‘End of an era.’ Well-known boys, girls choirs from Eastern Kentucky school combined

Harlan High School still has a choir, but it’s no longer the well-known Harlan Boys Choir, which sang for a U.S. president and governors and won acclaim in performances around the country and internationally.

This school year, for the first time in 59 years, the boys choir and the counterpart for girls, the Harlan Musettes, are combined at the high school.

Participation by high-school students had dropped over the last several years to a point that didn’t justify separate choirs, said C.D. Morton, superintendent of the Harlan Independent school system.

“I’m heartbroken,” said Marilyn Schraeder, 77, who directed the Harlan Boys Choir and the Musettes before retiring after the 2023-24 school year. “It’s the end of an era.”

‘A high-class, sophisticated choral organization’

The Musettes, founded at Harlan High in the fall of 1944, had a longer history than the boys choir, started by David Davies in 1965, but the boys choir received wider recognition.

It was best known for performing in January 1989 at the inauguration of President George H.W. Bush.

The ensemble, 78 members strong that cloudy, breezy day, sang “This Is My Country” from a balcony at the Capitol directly above the new president.

Then-U.S. Sen. Wendell Ford of Kentucky, who recommended the choir for the occasion, said at the time he’d heard nothing but praise.

“I think they kind of captured this inauguration,” Ford said.

Davies, who directed the boys choir for more than 40 years, taught participants how to sing well but also how to conduct themselves, said James Greene III, who was instructional supervisor for the Harlan Independent system for many years and is organizing archival materials for the district.

“It was really intended to be a high-class, sophisticated choral organization,” Greene said.

The choirs were premier programs at one time.

Terry Harris, a member of the boys choir from 5th grade until he graduated high school in 1974, said there were 70 to 100 members in that period.

Boys could join the choir program as early as the 4th grade.

In Harris’ time, the boys choir performed everywhere from Anaheim, Cal., to Graz, Austria.

“You wanted to be in the boys choir. You wanted to be in the Musettes,” said Harris, 68.

His daughter, Mary Beth Hamilton, directed the boys choir for several years and his son, Sam Harris, was a member.

The Musettes, made up of high-school girls, traveled widely as well, both in the U.S and internationally.

In 1974, for instance, the Musettes won a gold medal at a competition in Rome, Schraeder said.

The two groups sometimes performed together, said Schraeder, who worked with both choirs for 54 years.

She recalled joint performances by the boys choir and Musettes on a 1994 trip to Washington, D.C., where the venues included the Pentagon and a veterans hospital.

“There wasn’t a dry eye in the place” at the hospital, she said.

Alumni said both groups received great support from the community, including fundraising to pay for trips and other needs such as equipment.

“Both programs are esteemed in terms of their heritage,” said Ryland Pope, who was in the choir program from the 4th grade until he graduated in 2003, and later led the boys choir for a year.

Through ups and downs in the coal industry that underpinned Harlan’s economy for decades, the choirs brought positive attention to the small mountain city.

The boys choir was nicknamed the Singing Sons of Appalachia.

“It was a shining light for the county, something that people could take pride in,” Pope said.

Dwindling interest

Morton, the superintendent, said the move to combine the high-school choirs was not motivated by finances.

The school system, which has 800 students total and 220 at the high school, invests as much, or more, in arts and humanities as other districts its size, and was unique for many years in having separate boys and girls choirs at the high school, Morton said.

But Schraeder said membership dwindled last school year to five students in the Musettes and 22 in the boys choir, with just a few high-school boys taking part.

Some alumni said they believe one factor in the drop in interest was high-school students choosing other courses over choir in order to burnish their high school transcripts.

“They were trying to compete for valedictorian,” said Deron Major, who was in the choir from 4th grade until he graduated in 2007 and now keeps up the Facebook page of the Harlan Alumni Association.

Tiffany Hampton, who graduated from Harlan High in 2017 and was president of the Musettes her senior year, said she knew girls who left the Musettes so they could take other classes.

Hampton said she cried over the decline in the Musettes.

“It was my life in high school,” she said.

Some former members of the choirs hope more students will get involved and revive the boys choir and Musettes as separate groups.

Harris and other former members are working to start an alumni choir. The group could show the possibilities for staying involved beyond high school and revive interest among students, he said.

“We’ve gotta get the interest back in the high school,” he said. “That’s my dream.”