Tim Hauser, the founder and guiding force behind the Manhattan Transfer, a Grammy-winning pop-jazz vocal group that enjoyed decades of worldwide acclaim, died Oct. 16 at a hospital in Sayre, Pennsylvania. He was 72.
His death was confirmed by Dan Rahilly of Ed Keane Associates, Hauser’s management agency. The cause was variously reported as cardiac arrest or complications from pneumonia.
Hauser, a one-time advertising and marketing executive, formed the Manhattan Transfer in 1972 as a modern-day throwback to the intricate vocal harmonies of an earlier era. With few changes in personnel and none since 1979, the two men and two women of Manhattan Transfer became one of the most successful and enduring vocal groups in history, recording more than 20 albums and winning 10 Grammy Awards.
The quartet became known for its supple harmonies and smooth stage style, but the choreographed dance moves and flashy costumes always took a back seat to the vocal arrangements that featured Janis Siegel, Cheryl Bentyne, Alan Paul and Hauser.
“We never started out with one lead singer,” Hauser told the Los Angeles Times in 1991. “Everybody gets their shot. We understand that if everybody’s not happy, it’s not going to work.”
As the group’s leader, Hauser drew from a deep and diverse musical well. The Four Freshmen and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, two jazz vocal groups of the 1950s, were important forerunners, but Manhattan Transfer also borrowed from the World War II harmonies of the Andrews Sisters, the doo-wop trend of the 1950s and the girl-group sound of the ’60s.
Hauser developed the concept for the group as a college student at Villanova University outside Philadelphia, he told The Washington Post in 1986. He told one of his music professors he wanted two men and two women singing complex, interweaving parts.
“He said, ‘Well, what you’re basically talking about is two tenor and two alto saxophones, singing in close harmony — that’s the Count Basie sax section,” Hauser recalled.
In 1981, the Manhattan Transfer became the first group ever to win Grammy Awards for best pop vocal (for “The Boy From New York City,” the group’s biggest hit) and best jazz vocal (for a version of “Corner Pocket,” first performed in the 1950s by the Count Basie Orchestra).
The Transfer’s 1985 album, “Vocalese,” which put words to 11 instrumental jazz numbers, received 12 Grammy nominations — second only to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” for the most in history.
Critic Geoffrey Himes praised Manhattan Transfer’s “precision harmonies and playful irreverence” in The Post in 1995, but others were not always as kind. One of the group’s better-known tunes, a 1979 vocal version of Weather Report’s “Birdland,” was seen by detractors as emblematic of the jazz-fusion excesses of the 1970s. Nonetheless, Manhattan Transfer was considered the pre-eminent vocal group in jazz for decades, repeatedly winning polls and other honors.
“At this point in our lives, what else are we going to do?” Hauser said in 1991. “When you do something and people say you’re one of the best at it, it’s too late to change your mind and say, ‘I want to be sales executive.’”
Timothy DuPron Hauser was born Dec. 12, 1941, in Troy, New York, and went to high school in Belmar, New Jersey.
In a 2012 interview with the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, he recalled sitting in on a rehearsal in 1956 with the popular doo-wop group Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.
“They sang ‘I Promise to Remember,’ a cappella,” Hauser said. “I swear that was my turning point. That was God’s way of saying, ‘Here’s your gig, son, and if you don’t get it, it’s not my fault.’”
Hauser formed his first band at 15 years old and sang in various groups through college, before graduating from Villanova in 1963. He later worked for a New York advertising agency and for the Nabisco food conglomerate before forming the first incarnation of Manhattan Transfer — named for a novel by John Dos Passos — in 1969.
After that group broke up, Hauser was driving a taxi when he met singer Laurel Masse. She introduced him to Siegel, and they later invited Paul to complete the quartet. Masse left the group in the late 1970s and was replaced by Bentyne.
Hauser lived in Southern California since the late 1970s. He occasionally produced albums for other performers and also marketed a line of tomato sauces.
Survivors include his third wife, Barb Sennet Hauser; two children; and a sister.
With its eclectic blend of styles, the Transfer was an exotic musical flower in its early years, playing at small New York clubs and underground venues.
“Salvador Dali came to see us,” Hauser told the Idaho Statesman in 2005. “And Rex Harrison. I remember when Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson were sitting in the front, both wearing dark glasses. Faye Dunaway came into our dressing room by mistake — she was looking for the ladies’ room — and we wouldn’t let her leave.”