This beloved Birmingham choir has kept a 96-year tradition alive, but their next performance might be their last big show

Published On: July 4, 2025

This month, the Warblers Club, a men’s chorus from Birmingham that began at Woodlawn High School in 1929, may put on their final major theatrical performance.

On July 12 at 6 p.m., the Warblers will perform at Samford University’s Wright Fine Arts Center.

It might be their final major performance.

“There’s a good chance of it,” said 17-year director Bob Parker. There used to be more than fifty men on stage.

With fluorescent hats, gloves, and shoes, the 17 Warblers were rehearsing harmonies and Vaudeville-style dance routines on Tuesday under black light.

The majority of the 38 men on the show’s roster are in their seventies and eighties, and they will be singing on stage.

Every year, the Warblers are weakened by aging.

Parker said it was just attrition.

Although the Warblers have made an effort to enlist new, younger members—some as young as 38—their ties to the former Woodlawn High School music club, which was established only seven years after the high school’s founding, have always been their main motivator.

The nostalgia must be enough to draw in new members.

Parker lamented that young men simply do not want to perform this type of music. Because it’s good music, it’s sad.

With a mix of patriotic classics, Vaudeville successes, Negro spirituals, and songs that fit well with barbershop harmonies, the group has always focused on the Stephen Foster style of American music.

Parker stated, “We’re kind of keeping it alive.”

Down in the Valley, Coney Island Babe, In the Evening by the Moonlight, Walk Together Chillun, and What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor are some of the tunes the Warblers have been practicing for their July 12 performance.

They will perform their most well-known patriotic songs, which consistently receive a standing ovation, including God Bless America and Proud to be an American.

Alabamy Bound, a Tin Pan Alley song released in 1924 by Al Jolson and Ray Charles, and Are You From Dixie will be featured in their opening chorus. Jerry Reed, a country musician, recreated a 1915 Vaudeville song in 1969.

Along with joining the Warblers on Still Kickin and other selections, Three on a String will also perform a number of their own tunes.

Despite their elderly age, the Warblers’ presentation relies heavily on coordinated dancing maneuvers with luminous blacklight accessories. Parker doesn’t give in, even if several of the men are slowing down.

During rehearsals in the gym at Huffman United Methodist Church, he is still very strict with them.

“I understand that we’re growing older,” Parker stated. There are some of you who move slowly in all you do.

To hone their motions, he put them through several drills.

“We have a lot of work ahead of us,” he remarked. Just one week remains.

But after that, he was kinder to the men. He said, “We’re still doing a good job.”

Under the direction of John Light from 1930 to 1947, Amos Hudson from 1948 to 1950, and Joe Turner from 1951 to 1977, the club began at Woodlawn High School in 1929 and held yearly concerts there until its dissolution in 1977.

Turner directed a three-night run of sold-out reunion concerts by the remaining Warblers at the Alabama Theater from July 1–3, 1988. The Warblers continued to perform a number of shows every year after the reunion since it was so well received. In 2001, Turner passed away.

With yearly summer performances at Samford University and Christmas concerts at local churches that frequently attract chartered buses full of nursing home enthusiasts, Parker has kept the Warblers roaring in recent years.

A few Warblers are hoping for a centennial jubilee show in 2029.

“Unless we get a bunch of younger men, this will probably be the last show we do,” Parker remarked. We can have a 100th anniversary performance if we can continue to perform until 2029.

The Warblers have scheduled a modest Christmas concert at Lakeside Baptist Church for December 7, however this might be their final major stage performance. Apart from that, the future is uncertain.

Tickets for the Samford event on July 12 cost $30 and may be purchased on the group’s website, Warblers.org.