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.