On the Sunny Side

When a group of five singers gathered in Danbury, Connecticut in 1966 to discuss forming a barber- shop chapter called the Mad Hatters, they could scarcely imagine that in less than a decade, that group would grow to nearly one hundred men and would be among most talented, irreverent, and exciting choruses in the northeastern United States. Yet by the early 1990s, less than fifteen years from its heyday in the mid-seventies, the Mad Hatters almost ceased to exist.

Why did this chorus grow so quickly, and then devolve into near oblivion, only to rise again like a phoenix from the ashes? Eschewing simple answers, Gadkar-Wilcox weaves together the changing inter- personal dynamics among the men of the chapter, the demographics of the Danbury area, and the impact of broader social change in the United States. He demonstrates that barbershop singers struggled to adjust to the social, racial, and cultural changes of the 1960s and 1970s, but that they also rose and fell based on the individual personalities of their leaders. On the Sunny Side shows that even though organizations are bound to reflect, and be constrained by larger social, economic, and historical forces, they also come to embody the spirit of the individuals who comprise them.