Merry Christmas to You All!

It's probably the most unique record album of the many UP WITH PEOPLE recorded back in the 1960s, '70s and '80s.

Produced in a Los Angeles studio, according to Linda Blackmore Cates (the featured solist on the cover of the album), it was funded by an UWP donor and created "following an amazing gathering of all the UWP casts in Sante Fe, New Mexico during the Christmas period of 1967."

In addition to Linda's involvement (she now lives in the Nashville area), there were several other Tennesseeans involved with the album's production. Her husband-to-be Bill Cates (they had just gotten engaged) played a role in the recordings. Bill served as Musical Director for Up With People after being the original Music Director of Sing Out South.

Bill Cates in May, 1966 with Sing-Out South

And then there's the title song for the album "MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL" which Linda says was written by former SOS cast member Cabot Wade when he was a part of Cast C of Up With People in 1967.

Linda Blackmore Cates & Cabot Wade at an UWP People Reunion

Thanks to YouTube and Willie Knowles' Up With People 1965-1970 Facebook page, here's the title song of MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL with Linda as the featured solist...

Linda told me one more very interesting thing about this title song. She wishes she had done another take of it in the studio! She didn't like how she has done the closing part of the song, feeling she missed a note at end. However, she says nobody has ever mentioned any concerns to her about that over all the years.

Linda has other strong memories during the time the album was recorded, including one surrounding the creation of the song THE HOPE OF MANKIND. It's also featured on the MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL album. Linda says the music for the song came out of a dream which Herb Allen, the all-star UWP song writer and producer, had one night.

The next morning he was so excited, he called Linda, woke her up ,then had her come over to hear the song played on a piano for the very first time. Here it is from YouTube and the 1965-1970 UWP cast Willie Knowles Facebook page as heard on the MERRY CHRISTMAS album...

Linda says this song was the highlight of the album for her which also featured many of UWP's stars at that time including:

Frank Fields
Pat Ector
Finis Fator
Debbie Kirkpatrick
THE UP WITH PEOPLE CHORUS

Here's another original song from the album featuring some of those artists and the UWP Chorus entitled A PRESENT FOR SANTA...


The album was produced in stereo and released under the PACE RECORDS label in time for the 1968 Christmas season. In my archives information, I found a 4/color circular about the album inserted the next year in 1969 inside an edition of TOMORROW'S AMERICAN.

The ad features the album for sale with the extra bonus of it being available at the low price of just $3.98 along with all the other UWP People albums at the time (UWP I, II, III and FRONTIERS OF TOMORROW) all being offered in tandem for a similar price to be given as holiday gifts.

Today, the album may be more difficult to buy. I could not find its sheet music on line and I am not sure it has been released on CD by UWP. All I could find were some album copies available (in various conditions) ranging in price from$5.00 to $9.95 on E-Bay.

Along with several original songs, the MERRY CHRISTMAS also features UWP arrangments of several classic Christmas carols such as I WONDER AS I WONDER, AWAY IN A MANGER, O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM and this classic....O HOLY NIGHT!


If any of you reading this blog posting were involved in this recording, we'd love for you to share your memories here or send them to me by e-mail, and I can post them (pat.nolan@dvl.com).

I can share one review of this album which I recently found on on-line. It was written some 40 years after the album was recorded. Dated Thursday, September 25, 2008 on the blog site A CHRISTMAS YULE BLOG, the un-bylined article says:

"The album is undeniably Sixties--the sound, the pop beat, the smell of dacron and polyester. At times, it goes so overboard that you need scuba equipment to simply breathe.

There are fun Christmas songs (JINGLE BELL BEAT, A PRESENT FOR SANTA), traditional carols (AWAY IN A MANGER, O LITTLE TOWN OF BETHLEHEM) and at time preachy songs (PAT'S POEM, UP WITH PEOPLE) with a hint of Christmas that make them qualify for this album.

Overall, I liked the album, and the soloists (Debbie Kirkpatrick, Linda Blackmore, Pat Ector) did a fine job when the spotlight shone on them. The group singing is very reminiscent of a hip Mitch Miller & The Gang and the '60s sound is a true flashback."

So MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL, to all, the best in 2011!

A Sing-Out White Christmas

Something appears to be ready to happen in Nashville for Christmas Day that hasn't been seen since the days of Sing-Out South. That's 41 years ago in 1969.

A White Christmas!

Forecasters say the city could get at least a couple of inches beginning late Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day. Technically, Nashville had a White Christmas in 1993, but that was only for about three-tenths of an inch. The last time we had appreciable snow was in 1969 when we received almost 3 inches.

I remember that Christmas. It was my first year in college and I had gone to Midnight Mass at the Cathedral with several of my Sing-Out friends. It was just raining hard at that time. So when I went to bed, I thought we'd missed out again on the white stuff. Nashville has had a White Christmas only a handful of times during my life. But when I awoke to join my little brothers and sisters to see what Santa Claus brought, there was this wonderland of white outside.

My father's favorite singer was Bing Crosby and it wasn't the holiday season until he got out his White Christmas album and began to play the title song. In 1969, with all the snow on the ground outside, it seemed like a dream come true, just as Bing sang it (after Irving Berlin wrote it) for the movies so many years ago....


Bing Crosby - White Christmas
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While we didn't have snow very often for Christmas, during our time growing up in Nashville in the 1960s, we did have a lot of Christmas traditions, beginning with the annual Christmas Parade held on the first Sunday of December.

In 1966, the parade featured Sing-Out South as we entertained tens of thousands of Nashvillians as we rode on a float in the parade. We also darn near froze to death as it was quite cold that day as I remember it.

Not far from the Christmas Parade site, thousands of people every year,during the 1950s and '60s, came to Centennial Park to see the annual Nativity Scene, sponsored by the city and Harvey's Department Store, in front of the Parthenon. While it would never work today putting a Christian symbol in front of a pagan temple in a government owned public park, none of that was an issue in those days. Just the beauty of the scence that made it a special Nashville Christmas treat every year.

While the Parthenon Nativity scene eventually just wore out from age and weather exposure in the late 1960s, the tradition of special Christmas lights continues in Nashville with the annual holidays displays (and special holiday shows) at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. To see this year's display is especially moving for Nashvillians because the Hotel was damaged by the terrible May Floods and closed for several months, opening just in time for the holidays and those special lights!

Another Nashville Christmas tradition still going strong to this very day is holiday caroling to raise money for the Fannie Battle Day Home. I can remember going caroling with Sing-Out friends, especially in Patty Mayer Higgins' neighborhood on Christmas Eve, 1968. What made it particularly memorable was coming in for hot chocolate just in time to watch the Apollo VIII astronauts on TV, orbiting the moon for the first time in history and reading from the Bible and the Book of Genesis...

When you look back, Nashville was clearly a wonderful community to grow up in, with many great Christmas traditions that continue in one fashion or another to the present time. No wonder, there is something of a Christmas song that speaks to it.
Here's Nashville's own Amy Grant, appearing with her former husband Steven Chapman in 1986 on the TONIGHT SHOW with Johnny Carson,singing a Tennessee Christmas....

Merry Christmas, everyone from what many hope to be a snowy Tennessee Christmas for 2010!

The Island

I am taking a business trip this coming week to Connecticut. In making my plane and lodging accomodations, I realized I will be less than 20 miles from David's Island and Ft. Slocum in New York state where many of us spent several weeks over two summers (in 1967 &'68) as a part of the World Sing-Out Festivals held there.

It made we wonder what's going on there today, including the nearby city of New Rochelle, NY.

New Rochelle, NY has about the same size population now at 73,260 as it did back in the late 1960s (75,385 in 1970 census) when it was the host city for the World Sing-Out Festivals. It is still the seventh largest city in the State of New York and is listed by the American Podiatric Medical Association as one of the best cities to walk in the nation. In November, 2008, New Rochelle was also named by BUSINESS WEEK magazine as of the best places nationally to raise children.

Long known as a town with a significant amount of single-family residential developments, including some communities that were listed by FORBES Magazine in 2006 as among the "most expensive zip codes" in the country,the downtown area had a significant revitalization in the late 1990s with a $190 million entertainment center. It is located near the former Macy's and Mall which had be built and opened in 1968.

According to Wikipedia, New Rochelle is also known for its impressive collection of parklands and nature preserves, but the city has had a long struggle when it comes to similar efforts regarding David Island's.

David's Island has had many names over the years. Its current name comes from an ink manufacturer, Thaddeus Davids, who was a longtime resident of New Rochelle and owner of the island back in the 18th century.

Rented by the federal government during the Civil War and used as a hospital for wounded prisoners, Davids Island was later purchased by Congress and used for a variety of purposes over the years including as a recruitment depot, an army base,and as a costal artillery post to defend New York harbor. In the late 1950s, it was also the site for a Nike Ajax air-defense battery. During its time in World War II as a recruiting and training base, the famous "Sound off,, one, two" miltary cadence was reportedly invented there.

The installation built on Davids Island was given the name, Ft. Slocum, in honor of Major General Henry Slocum, one of the youngest generals to fight in the Civil War and later a New York congressman. The facility was also once home of the U.S. Army Chaplain School and the U.S. Information School where Army and Air Force personnel were trained in journalism, public affairs and photography.

After being deactivated as military installation, there were reportedly plans by Con Edison to build a nuclear plant there before the island was sold to the city of New Rochelle in 1967.

After lying more or less unused for several years, during the summer of 2008, the city of New Rochelle reportedly demolished every remaining structure on the Island including the iconic water tower which was on the northern end of the Island (as seen above).

Unfortunately, progress in developing a park on Davids Island continues to be difficult. Acording to a posting on the City of New Rochelle website, during his recent State of the City speech on March 11,2010, New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson (seen above) talked about the matter, and "to the surprise and delight of many in his audience of citizens and civic leaders," announced a new focus on the project, "envisioning development with sustainable design of world class quality and global demonstration value, to benefit the Island's unique status and potential." (Don't some of those adjectives that sound like something Blanton Belk would have said during one of our conferences? LOL)

Continuing to quote from the City of New Rochelle's website and Mayor Bramson's remarks, "In announcing a fresh approach to Davids Island, Mayor Branson refocuses attention on a site that has both enraptured and frustrated community leaders for decades. Bramson's proposal entails a city-directed planning analysis as a precursor to the selection of a master developer--with significant public access, reasonable and limited scale, and above all, cutting edge sustainable design serving as the guiding principals for any project."

I don't fully know the reasons for concerns, but the Mayor's speech talks about his plan resolving "long standing tensions between economic and environmental goals surrounding the project." More specifically, I have seen reports that the Island today is home to a variety of plants, birds and animals, including an endangered sea turtle, and rare birds such as the osprey and least terns. Davids Island also reportedly supports valuable wetlands, rare rocky intertidal areas and sandy beaches. The waters surrounding the Island are home to Winter Flounder, Atlantic Herring and Atlantic Silversides.

I believe the road above is the one we used to go over to the Island by ferry during our World Sing-Out Festivals. It would have been great during my business trip to steal some time away to go over again by ferry to visit the new park. But as Mayor Bramson says: "Davids Island is a tough nut to crack." Indeed. But he also believes recent federal funds "secured by local Congresswoman Nita Lowey, together with evolving building and design standards, (will create) new options for progress."

I sure hope so, and I suspect so do thousands of former UWP and Sing-Out alumni from all over the world who remember fondly the days we spent on Davids Island so many years ago.

Time to Begin Planning the 45th Reunion

2011 marks the 45th anniversary of the founding of Sing-Out South.

So it's time to start organizing a Reunion for sometime next year.


And what better place to start than to hold our organizing meeting at Shoney's!

After all, that was the place we often hung out after practices and shows. And while the famous Big Boy (above) is no longer the mascot symbol for the restaurant chain (it's now Shoney Bear), many of the Shoney's still have a semi-private backroom area where a small group can get together and do some planning (and eating, if you are hungry).

And so this Saturday night, December 4 at 5:00 p.m., a few of us will be gathering at the Shoney's in Bellevue, which is located at 7745 Highway 70S. There we will begin to put our ideas and calendars together to see what kind of Reunion we can organize for 2011.

If you are a former SOS or UWP alum in this area, please join us if you'd like. Or if you have thoughts and ideas to suggest send them along to me here on this site or by e-mail (pat.nolan@dvl.com).

More precise directions to the Bellevue Shoney's are:

Go I-40 West towards Memphis

Take Exit 196 (Bellevue/Newsom Station)

At the end of the exit ramp, turn right onto US Highway 70s.

The Shoney is almost immediately on the left, less than .1 of a mile from the I-40 exit.