By RICK de YAMPERTENTERTAINMENT WRITER
As a 10-year-old, Tony Butala sang in Yiddish, Arabic and Greek as a member of the Los Angeles-based Mitchell Boys Choir.
Butala has since sung in Cantonese, Filipino, German, Portuguese and other languages as a member of the vocal group he co-founded a few years after his boys choir stint.
That globetrotting multilingual group, the Lettermen, are soldiering into their 52nd year with Butala at the helm. They'll perform two concerts Nov. 29 at the Athens Theatre in DeLand.
Taking their name from the school "letter sweaters" popular in the late 1950s and early '60s, the Lettermen first hit the charts in 1961 with their single "The Way You Look Tonight."
The Lettermen soon found their niche neatly between the Pat Boone set and the '60s revolutionary rockers (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and others).
"We weren't butch cuts," Butala says. "We weren't real square like the Four Preps or the Kingston Trio. We had relatively long hair and we had hipper clothes."
The group's smooth vocal harmonies led to hits throughout the '60s such as "When I Fall in Love, " "Put Your Head on My Shoulder, " "Hurt So Bad," "Shangri-La, " "Theme From 'A Summer Place'"and "Goin' Out of My Head/Can't Take My Eyes Off You."
The trio's other current members, Donovan Tea and Mark Preston, each have 25 years experience with the group.
Speaking by phone from the offices of the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, which he founded in 1997 in his hometown of Sharon, Pa., the 69-year-old Butala spoke about his foreign fans, rap music and when he'll hang up his Lettermen sweater.
The Lettermen experimented in the past by recording disco and new wave rock stuff, and a ballad version of the Doors "Light My Fire." Are you still as adventurous and-or contemporary?
(Laughs). It's harder and harder to be contemporary when contemporary is rap. When people say, "What do you think of rap?" I say, "I listen to it." There's some horrible rap and once in a while there's some very ingenious rap as far as the pentameter and phrasings. It's absolutely unique, some of the cleaner stuff.
If someone came to me presenting the Lettermen with a pretty rap ballad to perform, I'd probably record it.
What's new with the Lettermen?
The Lettermen's 76th album is going to be released in January. It's called "2010 -- New Direction." The album started out a year ago with the Les Brown band. His son Les Brown Jr. has the band now. He and I met and I said, "I've never done a big band album."
After visiting him, I came out with a new idea. We're doing our favorite rock hits of the last 40 years, our way: "Listen to the Music" by the Doobies (Doobie Brothers), Mickey Gilley's "I'm Just a Fool for Your Love," "Ain't No Sunshine."
We're not doing these as ballads. We're just doing these a little more in tune, a little more Lettermen harmony. They sound totally different because we have the big band and the Lettermen harmony.
The Lettermen have sung and recorded in over 14 languages, your 2007 CD "Live in the Philippines" has some strange-looking titles, and your 2001 "Visit Hong Kong" CD has songs you sing in Cantonese. What has the most unusual or difficult foreign language?
It's nothing new to me. When I was a 10-year-old kid, I was in the Mitchell Boys Choir in Los Angeles, and we sang in 28 languages.
Bob Mitchell was a linguist. On Friday night we would sing in the Wilshire Temple in Beverly Hills in Hebrew and Yiddish. On Saturday morning, we'd do an Orthodox Malachite rite church service in Arabic and Greek. On Sunday we'd sing in an Episcopal church in English, then high mass at the Good Shepherd Church in Latin.
Every country we go to -- we learned this back in 1969 during our first visit to Japan. Most American groups would come in with their chests out ... arrogant. American acts would have a Japanese person on a podium who would translate the lyrics and do the introductions in Japanese, and the American act would sing. It was so stiff and so stupid.
I said, "We're not going to do that." We didn't speak Japanese, but we certainly phonetically learned the introductions. That floored them, so we did the same in every country.
We went overseas and we sang in all the European languages: Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Polish, even in my native language, Croatian.
It got to be such fun to see their reactions. It was like we pulled a rabbit out of a hat or transfigured ourselves into Mahatma Gandhi or something.
Any thoughts of hanging up your Lettermen sweater? No. No. People say, "Aren't you going to retire?" And I say, "Retire from what?" I'm one of those very blessed people who is getting paid to do what I like to do.
Here's what I say: If I become a fat, balding old man, and I'm on stage singing love ballads and I can't put anything into it, then I would voluntarily replace myself and let the Lettermen go on.
I don't have the greatest voice in the world. However, it's still strong and I sing correctly. I've never done a drug in my life. I try to curb myself when I'm at a Pittsburgh Steeler football game. I try to pretend I'm screaming and shouting instead of screaming and shouting. I don't go to smoky bars and I don't talk loudly over loud music.
There are so many singers out there who think it's a party, and they don't have to protect their livelihood, which is their voice. They abuse it in so many ways. That's your instrument.
If You Go
WHO: The Lettermen
WHEN: 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 29
WHERE: Athens Theatre, 124 N. Florida Ave., DeLand
TICKETS: General admission $35, available in advance at the Sands Theater Center box office, 600 N. Woodland Blvd., or at the door on day of show. Premium seats $45, available only by reservation by calling the Sands at 386-736-7456.
INFORMATION: 386-736-1500 or athenstheatre.org
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