Happy Birthday, Sing-Out South!

It was 44 years ago this week (January 26, 1966)that Sing-Out South was born.

Nearly 600 young people and their parents (including my dad, myself, my uncle Frank, his children (my cousins) Gene, Mike and Becky) attended that first practice and organizational session held on a very cold Wednesday evening at Belmont College (now Belmont University as seen above).

SOS was organized in response to a week-long tour of Nashville by the original cast of Sing-Out '66 (soon to be called Up With People). The Nashville tour was sponsored and heavily promoted by the city's evening newspaper, THE NASHVILLE BANNER, which continued to be a major supporter of Sing-Out South throughout its existence.

This is what we wanted to emulate...the cast of Sing-Out '66 seen here performing "The Ride of Paul Revere" (photo courtesy of Stars & Stripes) during a tour of West Germany not long after leaving Nashville.

So excited were we that despite a snowstorm that dumped several inches of the white stuff on Nashville, over 200 people returned for the second SOS practice at Belmont held at Blanton Hall on campus on Saturday morning, January 29. I remember walking in the snow from my cousin's home on Brightwood Avenue all the way out Belmont Blvd. to be there.

This photo of an early practice at Belmont showed how hard the cast was working as we perform "Which Way, America." Within just a few days after the first Belmont practices on February 5, 1966, SOS would be performing its first show (a brief apperance by an SOS Task Force) at the Blue & Gold Cub Scout Banquet, Troop 300 at the Donelson Skychef Restaurant at the Nashville Municipal Airport. The evening also included an impromtu performance given for Tennessee U.S. Senator Al Gore, Sr. (More on this first show in a later post.)

What made you join SOS? Did you see one our shows or an UWP performance? Did your friends join and ask you to come along as well? Leave your stories below or e-mail them to me and I can share them here on the blog.