Fred Koch: Barbershop was where harmony lived

He didn't even think he could carry a tune.

But one evening of belting out four-part harmony with a barbershop quartet hooked him for life.

Koch belonged to a quartet in Milwaukee for a few years before moving his family to Tucson in 1971.

"You can't sing while you're angry. Once you start, your troubles just melt away," he said in a 1978 Arizona Daily Star article.

Koch's enthusiasm for barbershop spread to his family. His wife of 54 years, Lois Koch, performed with the Sweet Adelines; his daughter, Barb Weber, was a BarberTeen; and though his middle child, Jim, didn't take part, his older son, Dave, sang barbershop with his dad.

"There's nothing like four of you blending your voices together," Weber said.

"It's a lot of camaraderie, a lot of close friends who will be with you forever," Lois Koch said.

Her husband sang barbershop for more than 40 years, until cancer forced him to curtail his performances in the last year. Koch died April 19, a day after his 76th birthday. At his memorial service last week, friends and family remembered the gregarious performer by singing barbershop tunes.

Hap Haggard met Koch in 1976, when they merged voices with two other singers to form The Thursday Night 4-um quartet. At the memorial, as a tribute to his friend, Haggard donned the first vest he ever wore as part of the quartet.

"We began rehearsing on Thursday nights at Gary's house, and just to make it nice and happy times, we started with a case of longnecks every week," said Haggard, recalling rehearsals at Gary Tuell's home. Soon, though, "We decided we couldn't sing and drink beer, so we quit drinking."

Singing barbershop gave the quartet the "innate feeling that it was the kind of music we enjoyed the most. We'd rather do that than sleep, if given the chance," Haggard said.

"Fred was always on the lookout for somebody to sing for and someplace to sing," Haggard said. "We never turned down a gig if we could make it."

Even when the quartet members got together to take their wives to dinner, Koch, a telephone company employee, couldn't resist enlisting his quartet to sing for other restaurant patrons if he learned they were celebrating a birthday or an anniversary.

After losing a barbershop competition about a year after the Thursday Night group formed, Haggard remembers, the members went out to commiserate over pizza and beer. Koch and his group started singing, and soon the other diners were sending pizzas and pitchers to their table.

"Fred was never one to let a fun time to go by," he said.

Despite that early setback, The Thursday Night 4-um improved and booked plenty of gigs through the decades. Typically they'd give 50 to 80 performances annually, but once did 130 shows in a year, Haggard said. After Koch retired from the phone company, he organized trips to Southern Arizona for local tour companies and barbershop groups.

Roy Ireland performed with the quartet for 17 years. Not only was Koch a great performer, he was the group spokesman and brought six international barbershop conventions to Tucson.

"He was very outgoing, used to dealing with people, used to talking to people," Ireland said. "He was a great promoter of Tucson."

Five of the six years Koch was in charge of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America's midwinter international conference, it operated in the black, Haggard said.

A conference that made money was a novelty for the preservation group, Lois Koch said.

Her husband rallied members of The Tucson Sunshine Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society to stage the conference, which attracted 1,600 members from throughout the world.

"He was the ultimate leader," Haggard said. "People could not resist once Fred asked them to get involved."

In 2002, Koch was inducted into the preservation society's hall of fame for his work through the years as Tucson chapter president, district president, Barbershop Harmony Society International board member and general chairman for the six conferences.

In the late 1970s, Koch also had a Saturday morning radio show playing barbershop favorites that he taped at home from his collection of records.

"They used to call him Mr. Barbershop here in Tucson," Lois Koch said.

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