The Lettermen
The Lettermen's close-harmony pop songs with light and easy arrangements
made them quite a successful group with adult audiences during the 1960s,
when changing styles and tastes made many older listeners feel just a bit
left behind in the music world. Formed in 1960 by two students at Brigham
Young University, Jim Pike and Bob Engemann, with a lounge singer named Tony
Butala, the Lettermen recorded without success for about a year until they
signed to Capitol Records. The group's first single for Capitol, "The
Way You Look Tonight," did very well on the pop charts, and its follow-up,
"When I Fall in Love," reached the Top Ten in late 1961. Though
the group only reached that plateau one more time, with the 1968 medley "Goin'
Out of My Head/Can't Take My Eyes Off You" (the same year Jim's brother
Gary Pike stepped in for Engemann), successful album sales to adult listeners
and popular concert tours kept the group going long after many of their similar
contemporaries had died off. Another Pike brother, Donny, replaced Jim in
1974, and the Lettermen formed their own Alfa Omega Records in 1979, sporadically
releasing albums of new material even into the 1990s. Jim Pike and Bob Engemann
later formed Reunion (with Ric de Azevedo), a group which released several
albums for Collectables. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide