The Serendipity Singers

The Serendipity Singers
Genres	Folk
Labels	Philips United Artists Empire
Associated acts	Newport Singers
Past members	Mike Brovsky Brooks Hatch John Madden Jon Arbenz Bob Young Lynne Weintraub Bryan Sennett Diane Decker Tom Tiemann Gerry Barnas

The Serendipity Singers were a 1960s American folk group, similar to The New Christy Minstrels. Their debut single "Don't Let the Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man)" was a Top Ten hit and received the group's only Grammy nomination in 1965. The majority of the group's recording sales took place in a two-year period of 1964 and 1965. The group's name was sold in the 1970s resulting in entirely new lineups of group members performing under the name The Serendipity Singers into the early 21st Century.

This nine-member folk-oriented group started at the University of Colorado with seven original members of a group called the Newport Singers. The members - Bryan Sennett (14 March 1940 - 7 September 2011), Brooks Hatch, Mike Brovsky, John Madden, Jon Arbenz (1 June 1940 - 1 February 2012), Bob Young (12 March 1939 - 16 September 2006) and Lynne Weintraub - had, with the exception of Weintraub, all previously worked together in various trios before coming together to form the Newport Singers.

In 1963, after working extensively in the Rocky Mountain Denver-Boulder Front Range region, the Newport Singers moved to New York City based on a telegram offering a record contract from a William Morris agent. Fred Weintraub (no relation to Lynne), then-owner of the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, agreed to manage the group. Weintraub, also at the time the talent co-coordinator for the popular ABC Hootenanny television series, felt the group needed two more people to round out the sound. He invited Tom Tiemann and Diane Decker, two University of Texas students whom he had heard, to New York for an audition.

Fred Weintraub proposed the name change from the Newport Singers to Serendipity in part because there was another performing act using the Newport name. After some considerable discussion the compromise became the Serendipity Singers. After several months of rehearsal and work with Bob Bowers who became the group’s musical director, the Serendipity Singers opened at Weintraub's Bitter End café. They played in Greenwich Village with 90% original songs and were signed to six appearances on the weekly Hootenanny show during the Fall of 1963. The success of the television exposure helped the band land its first record contract.

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