Frederick Hyland King

Music teacher led award-winning choruses and won a top honor in 1970 as member of barbershop quartet Oriole Four.

By Frederick N. Rasmussen

September 5, 2008

Frederick Hyland King, a retired music teacher in Baltimore County and a longtime director of the award-winning Dundalk Chorus of the Chesapeake and Sweet Adelines' Dundalk chapter, died Monday of complications from diabetes at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 77.

A lifelong devotee and practitioner of barbershop harmony - a cappella and four-part harmony - Mr. King was a member of the Barbershop Harmony Society Hall of Fame, which described him in a biographical profile as a "barbershopper's barbershopper."

"This music educator, coach, judge, chorus director, master of ceremonies, composer, arranger, and international champion baritone (Oriole Four, 1970) has left an indelible mark on the world of barbershop singing," according to the profile. "He is the composer of 300 songs and arranger of more than 500."

Mr. King, who was known as "Freddie," was born in Baltimore and raised in Irvington and Pigtown. He graduated in 1954 from Forest Park High School.

"He was very, very young when he began singing. You could sing a song to him, and he'd sing it right back," said a brother, Edward A. King of Reisterstown.

"By the time he was 11 or 12, he was a talented musician. He learned to play the ukulele, piano and drums. Give him any instrument, and he learned to play it," he said.

Mr. King's interest in barbershop singing began during his high school days, when he and three other students formed the Oriole Four, a barbershop quartet.

In a 1983 profile in The Sun Magazine, he explained that the key element in barbershop harmony is intonation or tonal quality; and the tones of barbershop harmony are based on a slightly higher - or "sharper" - version of the musical scale than the human voice normally sings.

After high school, he served in the Navy. He later worked as a bricklayer and as a ditch digger, delivered Rice's Bread and held jobs at Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point and at Crown Cork & Seal Co., while continuing to sing with the Oriole Four.

"Teaching kept calling him," said his son, Kevin B. King of Lutherville.

In 1960, Mr. King applied to the Baltimore County school system and was assigned to Parkville Junior High School, where he taught music until 1977.

He earned a bachelor's degree in music in 1972, and a master's in education in 1977, both from what is now Towson University.

Mr. King was music department chairman at Pine Grove Elementary School from 1977 to 1980, and music department chairman and choirmaster at Overlea High School from 1980 until retiring in 1990.

He began directing the 80 women in the Sweet Adelines in 1959, and continued until stepping down in the 1990s.

For 40 years, Mr. King also directed the Chorus of the Chesapeake, a 180-member men's chorus that is formally known as the Dundalk chapter of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America. He retired from that group in 1996.

Under his direction, the men's chorus won an international barbershop competition that was held in New Orleans in 1971.

In addition to singing with the award-winning Oriole Four that won a 1970 barbershop competition in Atlantic City for its rendition of "Danny Boy," he performed and was still performing at his death with several other quartets, including the Pro's N Con's, Premiere and Sage.

"There was no one like him. His infectious love of music easily came across to us and so inspired us. He got singers doing things they didn't know they were capable of doing," said Henry "Bud" Laumann, a member of the Chorus of the Chesapeake for 44 years.

His wife of 50 years, the former Patricia Lee McDermot, died in 2005.

Mr. King was a member of Perry Hall United Methodist Church, 9515 Belair Road, where services will be held at 10 a.m. tomorrow.

Also surviving are a daughter, Kerry Lee Vance of Parkville; another brother, James Pugh of Parkville; a sister, Merle Burgess of Yorktown, Va.; four grandchildren; and a great-grandson.