The Harvard Krokodiloes are Harvard University's oldest a cappella singing group, founded in 1946. Four members of the Hasty Pudding Club at 12 Holyoke Street, popular for its all-male, burlesque musical theatre productions, began singing popular hits of their time in four-part harmony. The Krokodiloes, deriving their name from the ancient Greek word for crocodile, krokodilos, now consists of twelve to fourteen tuxedo-clad undergraduates who sing songs from the 1920s through the 1960s.[1] The group is no longer a part of the Hasty Pudding Club but retains a close informal relationship, including rehearsal and office space in the Club's headquarters.
The Krokodiloes have performed around the world for such luminaries as Ella Fitzgerald, Princess Grace of Monaco, Princess Caroline of Monaco, The Aga Khan, King Bhumibol of Thailand, Yo-Yo Ma, and Julia Roberts. They had a particularly close relationship with Leonard Bernstein, who became friends with the group first in 1973, when he composed a setting to an E. E. Cummings poem "if you can't eat." In 1983 Bernstein wrote an original song for the group, "Screwed On Wrong," and provided an introductory letter that helped launch the group's first of a continuing string of annual international summer tours.[2]
The group has performed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Good Morning America, National Public Radio, and on numerous international national television programs.[3]
Each year, the Krokodiloes continue to travel around the world on an eleven-week, six-continent tour. They have recorded 31 albums.
Some of the group’s notable accomplishments include the following:
The group's motto is Nunc Est Cantandum, or “Now is the time to sing.”[3]
In the episode "The Breakup" of the show 30 Rock, the character Toofer, a Harvard graduate, says that he was in the Kroks and had a solo on "Like a Prayer."