from 2008
SHELBY GRIMM
talks about his time with Disneyland's Dapper Dans
and in the "Golden Horseshoe Revue" and "Circus Fantasy"

by Scott Wolf

Going back to the 1980s, I remember seeing Shelby Grimm singing with the Dapper Dans of Disneyland barbershop quartet. The group never failed to bring a smile to the faces of the crowds, and me, with their harmony and vaudeville-style comedy. With Shelby as the leader, they also appeared at various events, and in a feature film and television shows, which includes providing the singing voices for Homer and characters on "The Simpsons." Shelby, however,  established himself as in important part of Disneyland live entertainment history even before he joined the Dapper Dans! But enough of me "singing" Shelby's praises, I'm sure you'll enjoy this fascinating interview.

Scott Wolf: You had been performing with Debbie Reynolds in her act. How did you come to work for Disneyland?

Shelby Grimm: I was working 22 weeks out of the year with Debbie, and I was trying to fill out the year with other shows and get work. So I went in, at Debbie Reynolds’ Studio, to an audition for “Fantasy Follies.” A friend of mine, Amy Sheridan, was the director. Connie Gohata and Stan Freese were there and I gave a really good audition, but I wasn’t what they wanted for “Fantasy Follies.” So, Connie Gohata came up to me and gave me her card and said, “Call me about another show, ‘The Golden Horseshoe.’” So I said, “Okay.”

SW: What year was that?

SG: I’m thinking about ’82. So I went over and auditioned to perform for them in that.

SW: In the (Irish Tenor) Fulton Burley part?

SG: Yes, in the Fulton spot.

SW: Were you familiar with the show yet?

SG: I had seen it when I was a child coming from Kansas on the Super Chief train and remembered Wally Boag spitting those teeth out and I always thought, “Gee. What a great show to be in. I wonder if one day I could ever do something like that.”

SW: So Connie gave you her card and you auditioned?

SG: Yes. At that time, Debbie (Reynolds) was touring. Also around that time we went to Australia. That was in the fall of ’82, and that’s where I met my wife, Giulia, when I was on the road with Debbie. I met her in Melbourne.

I started subbing (in the Golden Horseshoe) and then they hired me to do the nighttime spot full-time. They were doing 10 shows a day. There was a day cast and a night cast, seven days a week.

Fulton was five days a week during the day, I was five days a week during the night, and Jay (Meyer) did double shifts Saturdays and Sundays.

SW: Did you enjoy doing that show?

SG: Oh, it was great. It was great. It was the perfect family entertainment.

SW: Did you work with Wally (Boag) at all?

SG: I never worked with Wally. It was always Dick Hardwick and Kirk Wall. Kirk and I knew each other from the outside because he and I did “Grease” at San Bernardino. So we palled around a lot. It was a good show. I did work with Betty Taylor – she was a real gem.

SW: What was your training like for that role?

SG: It was pretty dicey, actually, because I learned kind of with Dick Hardwick. I didn’t learn with Fulton or Jay except for just watching them, coming in and watching the show. They just gave me music, which wasn’t the right music. It had changed. All the charts evolved over time, so you got a piece of music, and find out, “Well, we don’t do it that way anymore.” So you’d have to rewrite it as you go. That’s part of the tradition. Dapper Dans' tradition was that we had charts that were so old and photocopied so many times you couldn’t even read them. It was part of your job to decipher them. We weren’t about to tell you what it was. It was the same deal; it was part of the gig.

SW: Each of the people in the Fulton role sang different songs. Did you bring your own songs and routines to the show?

SG: They gave me options of songs to do. I did it differently than Fulton and Jay did. I’d do stuff and try songs a little bit different, every now and then. Dick Hardwick would say, “Don’t do that. That part that you did? Don’t do that.” That’s how you learned what was acceptable or not.

SW: Didn’t you go to Japan and do the “Diamond Horse Revue” there?

SG: Yes, in ’84 for two months.

SW: Did you have to learn Japanese?

SG: Yes, a little bit, because we also did a nighttime show which was mostly in Japanese.

SW: What show was that?

SG: “Hoop Dee Doo (Revue).”

SW: How did you end up with the Dapper Dans?

SG: When they revived the act, Stan (Freese) called me and asked, “Can you tap dance?” and I said, “Yes!” “Well, we’re going to put this group together.” I hadn’t seen them because when I was at the park, they had been let go for a couple years. There weren’t any Dapper Dans for a couple years, like ’84 to ’86. Something like that.

SW: Could you tap dance?

SG: I was a dancer, but it wasn’t my forte. I never claimed to be a professional tap dancer, but I knew the steps and I figured, how hard could it be if you’re still going to sing? And it turned out that it was soft shoe and it was choreography - right up my alley. I was chosen to be the full-time baritone.

SW: Who were the other three?

SG: Jim Schamp, Ron Browne, and Rick Allan. I think that was spring of ’86. Ron, Jim, and Rick were all schoolteachers. By the way, Jim Schamp subbed with us even into the 21st century. There were times when he’d come in and sub with us. Here’s a guy that’s worked in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘00s at the park.

SW: And you sang in a barbershop quartet in high school, right?

SG: Yes. I already had performed in The Lost Chords so I did know barbershop. But we didn’t sing society barbershop. It wasn’t that purist, the way it is now. I don’t know if you’ve heard barbershop quartets from the society have a sound that’s a lot different.

The Disneyland quartet was more of a commercial sound that was more accessible to people. It was more of a men’s quartet sound and not your really, really pure barbershop, because you have to admit, that has kind of a limited appeal.

It was smart because it was so much more entertaining. The way the act was as I learned it from those guys was that it was vaudeville and it was that shtick that was difficult to do. Corn is always difficult to pull off. Timing in comedy is always more difficult than drama. Anybody can cry. I think a lot of entertainers would say that they find comedy much more difficult than drama.

SW: Together you performed as other groups, not just the Dapper Dans, right?

SG: Yes, every time they had those themed events. The first one was “Blast to the Past” (a Disneyland marketing campaign themed to the 1950s.) Stan called and said, “We won’t need you for these three months. We won’t need the Dapper Dans.” We weren’t doo-wop, so I said, “Wait a minute, we can sing doo-wop,” and we learned three songs. Jim didn’t want to do it, so we got Mike Geiger, Rick Allan, and I think Jerry Siggins started singing bass with us. So, we learned three tunes and auditioned and he said, “Okay, can you learn a whole repertoire?” and we said, “Absolutely,” which we did, and became Danny and the Dappers.

But there were all those themed events that I thought were really successful. “State Fair,” “Blast to the Past,” “Party Gras.” One year I was a ringmaster in Clown Alley at Carnation Plaza Gardens for the “Circus Fantasy” event.

SW: Did you do that while you were doing the Dapper Dans?

SG: Yes, because the Dapper Dans were two days a week during the “Circus Fantasy.”

SW: So when they had the themes they kind of cut back?

SG: Except for "Blast to the Past" when we were five days a week.

SW: How did you become the leader of the Dapper Dans?

SG: Just maybe the first season Jim Schamp was the leader, then he said, “I don’t want to do this anymore. Will you be the leader?” He didn’t want to be the leader. Ron quit one day in the middle of the summer. He just said, “I’m not coming in tomorrow. I don’t want to do this anymore.” Back then it was like, “Just get somebody.”

SW: What did being the leader entail?

Everything. Right now they have a show director and they have a choreographer and they have a musical director, and then of course they have a stage manager and they do all the things I used to do on my own. You know, we would write our own stuff, find our own music, create our own shtick, everything. Create a show on our own. I did everything from fixing the bike (the four-seat bicycle that all four ride,) fixing the (Deagan Organ) chimes during breaks, writing arrangements, dealing with all the nuts and bolts, costuming issues.

SW: You also did a lot outside of the park. I remember photographing you at a football halftime show, and at an Angels game singing the National Anthem.

SG: The Angels game - Corky Lippert had been doing it for 30-some years and she would call us directly - it was separate from Disney. We would go sing the National Anthem until Disney bought the team and then they couldn’t use us because then they’d have to pay us, so we lost that experience. But they would tap the quartet a lot for special events because we were versatile enough.

SW: You mentioned Danny and the Dappers, you also did the Grease Monkeys, right?

SG: Yes, we changed our whole repertoire and became purveyors of Disney Channel cartoon shows for Disney Afternoon Avenue. We got a bundle of lead charts from the different cartoon shows; “Gummy Bears,” “Rescue Rangers,” “DuckTales,” and “Tale Spin.”

SW: Who were the Cowboy Buckaroos?

SG: Special Events would have a themed event and they’d say, “Can you guys be a quartet for this event?” and we’d say, “Okay, give us time,” and we’d throw together a repertoire of country tunes. We were “The Jolly Tars” for pirate events. They’d rope off a section of the Rivers of America and serve beautiful dinners out in the setting. They’d theme them. They were really great nights. Great nights.

SW: I remember you did a show in Mickey’s Toontown.

SG: It was set to run five years, and it was a show about drying up the dip, about a bomb in Toontown, with clown wigs and clown make-up. It lasted 8 months, I think, and then one day they came and said, “That’s it. We’re not going to do it starting next week.” I was just thankful I still had the Dapper Dans working because they said, “You guys are going to go back to Main Street.” I was just glad we still had our group to go back with.

And then they had us, many times, go down to the bowels of the “Haunted Mansion,” go down the elevator into the lobby and a guest had fashioned a long table that went the length of that lobby.

I asked one of the directors once where the table came from and he said, “You know, a guest of ours made this table.”

SW: What types of events were in the "Mansion"?

SG: They’d offer clients all different types of events and they would just say, “You can have a dinner down here in the ‘Haunted Mansion’ and have it themed.”

’95 was the first time we had the “Halloween Treat” event and we became Frankenstein, Count Dracula, the Mummy, and Phantom. There were four nights of “Halloween Treat.”

Then it kind of evolved into doing gigs down in that ‘Haunted Mansion’ because we had developed a repertoire that we played on the chimes, everything in minor key.

SW: You and the quartet ended up singing in “The Haunted Mansion” movie, right?

SG: Right. That was in ’02. We were contacted by Don Hahn who had known us from outside. It wasn’t through Disney. He called me directly because we had known him in the past. He and Rob Minkoff were a team.

SW: Do you have any favorite memory of working with Disney?

SG: I think just my time when I was working with Ron and Rick and Jim. They were all guys that really, really knew how to work the street. They were so focused and committed and great singers, all, and great attitudes, all.

Enjoy these images of Shelby
in "Circus Fantasy"

See other interviews