Fred Finn was impressed by the barbershop quartet because they were able to read music and they could learn their parts to songs in one day. He liked the way my brother Ron wiggled his mustache and copied the motion by wiggling his own upper lip while he played the piano. His show was named after Fred's wife Mickey Finn.
The Dapper Four barbershop quartet went on the road with The Mickey Finn Show after doing a series of television shows with them. The T.V. show was before we ever saw Laugh In. It was a very fast paced show with corny humor and plenty of rag time jazz. The star was Fred's wife Mickey Finn who was blond, beautiful and she played the banjo. The first road engagement was at a new casino in Las Vegas called Caeser's Palace. The show was successful and they played in many other famous places including The Coconut Grove in Hollywood shortly after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated there in the same Ambassador hotel. The quartet was very entertaining because they sang good harmony, had good choreography and they were all young good looking men. At the end of the summer the barbershop quartet performed at the big room in Sparks, Nevada's Golden Nugget. Tom Knox sang tenor and did back handsprings during the act. He was several years younger than the others and this was his only job. Ron Browne, Fred Frank and Jim Schamp had been hired in Orange County to teach music in different junior high schools. It was September and school would be starting soon. The quartet decided to hire a pilot to fly them five hundred miles to Orange County after each late night show. The three new teachers would teach school during the day and fly back to Sparks every evening to entertain. Tom Knox, the young tenor, would fly home just to see his folks.
After midnight the airplane flew over Orange County Airport, but it was too foggy to land. The pilot said "Don't worry. I will fly to the San Fernando Valley and it won't be foggy there. You will not be late on your first day as a teachers. I won't try to land here because my radio isn't working."
He flew the plane for quite a while, it was very dark, and they couldn't find a hole in the clouds to look for a place to land. They ran out of gas, and the motor stopped. "Don't get nervous. I will find a hole in these clouds."
After a while the pilot found a hole and dived under the clouds, but they were in very rough mountains and saw no lights. "Don't worry. I can land this thing on the side of a mountain and we will be safe. But wait. Look over there to the right. I think I see some car lights."
He glided the plane toward the lights. They were flying over the El Cajon Pass north of San Bernardino headed toward Las Vegas. They were fifty miles off course and it was just dumb luck to have found interstate highway fifteen.
The little plane with the five men in it dropped fast. As they swooped over the highway they flew under telephone wires and touched down behind a station wagon. They were going too fast and the pilot said, "No problem. We have enough air speed to pass over him."
He lifted the plane and landed in front of the car but his brakes were poor and he was about to crash into the back of a little Volkswagen. "Hold on tight. I'm going to crash into the bank on the right side of the road."
Nobody was hurt in the crash but the boys made a decision not to fly in small planes anymore. Barbara woke me, and said Ron was on the phone and had told her the Dapper Four had landed at a small airport, and the quartet needed a ride to school. He asked Barbara to call his wife so she wouldn't worry. Ron asked me to meet the quartet at the top of Cajon Pass. I arrived at sun up and the quartet was still shook-up, but they were making jokes. Ron admitted there was no airport, and he showed me the wrecked plane. As I drove them home they sang a tag with the words "when I leave this world behind", but they would not let me sing with them. They voted to continue show business and the three teachers quit their jobs the first day they were supposed to start work. Each was told he would be blackballed from teaching again in Orange County.
The following year the teachers quit show business and were quickly hired by Orange County high schools because of their professional experience performing on The Mickey Finn Show. Tom Knox the young tenor continued to work in show business as a dancer and later as a sound engineer for records. He was nominated twice and the second time won a Grammy. Jim Shamp and Ron Browne continued teaching school. They performed for many years in Barbershop Quartets including the Dapper Dans of Disneyland.