Par Avion Remembers - Restarting the Krokodiloes' Tour Tradition, 1981

The ’80-’81 Krokodiloes started discussing the idea of a European tour, thinking it would go in the summer of ’81.  It was the brainchild and ended up being a two-year passion project of Tour Manager Gordon Bloom.   In the end it did not go in ’81, but Gordon and the Group persisted, and the Par Avion tour of Europe took flight in the summer of ’82, launching the Krokodiloes’ “modern” touring era.

Gordon was well-versed in the prior touring experience of the group.  In the following remembrance he pays due homage to the efforts of prior groups who planted the seeds of the Krokodiloes touring tradition:

FYI, I would like to pay my respects to the trailblazing Kroks who preceded us…and traveled abroad in the 1960s—

 

I understand that the Kroks traveled to India (and participated in the Experiment in International Living) therefore the awesome album cover “Back Bay to Bombay- The Krokodiloes of Harvard”.  That album is available on Amazon – note that Track 12  is Blue Day, written by King Bhumibol of Thailand.

 

I’m also attaching a scan of a letter dated July 6, 1962 from King Bhumibol’s “Principal Private Secretary to H.M. The King” to David Rockefeller Jr., in “Eliot I-32”.  David was the Kroks Manager. 

 

In any case the lore is that there was a command performance for King Bhumibol and that the court of Thailand was formal, but that after the performance that the King smiled… Bhumibol reigned 1946 until his death in 2016, longest reigning adult monarch- 70 years. He was born at Mt. Auburn Hospital, Cambridge MA when his father was doing a public health certificate at Harvard Medical School/School of Public Health…which is the Harvard/Cambridge MA connection and he later became interested in music/jazz and he wrote the Kroks the tune “Blue Day”!  

 

And I believe the Kroks traveled to Germany and Austria in the late 60s (1968? over Winter/Christmas break?) … and, of course, Bermuda is its own country … so perhaps we style ourselves the Par Avion early 80’s and First Int’l Summer Tour Kroks…. of the Modern Era … since one wonderful outcome has been that from Summer 1982 to Summer 2019 there were 37 consecutive major Summer international tours— and that Krok groups from the 1960s to 2019 have been to quite a few countries across 6 continents…North America, Central and South American, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia/New Zealand, and it took the Coronavirus/COVID 19 Pandemic to force a break in the in-person touring and resulting in the Year to Remember…

 

Below is the letter to David and the Kroks from the King of Thailand’s Principal Private Secretary!

The 1982 summer tour had a somewhat difficult birth.

  • Gordon took a term off to work on the arrangements.  This idea was not without some controversy, but the tour would not have happened otherwise.  This culminated at a memorable group meeting, where Gordon announced his plans, and that he would find a job to support himself during his leave.  One of the basses, Tom Walsh, famously retorted: “You better get a job, huh?”
 
  • We self-financed the tour, resulting in some interesting added concerts, gigs and fundraising activities.
 
  • Gordon arranged for us, for example, to sing the theme song for the pilot episode of The Lenny Clark Show, a then-new, now-forgotten television comedy hour in Boston:  https://youtu.be/JOOANcvwJhg (available in the Archives).
 
  • In lieu of Bermuda that year, we did a driving tour of colleges in the Southeastern US as far as Atlanta. 
 
  • We thought of other creative ways of raising funds for the tour, such as the truckload of Dr. Pepper someone arranged to be donated, which we sold for concessions at intermission of the Hallowe’en concert.
 
  • We added an extra concert or two to the schedule, including two special Tour benefit concerts in the Spring, no mean feat in the busy Sanders Theater schedule.  

We had a lot of help of course from the Harvard network in Europe, and others.

  • Gordon’s roommate put us in touch with an uncle, Larry Lovett AB ’51, who was a wonderful early sponsor of the tour and our main host in Venice (his summer residence).  Larry put the Krokodiloes in the care of his friends in Venice, including the Director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Philip Rylands and his wife Jane, and many others….and he arranged for us to sing on the terrace of the Gritti Palace Hotel for Princess Margaret of England, a rowdy gig right on the Grand Canal.  Larry Lovett also was deeply involved in the music scene and on the Board of the Metropolitan Opera in NY for 45 years.  He later helped later groups with connections in Europe, including the wonderful Sayn-Wittgenstein family.  Larry Lovett passed away in 2016, at age 86, while in Monte Carlo. He was an important part of Krok touring history, and it has been proposed that we honor him posthumously by making him an honorary Krok.
 
  • Around this time, fortuitously, we came into the orbit of the legendary Leonard Bernstein, who hosted the group in his Lowell House suite during a visit to the campus, and later met with us at his apartment in New York, and backstage at the Philharmonic.  We were singing in the new group on the walk below his suite.  Bernstein stuck his head out the window to find out what was going on.  He invited us up and we finished the evening singing with the maestro in his Lowell House guest suite. He had a grand piano there, on which he played a bluesy number for us that he was working on.  We were in awe.
 
  • This resulted in an important letter of recommendation from the Maestro that opened a lot of doors for us in Europe.  
  • Those years also brought us Bernstein’s wonderful composition Screwed on Wrong, the very bluesy number he played for us in Lowell House, which he dedicated to our very own group, and which was immortalized in the premier by our inimitable bass Marc Clinton.
 
  • Other nodes in the Harvard network (London, Brussels, Köln, Paris, Zürich, Geneva, Monaco, Rome, Venice, Milan) provided crucial hospitality and performance opportunities.

Our memories from that first tour, as from our entire brief time in the limelight of the Krokodiloes, beggar even the most fulsome description.  They range from the banal, to the ridiculous to the sublime.  Some examples:

  • Checking cartons of vinyl LPs (Par Avion) with our luggage, finagling them through customs, and lugging them around Europe with us by trains, hovercraft, planes, and automobiles.
  • Pub gigs in London.
  • Live radio performance in Köln.
  • Camaraderie with the Zürcher Singstudenten in their clubhouse at the University of Zurich.
  • Fourth of July performance in Geneva, Switzerland, billed as the largest outside the United States.
  • Changing into tuxedos by the side of the road in Cannes on our delayed way to a gig.
  • Dinner on the terrace at the Hermitage Hotel in Monte Carlo.
  • Serenading Princess Stéphanie of Monaco at her 18th birthday party at the Monte-Carlo Beach Club, and meeting her mother Princess Grace, with Adnan Khashoggi’s super-yacht The Nabila on patrol just offshore.  How shocked we were to hear of Princess Grace’s death in a car accident later that very summer.
  • Danny Adamian’s (whom we miss terribly) and Marc Clinton’s goofy gargoyle grins in southern France (see pictures).
  • Many others, which we are certain can be imagined by anyone who has had the fun of being on tour with the Kroks!

For many of us these were our first international travels—quite an introduction.   

 

The ’83 summer tour was more or less a reprise of that first one, and somewhat easier to arrange.  But importantly, it kick-started the summer touring juggernaut which continued uninterrupted up until the pandemic.  With each passing year each group made the tour its own.  We know it will carry on again soon.  Without the dedication and energy of our Tour Manager and the cachet of the Harvard name around the world, the restart might never have happened.  We all are awfully glad it did.

 

Kroks of ’81 – ’83, the “Par Avions”