A Scottie as consummate tenor
Hangs high notes beyond a beginner.
But a quartet Supremo
Needs a basso profundo
To belt out the chords of a winner!

Those of you who keep up with Great Scots Magazine know me as a wrassler, the drag-racer, the baptizer, not to mention Kid Crocodile. What you don’t know is that like my namesake, Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, I’m a keen singer of rare talent.

Voices like mine come along as frequently as Ice Ages, so you’ll excuse my forwardness in trumpeting my own ‘pipes.’ My gifts as a high tenor are simply too good to hide behind modesty!

The Voice was discovered quite by accident on the winding country road between our house and the Tomé Post Office. Along the route are several irreverent farm dogs who dash wildly about protesting my Supreme Being in a bedlum of bellows suited to untutored and uncouth ways. The first time I took measures to out vocalize those rowdies, Dad rolled the windows up in the truck—“to keep THEM out, and YOU in!” he said.

Well, that was a mistake and a discovery. You see, in the closed-up cab of the truck, I was in a sound chamber where my vocals reverberated off the hard surfaces and were amplified. Holy High Notes! Dad was holding his ears and trying to keep the truck out of the ditch while wildly calculating which window would shatter first so we could take evasive action. Dad said I hit notes so high Angels wept.

Still, right there on a country road in Valencia County, NM., out of the din of canine cacaphony, was born The Voice which Andrea Bocelli, the Three Tenors, and every S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A. barbershop quartet ever to sing a dramatic ‘tag’ at the end of a performance can only dream about! I may be little, but I discovered I’ve got pipes from the gods!

Dad says I’m his little “castrato”—those were singers in old Italy who were castrated before puberty to preserve the soprano or contralto range of their voices. I thought I lost my “prospects” at my neutering but it turns out, that may be what guaranteed ‘em. Look out Metropolitan Opera, Grand Ole Opry, and Barbershop contests everywhere, I’ve got prospects!

Truth is, when we discovered The Voice that day on the way to the post office nobody was more impressed than my Dad. He knows a high note when he hears one and he instantly had in mind a rather novel use for my glass-breaking talent, which I’ll get to in a moment.

Since discovering my prospects I’ve been honing The Voice every time the folks leave the house without us. Albie’s my backup singer. I hang high notes even Dad can’t believe. He says my duets with Albie are burglar alarms in reverse: my voice carries so far bad guys in Albuquerque know when the the coast is clear to make a raid on our house.

Now all of this has taken on new urgency since Dad set me the task of perfecting my vocal gift by forming my own quartet. I’ll explain in a minute what he’s up to, but suffice it to say it’s easier to want a quartet than it is to find the singers to sing the four parts, especially when your candidates are donkeys, goats, and chickens.

What I want is a male quartet like the one my Dad traveled with in college and that has meant some not so subtle opposition from the resident prima dona, Miss Albie. She reminds me daily with lip curls that she’s not amused at being excluded.

I thought I had me a decent second tenor in old “Combs” the itinerent “barnyard bugle boy” rooster at our place—till a neighbor’s dog grabbed him as he strutted down the side of the road in front of our corral. But Dad promised a replacement once he gets his chicken palace finished.  I get to audition our new Brahma rooster for a voice with just the right timbre to suit my new group.

Finding my baritone is proving a challenge, too. I’ve settled on young Wendell, the mini-donkey foal. Merton, his dad, is too set in his ways, too stubborn to take instruction from The Voice, so the kid is ideal for me to mold into the rich baritone I’m after. He’s just beginning to bray at this point and we’re working on breath control and vocal placement. So far, my instructions about projecting from his diaphram have netted grunts more like seizures. Still, I think the kid has promise.

The hardest quartet part of all to fill so far is my bass singer. Dad says the bass singer in a good quartet anchors everything. Just like a well-built house, if you don’t have a deep and solid foundation everything above is shaky. Besides, I don’t want just any deep voice in my quartet. I want a booming contra-bass voice worthy of my glass-breaking contra-tenor!

I’d just about given up hope of finding such a voice until a recent July summer night. We were all in our living room watching a movie when out of the bowels of the earth (or lower!) came a bass voice to die for. I was drooling instantly. No wimpy “r-r-rivv-it” sound here; I’m talking a shake-your-britches-off sound coming from our Koi pond:

It was awesome! The great yodel gods in the sky sent me a basso profundo beyond my wildest dreams! Why, it was the old Statesmen Gospel Quartet’s bass singer, J.D. Sumner, in frog legs! He was known as the world’s lowest bass singer, with a range that went off the piano keyboard. Naturally, I saw world tour plans instantly featuring my quirky quartet with me at top tenor, the new Brahma rooster at lead, Wendell at baritone, and the Tuba of Tomé at bass.

Wow! What a ‘tag chord’ that guy and I could muster for a Barbershop convention. Why, the octave range of our spread, high and low, could make hair stand up and then make it lay down in obedience without so much as a comb, razor, or clippers!

One problem, however. Mr. “Tuba of Tomé” is a voice without a body. I mean, I’ve looked high and low for him everywhere and can’t track him down. I’ve camped out in the window sill of Mom’s office on patrol to catch him. We hear him alright; but he’s warier than Big Foot. Dad says the ‘foot’ thing may be the reason: our bullfrog thinks we’re after his legs and doesn’t know we want him for his voice.

So while I’m stalking my run-away bass singer, I’m doing my homework on frogs. Dad says about 88% of amphibian species are frogs and that, technically, the common distinction between “frog” and “toad” has no taxonomic justification. In terms of scientific classification, all members of the order Anura are frogs, but only the family Bufonidae are considered true toads. I found out that the croak of the American bullfrog (Rana catesbiana) can be heard up to a mile away and that bullfrogs call to attract a mate. I don’t fancy myself as a frog pimp, but I may have to reconsider to achieve the greatest quartet ever. I’ve got to get the Tuba of Tomé signed up as my bass singer before he takes off for the froggy Red Light District and before his w-a-y low rumbling brings circus elephants to our gates!

That note of urgency brings me back to my Dad’s rush to get my quartet going. Now, my Dad knew from the moment my piercing high-C punctured his eardrum that my extraordinary voice had purpose ringing through it. You see, he’s all gung-ho for me to get my hair-raising octaves in rare form before his next annual general physical. He says The Voice is his big time revenge.  I mean, whether my quartet is ready for show time or not, he wants me and my ear-splitting, paint-peeling high note right beside him in the exam room the next time his doctor says, “Bend over!” He says I’ve got the quintessential, grand pay-back his doctor won’t soon forget—the perfect aria high note befitting a prostate exam rear-end invasion!

Joseph Harvill, publisher Great Scots Magazine (Revised version of a story in Great Scots Magazine, Sep/Oct 2009)