MARK WAITE / PVT From left, Stuart Smith, Dale Roberson, John Slocum and Edward Cotton pose for a photo on the set of "The Music Man" before a performance last Saturday evening. Advertisement

LAS VEGAS -- The theme to the musical "The Music Man" was partly about how four school board members were convinced to speak to each other again after 15 years, by singing together in a barbershop quartet.

Singing is prolonged talking, salesman Harold Hill told skeptical townspeople in River City, Iowa back in 1912. The quartet warmed up by first singing the words, "ice cream."

The first quartet member to start the harmony at the low, bass end of the scale for a production of "The Music Man" by the Nevada Conservatory Theater at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was Stuart Smith of Pahrump. The production has been staged for the last two weekends.

Smith played the role of school board member Olin Britt. He was recruited for the "Music Man" role while singing with the City of Lights Barbershop chorus, a group of roughly 40 people who gather every Tuesday night at a Las Vegas church.

"My best compliment I got was from the guy -- Glenn Casale -- who was supposed to be the director, who we had to audition for," Smith said. "Halfway through the audition he looked at me and said, 'you're the best bass I ever heard in my life.'"

Besides singing in the barbershop quartet -- a fitting part of a musical dedicated to the early 20th century -- the mythical school board members fit in with the cast of the small Iowa town. Seven of the nine performances were sold out at the Judy Bayley Theater.

"It's a lot of fun. I like to hear the harmony," Smith said.

When members of a barber shop quartet hit a "barber shop seven," he said, "it's a chord that makes the hair stand up on your neck."

Smith, 72, said he was raised in a musical family back in his hometown of Akron, Ohio.

"My parents were both on the Chautauqua circuit. That's where they met. I started playing trumpet in the third grade," he said.

When the family moved to a town outside Springfield, Ill., Smith had a choice of playing in the band or singing in the choir. He chose the 120-member a cappella choir which won the state title in a performance at the Chicago Opera House for the National Music Theaters Association. Smith was then a sophomore.

"When I was a senior my mother got me lined up for an audition for the American Male Chorus. The guy hit a low B flat on the piano and asked, 'Can you hit that?' And I blasted it, and I was on the bus that night," Smith said.

The American Male Chorus performed throughout northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.

Eventually Smith went back to finish high school, and became an Arthur Murray dance instructor. While living in Southern California in 1960-61, Smith sang with the Harmony Beaux in Arcadia, Calif.

While working for a bank back in Carthage, Mo., Smith again started singing with a barbershop quartet in nearby Joplin called The Initial IV.

"Then I dropped out and didn't do anything for 35 years except dancing," Smith said. "I moved out to Pahrump 25 years ago. Jan Jensen was my partner a lot."

About two years ago, Smith joined the City of Lights Barbershop Chorus.

Smith said barbershop quartets have a song book of 12 common selections everyone knows, like "Sweet Adeline."

"Barbershop really nationwide is a big deal. It's kind of having a low ebb right now," he said. But national champions of barbershop quartet singing can make a lot of money, he said.

The cast of "The Music Man" rehearsed from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. five nights per week and from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. beginning March 31. One recent Sunday, they rehearsed for 10 hours, he said.

"What I had in the back of my mind -- some day I'd like to sing bass as backup in a show on the Strip," Smith said.