What is a Hum?

My risky business on the “Hum” happened couple of weeks ago now. It was an excursion on the last remaining wooden operating steam-powered vessel in the United States in the company of about 60 other gents of approximately my age whose express purpose was to sing choruses in public.

As promised (or threatened), I obtained further information about the origins of this fairly unusual expedition from Bob Hall, who has been organizing them annually in recent decades. His information, in turn, comes from a three-page epistle called “A Short Sketch of the Hummers” by Bryant Tolles, written in February of 1983.

Per Tolles, Hums began in December 1936 when a large number of Yale alumni couldn’t fit into the Hartford Club to attend an appearance by the football team captain.  They wound up in larger rooms downstairs and began singing Yale songs, which Tolles says they did for “several hours,” enthusiastically. “This is some hum,” some wit remarked, and the name stuck.

For many years this activity continued with a varying group of about sixty, led by a core group. They met in people’s homes and in clubs and other venues. Hums were not limited to Yalies but welcomed college singers from many places. Tolles’ described energetic singing:

One of these non-Yale singers was Ted Hansen who stood up at the start of the Hum and sang the Norwegian National Anthem in Norwegian while he also directed the Hummers while accompanying him by one-third singing ‘Boo-a, Boo-a,’ another part ‘Lit-em, Lit-em,’ and the last third singing repetitively ‘Ile-Buscum.’ Each third sang in a different pitch.

This singing was done without music, since the repertoire was apparently commonly known, perhaps the way most people today know Happy Birthday to You or the Star Spangled Banner. Actually, I bet they knew their music better than folks today. Most birthday groups now make a terrifying cacaphony even on Happy Birthday. Many cannot carry a tune at all much less match someone else’s pitch.

I digress.

The Hummers never had regular meetings, getting together apparently on impulse yet still drawing good ad hoc crowds. They did a broadcast on a Hartford radio station (this was before the advent of TV) and filled the Bushnell Hall in that city with a crowd to hear the Yale Glee Club.

By the early 1970s, though, many original members had died or moved away, and there were no Hums for several years. In 1974, though, a new tradition was begun featuring an annual late spring gathering at Mystic Seaport on the Sabino, and it has continued that way.

In Tolles’ listing of early members, I noted the name of my college roommate’s father among the others, as he would have been a new graduate in 1936.

Tolles, I think, is now 92 and living in West Hartford. He concluded his piece with the hope that Hums would continue: “Hummers never die,” he says, “but sing on into eternity.”

Good philosophy.