Bernie Toorish was one of the Four Lads, a quartet that had its origins at St. Michael’s Choir School in Toronto. Back row: Jimmie Arnold and Bernie Toorish; front row: Johnny D’Arc and Frankie Busseri, shown in 1969.Fairfax Media Archives/Getty Images
One day in 1954 at Saint Ignatius of Loyola Catholic Church, in a ritzy area of Newton, Mass., just outside of Boston, an unusual group sang at mass. They were four former Toronto choirboys: Jimmy Arnold, Frankie Busseri, Connie Codarini and Bernie Toorish.
The soda-shop set knew them as the Four Lads, harmonizing pop vocalists based in the United States whose signature hit at the time was a novelty number from a year earlier, Istanbul (Not Constantinople), their first gold record.
When they weren’t in church in 1954, they were on CBS’s The Ed Sullivan Show (twice that summer) or at the illustrious New York nightclub the Copacabana, where celebrities such as Judy Garland, Eddie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Patti Page, Ava Gardner, Milton Berle and Sammy Davis Jr. caught their well-polished act.
Praising the Canadians, Hy Gardner of the New York Herald Tribune wrote, “I’d like to salute a singing group called the Four Lads, each has a legitimate voice and when you put them all together, they shape up as the zingiest male quartet in the business today.”
The foursome would go on to chart more than two dozen singles throughout the 1950s. Their last significant single was 1959’s Happy Anniversary, from the David Niven/Mitzi Gaynor comedy film of the same name. The Four Lads underwent lineup changes in the 1960s before calling it quits in 1977.
The group’s last surviving original member, Mr. Toorish, died of natural causes on Dec. 7, in the Lutheran Home at Concord Reserve, in Westlake, Ohio. He was 94.
The Four Lads in a 1954 photo, from left: Arnold, Codarini, Busseri and Toorish.Supplied
A handful of other Four Lads songs earned gold record status in the United States in the 1950s: Moments to Remember; No, Not Much; Standing on the Corner; and Who Needs You?. Though they did perform in Canada, their focus was south of the border.
Mr. Toorish was the group’s vocal arranger and second tenor. He also wrote or co-wrote many of the group’s original songs, among them The Mocking Bird, My Little Angel (for his future wife) and Down by the Riverside. Those were published under one of his pseudonyms, Dazz Jordan.
Modesty and a sense of camaraderie were behind Mr. Toorish’s decision not to put his own name on the 45s.
“He didn’t want the attention on him because of being in the group,” Mr. Toorish’s wife, Angela Toorish, told the group’s biographer Hans Jeff Borger. “He thought writing under a pen name would be the better thing to do.”
The Four Lads left Toronto for New York in 1950. Mr. Toorish lived most of his adult life in the Cleveland area, where he and his American wife raised a family.
Mr. Toorish and the other original Lads trained at St. Michael’s Cathedral Choir School, where they sang Gregorian chants while soaking up the pop-gospel recordings of their biggest influence, the Black American vocal group the Golden Gate Quartet.
In the 1950s, the Four Lads competed on the Billboard charts with other Toronto exports the Diamonds and fellow St. Michael’s grads the Crew-Cuts, whose version of Sh-Boom (“life could be a dream”) was No. 1 on the Billboard charts for nine weeks during August and September of 1954.
The Four Lads, shown in a Columbia Records handout from before 1957, left Toronto for New York in 1950.
Canada was a musical wasteland at the time, and for many years to come. “Plenty of talent, but no industry, no network, no scene,” Nicholas Jennings wrote in his book Before the Gold Rush.
But in the United States, business for crooning quartets was sh-booming. The Four Lads, the Crew-Cuts and the Diamonds racked up 38 hits in total on the Billboard Top 40 charts. The three groups were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1984. The Lads entered the U.S.-based Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2003.
“Most everyone credits Jimmie Arnold’s high tenor as the mainstay of the group, soaring above the other voices,” said Mr. Borger, author of the forthcoming The Four Lads Book. “But the fact is the blend of all four voices together is what made the group so special.”
Mr. Toorish was a hockey fan, enjoyed Wagnerian opera and had a vast collection of Black spiritual records. He was, according to a Kapp Record publicity blurb issued in 1961, “fair haired, handsome and serious, married to a Cleveland girl and a proud father.”
John Bernard Toorish was born in Concord, Ont., north of Toronto, on March 2, 1931. Records such as Dream a Little Dream of Me by Wayne King and His Orchestra and By the River St. Marie by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians were typical of the smooth hits of the day.
He was the youngest of three children born to John Toorish and Claire Toorish (née Dinan). The father, from Northern Ireland, was a switchman for the Canadian National Railway.
As a teenager, Bernie and the other future Four Lads learned their unison singing at St. Michael’s under the tutelage of the choir school’s founder, Monsignor John Ronan.
“They’re good boys who got there by talent and energy,” Father Ronan said of the Four Lads’ pop stardom in a 1954 interview with Newsweek. “Their repertoire is not, perhaps, what we would have chosen, but we wish them well.”
(Father Ronan and the Four Lads would reunite in 1960 when the group performed with the St. Michael’s Boys Choir on CBC-TV’s Music 60 Presents the Jack Kane Hour.)
They had formed in 1947 while still in school, playing for free at weddings and dances. Things took off when Mr. Arnold was made lead tenor.
John Bernard Toorish was born in Concord, Ont., north of Toronto, on March 2, 1931.Courtesy of family
“That’s when we began to fully utilize his gifted voice,” Mr. Toorish told The Globe and Mail in 2004. “It was reputed that even Roy Orbison tried to pattern his voice after Jimmy.”
They turned professional in 1949. Too young to work at hotels and nightclubs, they performed under a variety of group names at lodge meetings and other venues.
“We usually got $10 and all you can eat,” Mr. Toorish later recalled.
In 1949, the group made its CBC radio debut. A backstage meeting that year with the Golden Gate Quartet, who were performing at Toronto’s Casino Theatre, led to booking at New York nightclub Le Ruban Bleu.
All but one of the group’s members were still teenagers when they boarded a train to the Big Apple on April 5, 1950. Julius Monk, the manager at Le Ruban Bleu, suggested the name the Four Lads. An initial two-week engagement turned into a 30-week residency.
A subsequent gig singing backup on Johnnie Ray’s smash-hit recording of Cry in 1951 led to their own contract with Columbia Records. They were under the direction of Mitch Miller, the label’s powerful head of artists and repertoire.
Mr. Toorish and the Lads were never considered hip. Sticking to wholesome pop and novelty fare instead of dabbling in do-wop, they were even more square than the Crew-Cuts.
On the road, they called their family every Tuesday night and prayed together backstage before their nightclub performances.
As a go-to backing group, they appeared on two Doris Day covers of songs from the 1953 Walt Disney movie Peter Pan.
Still, they must have had enough street credibility to perform at the 1956 wedding of Bill Bonanno. The son of New York mob boss Joe Bonanno tied the knot with Rosalie Profaci Bonanno, whose memoir Mafia Marriage: My Story was published in 1991.
Despite their squeaky-clean image, the Lads were listed on the ballot for Playboy magazine’s 1960 All-Star Jazz poll. (They lost out to the Four Freshman.)
The Lads lost their zing in the 1960s as pop music tastes evolved. Bass singer Mr. Codarini had told The Globe in 1957 that “whatever happens in the future, we’re going to stick together.” Mr. Codarini left the Lads in 1962, two years after the group’s contract with Columbia expired.
He was replaced, but the quartet’s chart success was behind them. The Lads toiled on smaller labels and survived as a touring outfit. In October, 1969, they arrived at the Palace Room in the upscale Town and Country restaurant in Toronto as once-relevant artists groping for a new image.
Globe writer Blaik Kirby wrote that their act was “a bit of a mish-mash” as they struggled to keep up with the times while still pleasing their loyal fan base.
By the 1970s, Mr. Toorish, tired of touring, had left the Lads. The singer worked in the insurance industry while performing and writing music on the side.
He leaves his wife, Angela Toorish (née Tabor); and children, Jeffrey Toorish, John Bernard Toorish, Gregory Toorish, Suzanne Mercuri and, from a previous relationship, Deborah Stewart Tranter.
You can find more obituaries from The Globe and Mail here.
To submit a memory about someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page, e-mail us at obit@globeandmail.com.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Angela Toorish’s and Claire Toorish’s maiden names. As well, Johnny D’Arc’s name was misspelled in a photo caption. This article has been corrected.