Some Final Reflections On Our First Trip To Fort Slocum

If there's one thing we got plenty of while we were on David Island's for the First World Sing-Out Festival in August of 1967, it was exercise. And it wasn't just playing volleyball such as the photo above.

What remains most infamous in my mind (and I suspect for others) was the manditory early morning calisthenics we had to do on the parade field...jumping jacks, push-ups, etc. Hey, man, like any teenager, I was barely awake and I was doing exercises? Oh well, we survived, and I guess it gave us a better appetite for breakfast.

One time while we were on the Island our exercise got a little out of hand. We had these really big medicine balls to push around. One of the cast members, Jackie Dodson somehow got on top of the ball, then lost her balance and fell right on her tail bone. It was really painful and she had to leave the Island and ultimately went home early from the conference with her mom who had come as a chaperone.

This is what the ID badges we had to wear looked like (thanks, Alan Mayor for taking this photo). I can't remember exactly why we needed them. I guess to get into the shows and the mess hall for meals (although I doubt they had many folks swimming over or getting smuggled into the conference, but who knows?).

One day we did get the chance to get off the Island and do a little sightseeing (and the girls did some shopping as you can see from the picture above) in nearby New Rochelle, NY. In the photo are above are me (in the center) along with Patty Mayer (right) and Sandra Vaughn on the left. I have no memory of who is blocking her face in the shot nor who took the photo.

After 10 days at the World Sing-Out Festival, it was back on the bus for the two-day trip back to Nashville. That's Mr. Raymond Cannon (Dave's father), one of our chaperones who is walking the aisles (you can only see his back) in this photo.

You might also notice what looks like a strand of beads or something hanging down in the shot. Those are pop-tops off cans of Coca-Cola we brought while on the Island. Cokes in cans were a relatively new deal in 1967, and unlike today's more environmentally-conscious time, to open the can you had to peal off a pop-top. Don't ask me why, but we decided to collect them. By the time we left the conference we had a string of these pop tops that stretched at least the length of the bus as I remember it. While I remember a lot of Coke machines on the Island, there were often empty, which was frustrating at times. Nevertheless, one of our cast members, the late guitarist Jerry Austin could always seem to find a Coke and I think everytime I saw him he had one in his hand. Jerry lost his life recently here in Nashville trying to be a goof smaritan and help a woman being mugged. He is missed.

When we arrived back in Nashville on August 23, 1967, I think everyone was glad to be back home and fired up to see the other SOS cast members there to greet us.

We'd all had a great time at the Festival and we couldn't wait to add some of the new songs we had seen and heard the national UWP casts perform (The World Is Your Hometown, Gee, I Am Looking Forward To The Future, and New York City come to mind) along with some of the songs from the foreign casts (Harambee, Panama and others).

And then we were already planning how to go back to Fort Slocum and David's Island the following year in 1968 to attend the Second World Sing-Out Festival. More on that in future posts.

More Memories From The Island

It seems rather silly now, but to say the least, some of us in Sing-Out South went to the World Sing-Out Festival in the summer of 1967 with a bit of an attitude (especially the guys).

We remembered what happened the summer before when lots of Sing-Out South members, attending the national Sing-Out conference in Estes Park, Colorado, were recruited to fill out the ranks of the two new Up With People national casts (Casts B & C), which were then being formed.

It was great for them, but it decimated the ranks of Sing-Out South and we spent most of the next year regrouping and reforming our cast.

So most of the guys attending decided the best way to counteract that potential problem at the Fort Slocum-David's Island conference was to stick together and not be split apart to stay with folks from other casts.

Our request seemed to puzzle, even tick off, some of the UWP folks organizing the conference. But eventually, they put all of us together in the large basement of one of the service buildings. I think we were the only people housed there. It had a very high ceiling with large shower and restroom facilities down the hall.It was also pretty stark, so we spent some time decorating it and leaving our mark....

Henry Swider puts the finishing touches on a large piece of art that Sing-Out South cast members created on the the wall of the balcony overlooking our sleeping area. It featured the conference's slogan of "Freedom Is On The Move."

Bob Sharp shows off some of the other art work we left on the walls of our living quarters at Ft. Slocum.

Rick Jolly shows off more of the wall art we left on David's Island. That's Dave Cannon, Bob Sharp and Gary Geiger covered by the sheet. Don't ask me why we posed the photo this way or what the sign falling out Rick Jolly's mouth was supposed to mean. It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Another thing we did that seemed like a good idea at the time was using the word "Honduras" (you can see it in the photo above) whereever we went. Because the Sing-Out group "Harambee Africa" was at the conference (and Harambee means "pull together"), lots of people at the conference used that word. We decided to be a little different. So everywhere we went on the island (and we usually all went together) we would all count to three and yell out "Honduras." We did it when we did the garbage detail, even when we worked KP duty in the kitchen.

Of course, we got a lot of quizzical stares (especially when we did it before sitting down to breakfast or other meals). I think we probably embarrassed all the girls in our cast, but we had a good time with our own little inside joke.

That's (from the left, above)Randy Diamond, Kenny Swider, Dave Cannon, Rick Jolly, Mike Padgett and Bob Sharp posing for this picture.

Over four decades later I still get a charge out of looking at these photos which I took with my new Polariod SWINGER instant camera. The camera was also the source of a great practical joke that was played on me the first day we arrived at the conference...

What you see above is the bed I was to sleep on at the conference along with my tennis shoes, my camera and my foot locker with all my clothes, etc. After leaving the dorm area for a while that first day, I returned to find all these items missing, except for this photo of them taped to the floor.

After some good-natured razzing and some threats on my part, the guys all had a good laugh and brought back my stuff, although that did not stop a lot of short-sheeting and other pranks being played(including locking folks in the shower area)throughout our time there.

So I guess while we talked a lot about changing the world and other mature, lofty goals, we were still just a bunch of teen-age boys.

What are your memories of the World Sing-Out Conference? Please share them below or e-mail them to me at pat.nolan@dvl.com and I will share them here on the blog.

Honduras!

The Road Trips I Remember Every August

While America stops to remember the Woodstock Festival 40 years ago and the impact it has had on our ongoing pop and generational culture, what I stop to remember every August are the two longest road trips Sing-Out South ever made.

Those journeys were to attend the World Sing-Out Festivals held at Ft. Slocum, an abandoned military base on David's Island just outside New Rochelle, NY (and not far from New York City). The photo above from THE NASHVILLE BANNER (you can click on any of these photos to enlarge them) shows us performing on the steps of the War Memorial Auditorium near the State Capitol downtown, just before we boarded our bus (with parents and chaperones)to leave on August 11, 1967 for the first World Sing-Out Festival.

From that day until we returned on August 23, 1967, it all one great adventure. Most of us had never been this far from home for such a long period of time. That was sure true for me. Passing through New York City on the way to New Rochelle and the Island was a new, very wide-eyed experience for me.

Being wide-eyed wasn't easy, by the way. Many of us stayed up all night on the bus, singing, talking, just being excited. This was a trip we had worked and raised money for all summer. And we had worked on the show we would perform for the entire festival one night while we were at the Festival.

Of course, we took some breaks. The picture above I believe was taken on the New Jersey Turnpike where we stopped for breakfast very early in the morning after the all-night journey north. I remember we stopped for dinner the night before at a cafeteria in Ronoake, VA.

To get to David Island's, of course, you had to take a ferry boat. It was called "The Berkley" and riding over on it, is one of the clearest memories I have of going to the Festival.It literally brought Sing-Out groups and Up With People casts from all over the nation and the world to the Island.

Every night while we were there, local and national Sing-Out groups from across the country and from overseas performed in the Ft. Slocum theatre, along with three national casts of Up With People. It was quite an impressive array of talent, especially the foreign casts which included Harabee Africa!, Sing-Out Deutschland from Germany and Sing-Out Finland.

Watching all the other casts made it a little intimadating I think for our Sing-Out South when it was our turn. But I recall we got a tremendous reception, especially performing some of our own songs such as VOLUNTEERS OF TENNESSEE and WE VOLUNTEER.

The theme of the entire festival was "Freedom Is On The Move" and Mike Padgett, Steve Hinton and I wrote a special song with that as the name, which SOS cast performed on stage.

I recall it got a pretty good round of applause at the end, but no on asked us to add it to the the list of songs performed for the UWP national cast, so I guess it wasn't all that great. :)

We did however see and hear lots of new songs performed by the national casts that we wanted to add(and did our to our SOS show list), including NEW YORK CITY, GEE, I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO THE FUTURE and THE WORLD IS YOUR HOMETOWN among others...

The World Sing-Out Festival wasn't all about performing or going to shows. In many cases (but not all) we got a chance to meet and get to know the members of other Sing Outs and UWP groups from all over the country and the world. You can see a little of that in the photo above which includes Laurie Jones (Rutter) playing her guitar with some other Festival attendees.

We have lots more memories to share about SOS and its first trip to the Island. More on that in our next posting. In the meantime, if you have memories or stories you'd like to share about this or other experiences you had with Sing-Out South or Up With People, please post them below or send them to me at pat.nolan@dvl.com and I will share them here.

A Road Story: Living Crooked, Falling Straight

Over the years in the late 1960s, we did a lot of shows on the road, and a lot of outdoor performances, especially in the summertime.

The one I want to remember in this posting occurred on June 27,1967in Woodbury, Tennessee. We were booked to do two shows on the town square that day.

At that time I was a part of the lead trio with Dave Cannon and Glenn Nave. You can see the three of us in the photo above (although this picture was actually taken later during one of our shows at the State Fair in Nashville).

At that time our trio performed a song made famous in the early days of Sing-Out and Up With People by the Calwell Brothers. It was entitled "You Can't Live Crooked And Think Straight."

The chorus went like this:

"Oh,you can't live crooked and think straight,
Whether you are a chauffeur or a chief of state.
Clean up the nation before it's too late,
'Cause you can't live crooked and think straight."

Between each chorus were examples of folks trying to have things both ways and why that didn't work, including this stanza:

"There was a secret agent who was strong and tall.
But he had a secret that was known by all.
So that he how they got him, and today our hero
is listed in the files as Agent Double 0 Zero."

Given the James Bond/Secret Agent craze that was very big at the time, this part of the song almost always got a big laugh, and we tried to further enhance things by having one of the trio (I think it was Dave Cannon) take his hand and act like he was shooting me with a gun. That was to occur just as we sang; "So that is how they got him."

The drummer (probably Mike Padgett or Rick Jolly) was supposed to give us a rim shot, the music would stop temporarily, and I was supposed to fall straight back, headed for the floor of the stage.

That's exactly how it happened in our late afternoon matinee, except my good friend, Steve Hinton, who was supposed to step out of the front line of the chorus to catch me right before I hit the stage floor, forgot to do so that day, and I hit the ground with a thud.

You could hear gasps of surprise coming from folks in the crowd and even from some cast members on stage. I was a little startled myself. But fortunately I wasn't hurt, so I jumped up and finished the song on cue.

The audience liked that...and the song got a big hand as I remember. But that's not the end of my memory.

Between shows, the entire cast went just off the square and had dinner (I think it was some kind of picnic, so we ate outside). What I remember was after my "accident" on stage, I think every young woman in the cast and all the moms traveling with us came by to be sure I was all right and to ask how I was doing.

I was 15 years old at the time, and I had never had this much attention from so many women at one time (other than my mom)in my life.

I thought it was great. And yes, during the evening show, Steve Hinton did remember to catch me when I fell straight back during the song. :)

So what are favorite memories from our SOS shows? Just leave your thoughts and stories below.

Our First Road Trip & The Mamas & Papas

A couple of times in the last few posts, I've been talking about the first road trip Sing-Out South ever made. That was four bus loads of us going to Cookeville and Tennessee Tech to perform an encore with the national cast of Up With People on Sunday, February 27, 1966.

That may seem like a long way to go for just a few songs at the end of a show. But, hey, Sing-Out South had only been practicing for about a month (first real practice had been Saturday, January 29 during a snowstorm),so there was no way we were ready to do a full show at that time.

But as we traveled down the road in our buses paid for by a donation from Metro Mayor Beverly Briley, (I believe I-40 to Cookeville had been finished by that time), we couldn't have been more excited.

We were going to get to see, and then perform with Sing-Out'66, the one and only national cast at that time. It was the group that had inspired us all to join Sing-Out just a few weeks earlier. So we were pumped!

For that reason, you might think we spent all our time going up working on the Sing-Out songs we knew, and we did. At least I think we did.

What I remember most, however, was what a big hit "California Dreaming" was for the Moma & the Papas at that time, and how in the group I was with on the bus (Pam Jones Hazelwood was a part of it), we kept singing that song over and over as one of the guys had a guitar and knew the song.

I remember Pam knew how to sing parts and that really made us sound great, although probably not quite as great as the group that made it a hit and then continued with a series of big hits for the rest of the 1960s.

Here, courtesy of You Tube, are The Momas & The Papas performing "California Dreaming" from a period TV performance done on the "Hullabaloo Show."

Over the next three and a half years I was in Sing-Out South, we made a lot of road trips. Sometimes, such as when we went to the two national conferences in New York, we were on extended bus rides (see the photo at the top of this post as we took a break on the New Jersey Turnpike).

And while it probably wasn't a good idea to sing on the bus (you risked straining your voice to be heard over the noise of the road and the bus engine), we did it anyway. And loved it.

We didn't always take buses on the road. We couldn't always afford it, so our parents and others carpooled us.

So what are your memories of the road in Sing-Out South? Our trips to Woodbury? The Banana Festival in KY? Fayetteville? Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon? Gallatin? Opening the Roses Department Store in Murfreesboro? Smithville?

These are just a few of the out of town shows I can find records that we performed. What do you remember about these and other "road" shows?

Please leave your memories below or send them to me to post here on the blog.

We Had Friends In High Places--Metro Government

Much like our Governors, Nashville Mayor Beverly Briley was an early and steadfast supporter of Sing-Out South.

Here he is above proclaming the week of November 6-11, 1967 as PACE Week in Nashville. You'll remember PACE was the magazine we sold at our shows along with other Sing-Out related materials. Those in the photo along with Mayor Briley include (left to right) Glenn Nave, presenting the Mayor the latest UWP album, Linda Short, Jerry Baker, with a copy of PACE Magazine in hand, and Glenn Nave's mother.

Here's some more of the promotion we did for PACE MAGAZINE Week in Nashville back in 1967. I am sure this was paid for by Tom Cummings, the owner of the sign company who hosted this outdoor board. He was a very generous supporter of Sing-Out, as was Mayor Briley.

In the photo above, the Mayor greets some cast members at the old Green Hills Shopping Center. Those I can identify are Bobby Johnston (back turned wearing the letter jacket), along with Tempe Marsh and Wanda Ricks.

The Mayor was a promoter of Sing-Out from the beginning. Another major sponsor of the orginal visit to Nashville by Sing-Out '66, he also came back to town early, leaving a session of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, so he could intoduce the original SOS cast at its premiere show at Hillsboro High School on Friday evening, March 25, 1966.

Later that year, when the city was taken over by a large convention of Shriners, he invited SOS to perform for them at the Municipal Auditorium downtown. It was one of our first performances since reforming SOS after the Estes Park conference.

The next spring in April, 1967, Mayor Briley showed his interest again in SOS by inviting the cast to perform at the city's annual State Of Metro Breakfast to celebrate the city's birtday as a combined Metropolitan government.

This is an event I have been involved with for many years, as a reporter and on-air TV analyst as well as a mayoral aide. I always take pride in remembering my first visit to the State Of Metro was as a performer in the SOS cast.

Another way Mayor Briley showed his support for Sing-Out was with transportation. I have mentioned before the 4 bus loads of SOS cast members (over 250 people total) who went to Cookeville to see Sing-Out '66 perform at Tennessee Tech University on February 27, 1966. According to an article in THE NASHVILLE BANNER (published the day before on February 26) Mayor Briley paid the cost of the buses out of his own pocket.

The Mayor also treated the national cast in style when they came to town. From the very first visit they made here in January, 1966, their buses, like the ones seen above, we met at the county line and escorted through the city by their own police motorcade. These motorcycle officers were known as "Newman's Raiders," named after their commander.

To say the least, the national cast members were impressed. In one BANNER article, dated March 29, 1966, then-cast member Glenn Close was quoted as saying: "Nashville is my second home. I literally fell in love with the people there. They're wonderful."

And the feeling seemed to be mutual, with the city taking great pride in how it treated the national cast.In fact when Sing-Out '66 was on tour in West Germany in the spring of 1966, THE BANNER ran a photo of their buses receving a police escort there with the caption:

"Germans Can't Match Newman's Raiders"

We Had Friends In High Places..The State Of Tennessee

By the time the photo above was taken in the summer of 1967, Sing- Out South had enjoyed a long history of support from political leaders. In this posting, we will take an in-depth look at SOS' relationship with our leaders on the state level.

That's Governor Buford Ellington presenting to Cast Director Jill Walters (far right) a proclamation establishing August 5-11 as Sing-Out South Week in Tennessee. It was all a part of our efforts to raise public awareness (and money) so the cast could attend the World Sing-Out Festival then underway at Fort Slocum on David's Island just outside New Rochelle, New York.

Besides the Governor and Jill Walters, the others in the photo above include (from the left) Glenn Nave, Jackie Dodson, Gene Nolan, Jerry Baker and myself (Pat Nolan).

Our supportive relationship with state government actually began under Buford Ellington's predecessor, Governor Frank Clement.He was one of many civic leaders who endorsed the vist of the original Sing-Out '66 cast to Nashville in January, 1966.

That made sense for the Governor politically because the main sponsor of the Sing-Out visit was THE NASHVILLE BANNER, which had supported Clement in his previous campaigns for office.

But for Governor Clement his support of the Sing-Out movement continued well past the first visit of the national cast. On February 26, 1966 a delegation of the original Sing-Out South cast met with him in his office at the State Capitol. The next day, the Governor traveled to Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville to make a surprise introduction of Sing-Out '66, which had returned to the state to perform for a standing-room only crowd in the school's Memorial Gymnasium.

That crowd also included over 250 Sing-Out South cast members who had come up in four busloads to attend the concert. The SOS crew then joined the national cast on stage at the end of the performance for a rousing encore.

But for me, Governor Clement's most memorable involvement with Sing Out South came after he left office in the summer of 1967. He was the emcee of a show we performed at the Bandshell in Centennial Park.

This was all part of our Sing-Out South Week festivities proclaimed by Governor Ellington and we drew thousands of people, in fact one of the largest crowds I had ever seen. Former Governor Clement was renowned as an orator. And he outdid himself that evening, as the testimonial speech he gave during intermission helped fill our SOS buckets with enough money to reach the financial goal to pay for the cast to attend the World Sing-Out Festival (an estimated $3,000 to $5,000).

Sing Out South also performed at the State Capitol. In fact, as a part of the promotion for our premiere shows at Hillsboro High School, a task force of cast members performed for a Joint Session of the Tennessee General Assembly on March 23,1966 (which was the day before our premiere). Seen above, we later returned to perform an outdoor show on the steps of the State Capitol. Judging from who is in the cast on stage, this photo is likely from sometime in late 1966 or the spring of 1967.

As we close, here's another interesting governmental involvement for Sing-Out South...this one on the federal level. The very first show ever performed by Sing-Out South, with less than a week of practice, involved a small group of the cast singing before the Blue & Gold Cub Scout Banquet held at the Skychef Restaurant near the Metro Airport on February 5, 1966.

Among those present was Tennessee U.S. Senator Albert Gore, Sr. The cast gave him an inpromptu performance, which was much to his delight, according to published reports in THE NASHVILLE BANNER. There is no word in the article if the Senator's son, Albert, Jr. the future Congressman, Senator and Vice President was there.