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Essentials in
History
With pen in hand: Deac Martin
A man who, while neither champion nor president, made an impact that is still reflected in the Society we know today.
Updated: 5/7/2003 3:10:00 PM
by Ruth Blazina-Joyce, Museum Curator/Archivist
“There’s a man in Cleveland . . .”
One day, while listening to the radio, a friend of C. T. Martin’s heard about a new national society dedicated to preserving and encouraging barbershop harmony. He immediately wrote to its founder, O. C. Cash, telling him that “there’s a man in Cleveland, Ohio, you ought to know.” That man, of course, was “Deac” Martin.
Deac and O.C. were soon corresponding by mail. Shortly afterwards, they met, and over the years became close friends. But, “that man in Cleveland” had been a close harmony aficionado long before he joined the Society in 1938.
A scribe is born
Born in Atlantic, Iowa, in 1890, Deac grew up on a farm near Oakdale, Missouri. Music was a staple in his family. He learned many songs listening to his mother and older sister. When he was 12, his older brother returned from the gold mines of Colorado with a mandolin, and taught Deac how to play. Deac sang his first close harmony in 1905, in a high school quartet organized by his teacher. And, he actually did his quartetting in a barber shop.
After two years of college (where he earned the nickname “the deacon” after successfully hiding a keg of beer in a frat house during a surprise visit by a faculty inspector), he began his lifelong career as a writer, editor, and publicist.
Words without music
Although he loved woodshedding, Deac also arranged songs for friends. And, though he loved singing, he felt his strongest contribution to barbershop lay in his writing talents.
As early as 1925, Deac had privately published a little booklet called Season’s Greetings as a Christmas token for friends and family. It contained lists of song titles arranged by theme. In 1932, he expanded it into A Handbook For Adeline Addicts, which contained commentary on quartetting, discussions of songs and themes, and lists of songs arranged by theme. It came out just three days before the federal government closed the banks during the height of the Depression. Though it was well-displayed in bookstore windows, it was not a best-seller.
Deac began putting his talent to work for the Society soon after he joined. After several years as a vice-president, a board member, and national historian, he became an editor for The Harmonizer before settling into a 20-year run as a columnist. In his “The Way I See It” column, Deac expressed his opinion on a wide range of topics. Taking as his motto a quote attributted to Voltaire: “I may disagree with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it,” he offered those who disagreed with him space as “guest columnists” to present their thoughts.
In 1947, he began the arduous task of writing a 10-year history of the Society. Working with a committee, which pulled together historical materials and interviews, he summarized the Society’s formative years in a volume entitled Keep America Singing, published in 1949.
Throughout this period, Deac wrote countless articles for popular magazines and professional musical journals about barbershopping and the Society. He guided publicity for many of the national and international conventions during the 1940s, and prepared several radio scripts for the Society.
Deac published the book of his dreams in 1970 with Deac Martin’s Book of Musical Americana. Part autobiography, part discussion of American culture and history as revealed through popular songs, it was a super-expanded version of Adeline Addicts, with thematic treatment of songs and listings of song titles.
A man of many talents
In addition to his own furious activity at the typewriter, Deac also ghosted articles for others who lacked his skill as a wordsmith. He founded the Cleveland, Ohio, Chapter in 1940. By 1952, he was one of few men in the Society to be certified in all judging categories (five at that time).
Deac found a way to balance his love of woodshedding and his ability as an arranger during his time on the Song Arrangement Committee. Some of these earliest-published Society arrangements were actually transcriptions of songs “as sung by” popular quartets.
These arrangements captured songs polished by quartets as they woodshedded their way to close harmony, and fulfilled another of Deac’s long-standing goals: to preserve as many songs as possible, particularly those that lived only in the memory of certain quartets, before they were lost forever.
As his active participation in day-to-day business of the Society lessened, Deac gradually became a sort of unofficial “counselor” for Society leadership. Though he held strong convictions, he always saw the other side of an issue, and his words of advice and moderation were often sought on difficult or divisive questions.
Deac died at the age of 79, just after Musical Americana was published. But his membership card, signed by O.C. Cash, is still good until 1999.
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