adult record buyer--the man whose ear has been tuned by popular music but whose developing tastes lead him to folk music. Where the purer folk singers such as Joan Baez and Pete Seeger alienate some audiences with their austerity, the impure Christys, like the Kingston Trio, win them with the warm good cheer that makes everybody at least a vicarious minstrel.

The Christys jive up their music with a fine array of instruments, but it is mostly the whanging of guitars ill-played. For variety, they sing a few solos--just enough to let the ten personalities peep out. If egos are hurt or sensibilities trampled, Sparks pours on the sweet salve of success. "A year ago," he says contentedly, "most of this group didn't have enough money to buy new shoes. Now practically everybody has a new car."

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