Fox Valley Hall Men of Harmony

Present

Elgin Chapter Hall of Fame

Hall of Fame inductee 2004

Carl Missele

Carl Missele, QCA’s 2005 Music Man


If you were to come across a show program from the 1954 Elgin Chapter’s April Showers of Harmony, you would see the listing for a quartet called the Kord Kids. One member of that quartet was an 18-year-old Carl Missele, and that would be the beginning of Carl’s quartetting career. Soon to follow would be a quartet called the Houligans in the late 1950s, then the Mad Caps, the Valley Four-gers, the Critic’s Choice, then back to the Valley Four-gers. And his quartetting experience would not have been complete without singing with Doug Smith in the Harmony Time Machine, since everyone who is anyone has sung with Doug. Carl also has been a member of senior quartets; Diminished Capacity, who represented the Illinois District at the Seniors’ competition in 2000 and Grandfather’s Clock, who received the Ed Wilson Trophy in 2002.

Carl became a member of the QCA in 1976 when the Valley Four-gers won the Illinois District competition, but it wasn’t until his retirement in 1998 that he became actively involved. At that time the QCA had been in the process of assembling recordings from all of the past Illinois District Championship quartets in order to create a CD with one song from each group. Walt Martin had acquired some of the recordings, but severe health problems had prevented him from completing the project. Carl took over the project and finished it with the help of Walt, Dick Kingdon, Joe Sullivan, Scott Wetle, and Dick Johnson. The result was the QCA 50-Plus 2-CD set which includes 58 songs. Over 500 sets have been sold, with profits going to fund music education. In fact, many disc sets have been donated to music departments of various educational institutions and some libraries.

As a follow-up to the QCA 50-Plus project, Carl engineered a tag-learning CD with the help of District Champs, Alchemy, and Dick Johnson. This CD contains 19 familiar tags with 95 tracks: one balanced track and four voice-dominant tracks for each tag. This has also been a successful fund raiser for the QCA so they can continue their music education activities.

Carl’s technical expertise, organization, and drive have made these projects successful and have done much to promote music education in the Illinois District. It is for these reasons that Carl was chosen to be QCA Music Man for 2005.

Incidentally, Carl’s work is not done. Watch for a second tag-learning disc in the fall of 2005. Alchemy and Dick Johnson will again assist in making this CD.

Former Inductees

Paul Will, Marv Jedicker, Dennis Toren