Tony Butala, a founder of the soothing vocal trio the Lettermen who became a mainstay of the pop charts, cruising through the rocking 1960s as the musical equivalent of Dad’s comfy Buick on a highway filled with fire-breathing Corvettes and Mustangs, died Nov. 1 in Manitowoc, Wis. He was 87.
His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by a representative for the band.
The classic lineup of the Lettermen, featuring Mr. Butala and two Brigham Young University alumni, Jim Pike and Bob Engemann, came together in Los Angeles in 1959.
That was a transitional period in pop music. However shortsighted, rock ‘n’ roll was being written off by some as a teen craze of the 1950s that was ready for last rites. Buddy Holly died in February of that year, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis were facing career-threatening scandals, and Elvis Presley was off serving in the Army in West Germany.
It was, in other words, a perfect moment for the Lettermen, with their matching varsity-style letterman sweaters, Pat Boone-clean image, and delicate ballads, modeled after vocal jazz groups like the Four Freshmen, that were as warm and inviting as a Jacuzzi.
Then the 1960s happened. Rock rose from its putative grave to dominate the decade, from the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” to Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, shattering pop music conventions and mainstream social norms along the way.
The Lettermen were proud holdouts -- which by all appearances proved to be a blockbuster strategy.
Throughout the 1960s and into the early ’70s, the wildly prolific group was a commercial powerhouse, releasing a string of successful albums and landing 20 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including six in the Top 40.
The group’s breakthrough 1961 single “The Way You Look Tonight” -- a standard by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields from 1936 -- peaked at No. 13 and earned two Grammy Award nominations.
Their string-heavy interpretation of “When I Fall in Love,” a song notably covered by the likes of Nat King Cole and Doris Day, soared to No. 7 the same year.
Among other gems, their 1965 vocal take on “Theme from ‘A Summer Place’” -- written by Max Steiner as a lush instrumental for the 1959 film melodrama “A Summer Place” -- with its soaring falsettos calling to mind Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, hit No. 16.
Their 1967 medley “Goin’ Out of My Head/Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” which combined two earlier hits, the first by Little Anthony & the Imperials and the second by Frankie Valli, shot to No. 7.
“We were a pop act in the rock era,” Mr. Butala said in a television interview. “We got to perform with people that wouldn’t have a rock act with them -- Jack Benny, George Burns, Red Skelton. We went overseas with Bob Hope, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin.”
Anthony Francis Butala was born Nov. 20, 1938, in Sharon, Pa., a steel town near Ohio, to George Butala and Mary Ann (Ference) Butala.
A skilled singer from an early age, Tony was around 10 when he appeared on a morning show on KDKA radio in Pittsburgh. A few years later, his mother, a nurse, headed to California to tend to a sick sister. His father suggested that Tony tag along to pursue opportunities in entertainment.
Once in Los Angeles, he joined the high-profile Robert Mitchell Boys Choir, which provided vocals for films, including Disney’s animated “Peter Pan” (1953) and “White Christmas” (1954) with Bing Crosby.
As a student at the Hollywood Professional School in the mid-1950s, he started a pop quartet that lasted about three years. Early incarnations of the Lettermen took shape in 1958, and the classic lineup coalesced the next year.
A secret to their success, Mr. Butala said in one radio interview, lay in their shared vocal range. Unlike other vocal groups, theirs did not include a tenor or a bass; all three members had “thick, middle-range voices,” he said.
Therefore, they avoided any complications of sounding “like a tuba trying to blend with a piccolo,” he said. “If you have three trumpets, there’s a natural blend.”
It did not take long to come up with a handle for the group. “School names were really cool then,” Mr. Butala recalled in a 2013 television interview. “It was the Four Freshmen. The Four Preps, Danny & the Juniors, the Seniors, the Sophomores, and no one had used the name of the Lettermen.” Their sweaters were “a visual aid for people to remember us.”
“And then,” he added, “the ’60s came along, and all of a sudden, school names are so square and cornball.” Mr. Butala approached the group’s label, Capitol Records, about changing the name. “They said, ‘Are you kidding me? Three hit albums. Three or four hit singles.’ They said they wouldn’t do it. We had a million dollars.”
As the years went by, the Lettermen often wore contemporary clothing instead of their namesake sweaters and recorded covers of rock-adjacent acts including the Mamas & the Papas and the Turtles. Still, they resisted the lure of the counterculture -- at times pointedly.
In March 1969, they performed on the same bill as Anita Bryant and Jackie Gleason in front of 30,000 people at the youth-led Rally for Decency at Miami’s Orange Bowl.
The gathering was a response to an infamous performance by Jim Morrison of the Doors, who had been arrested after apparently simulating masturbation onstage during a concert in the city weeks earlier -- and, in an enduring rock controversy, may or may not have exposed himself during the show.
The Lettermen rolled on, touring and recording dozens of albums over the years with an evolving lineup in which Mr. Butala was the constant before he retired in 2019.
He also carved out a career in the wine business, growing cabernet and merlot grapes for producers Stag’s Leap and Castlebrooke on a vineyard he purchased in the Napa Valley of California in the 1980s.
Survivors include his partner, Sue Shimek-Kusche; his daughters Rebecca How and Lisa and Regina Butala; his son, Anthony J. Butala; and five grandchildren. His marriage to Judith Blaskovich ended in divorce.
The Lettermen’s last single to make it onto the Hot 100 came in 1971. A dreamy romantic ballad called “Love,” it was a cover of a 1970 song by a man who, in stark contrast to the group, had come to epitomize rock’s volcanic sound and shaggy-haired spirit of rebellion in the 1960s -- John Lennon.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.