The Hi-Lo's

Standing tall among the postwar era's most inventive and impactful close harmony quartets, the Hi-Lo's broadened traditional pop's scope through intricate, jazz-inflected arrangements that left a lasting imprint on the rock & roll artists who came after. Their name reflected the group's wide vocal span, and they assembled in Hollywood early in 1953 when bass baritone Gene Puerling and baritone Bob Strasen, previously paired in Milwaukee's Four Shades, joined forces with baritone Bob Morse and tenor Clark Burroughs, who had worked together in the short-lived Encores under session vocal veteran Randy Van Horne. Bandleader and future film composer Jerry Fielding steered the Hi-Lo's toward the new L.A. imprint Trend, where the quartet recorded its first EP in April 1953 and achieved a modest local success with "Georgia." "Love Me or Leave Me," cut for singer Herb Jeffries, appeared soon afterward on Olympic. Clark Burroughs's remarkable lead work gave Gene Puerling room to craft bold, richly layered charts far removed from prevailing hits, yet Trend balked at these bolder experiments, prompting the group to depart the label in mid-1954. They quickly moved to Starlite and collaborated with orchestral arranger and conductor Frank Comstock at the renowned Gold Star Studios, celebrated for its distinctive acoustics, yielding the debut album Listen! by the end of the year and The Hi-Lo's, I Presume in 1955.

Though sales remained elusive, the Hi-Lo's earned strong critical regard, and later releases such as Under Glass and On Hand broadened their range as Puerling's increasingly ambitious and elegant charts gradually wove in strands of contemporary pop, barbershop, calypso, and musical theater. Late in 1956 the quartet joined Columbia, where the label debut Suddenly It's the Hi-Lo's moved more than 100,000 copies after exposure on television's Nat King Cole Show. Rosemary Clooney subsequently brought the group into the cast of her syndicated variety program, and the two parties recorded the joint album Ring Around Rosie. A third Columbia session, Now Hear This, arrived in 1957, the year the Hi-Lo's also made their screen debut in Calypso Heat Wave. Even with greater visibility, their albums stayed cult items at most, and Columbia A&R head Mitch Miller kept urging Gene Puerling to simplify his writing for broader airplay. The Hi-Lo's held firm, and although 1958's Marty Paich-produced And All That Jazz proved their strongest and most satisfying effort so far, it underperformed commercially; a year later Bob Strasen stepped down. With tenor Don Shelton added, the Hi-Lo's recorded Broadway Playbill in 1960. It likewise failed to chart, and when its successor This Time It's Love met the same result, Columbia ended the relationship.

Longtime admirer Frank Sinatra cabled the Hi-Lo's in 1962 to propose a move to his new Reprise label; their pair of Reprise projects, The Hi-Lo's Happen to Folk Songs and The Hi-Lo's Happen to Bossa Nova, targeted popular currents yet missed the mark, and the association proved short-lived. Don Shelton exited in 1964 to join the Chicago vocal ensemble the J's with Jamie, after which the Hi-Lo's carried on by briefly enlisting singers Frank Howren and Milt Chapman until the British Invasion's commercial surge effectively ended their run in 1965. Bob Morse opened an antiques shop, Clark Burroughs formed a folk-rock duo with his wife Marilyn, and Gene Puerling launched Singers Unlimited, bringing in Don Shelton plus newcomers Len Dresslar and Bonnie Herman. While the Hi-Lo's were later hailed as a formative influence on West Coast harmony pop acts such as the Beach Boys and the Mamas & the Papas, Singers Unlimited issued a series of albums for the German label MPS, which in 1977 encouraged Gene Puerling to reassemble the Hi-Lo's: Back Again reached stores a year later, launched with a 1978 Monterey Jazz Festival appearance. Now appeared in 1980, and the group kept touring through the following decade before disbanding in 1994. Although Bob Morse passed away in 2001, Gene Puerling, Don Shelton, and Clark Burroughs occasionally performed again as the Hi-Lo's without him.