Serendipity Singers

Anyone who thought that Randy Sparks' New Christy Minstrels represented the most well-scrubbed element of the folk revival never reckoned with the Serendipity Singers. This mixed-voice nonet, founded at the University of Colorado by Mike Brovsky, H. Brooks Hatch, and Bryan Sennett, made Sparks' group look like a raw blues band by comparison. They sang magnificently, however, and did sell records; and, like the Christys, in a distantly related form, the name Serendipity Singers is attached to an ensemble that has continued to perform into the 21st century. Sennett founded the group as a trio with Brovsky and Hatch, and they proved popular at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where they were based. By 1963, however, Sennett was inspired to expand the group, partly through the influence of the New Christy Minstrels, who were making a serious name for themselves performing and had released a huge hit that summer and fall called "Green, Green." They added John Madden, a virtuoso on several instruments, guitarist Jon Arbenz, and bassist Bob Young, and Lynne Weintraub came aboard to add a female voice to the ensemble, now a septet. The group moved to New York in the spring of 1963, hoping to land a recording contract, and expanded yet again with the addition of Texas-born folksingers Diane Decker and Tommy Tiemann, who had been performing together as a duo and were already veterans of The Arthur Godfrey Show on television. The nonet, as they were now, performed at the Bitter End, then one of the top clubs in New York's Greenwich Village, and gained the management expertise of its two owners, Fred Weintraub and Bob Bowers. They didn't land a recording contract immediately, but they did pass an audition to appear on Hootenanny, the weekly ABC-TV folk music showcase, where...