The Four Freshmen

Music Instrument Museum (MIM) Theatre, Phoenix, AZ, December 12, 2025

Reviewed by Lynn Timmons Edwards

What is vocal legacy? Does it matter to the Great American Songbook? My seeing The Four Freshman for the first time posed those questions. The group was founded in 1948 by brothers Don and Ross Barbour, their cousin Bob Flanigan, and friend Hal Kratzsch. The founding members have all passed away, and since then more than 20 singers/musicians have graced the stage as The Four Freshmen. Bob Ferreira has been with the group on bass voical and drums since 1992. For this event, he served as host and his deep resonance wrapped a musical comforter around a blend of holiday classics and Freshmen signature songs. Tommy Boynton has been with the group for a decade, playing guitar and singing second tenor. Jake Baldwin, who played trumpet and sang third vocal part added not just vocal richness but the brass sound typical of so many holiday songs. The new kid on the block, Chris Peters, sang first tenor and played bass. He became obsessed with the sound of the Four Freshmen as a Music Production and Engineering student at the Berklee College of Music and is older than his baby face suggests.

Thanks to Stan Kenton, the quartet was signed to Capitol Records in 1950. Brian Wilson called them his “harmonic education” and dissected their records note-for-note as a teenager. The Four Freshmen are indeed a living vocal legacy; they have pioneered vocal jazz harmony and have influenced generations of singers and composers ranging from The Beach Boys to Manhattan Transfer to today’s high-school jazz choirs.

Their program on their return to the MIM was heavy on holiday songs: “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” (Tommie Connor), “Winter Wonderland” (Felix Bernard/Richard B. Smith), “White Christmas” (Irving Berlin), and many more. Peters soloed on “Rockin’ Round the Christmas Tree” (Johnny Marks), and Boynton soloed on “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (Walter Kent/Kim Gannon/Buck Ram). He sang it as a youthful boy soprano on the radio and made us laugh when he told us how he still needs therapy to get over being teased about it. The best of the holiday repertoire was an a cappella “Snowfall” (Claude Thornhill) and a medley of songs by Vince Guaraldi from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Their arrangements were complex but always melodic and featured extraordinarily tight harmonies that flowed like silk. These included “Give Me the Simple Life” (Rube Bloom/Harry Ruby), “From This Moment On” (Cole Porter), “Easy Street” (Alan Rankin Jones), the group’s first big from 1952 “It’s a Blue World” (Chet Forrest/Bob Wright), and their most popular song, “Day In, Day Out” (Rube Bloom/Johnny Mercer). To fulfill a request from a MIM patron, they added “Laura” (David Raskin/Johnny Mercer) to the show. It was not as well rehearsed as the other selections, but it was a stunning addition to their repertoire and should be included in their next recording. They encored with the Bobby Troup classic “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,” which elicited a standing ovation.