It Was 44 Years Ago Today....

It was 44 years ago today (March 26, 1966) that Sing-Out South completed its premiere shows which were held in the auditorium of Hillsboro High School. The first show was Friday evening, March 25 at 8:00 p.m. followed by a matinee performance on Saturday at 2 p.m. and another evening performance that night.

The late Ralph Martin (above) is getting made up before the big show. While (below) the top brass from Sing-Out (soon to be Up With People), including J. Blanton Belk, attend our Green Room before our first night's show. That's Mike Rourke of SOS to the left in the photo.

Showtime for the Hickory Valley Trio, Cabot Wade, Eddie Lunn and Ted Overman!

And this was the reaction!

The response from those attending was remarkable with standing room only crowds at all three shows. By the way, the photo above from the Friday night show features my mother, my aunt Maggie and my youngest sister Jeanna.

The crowds at the all shows gave several standing ovations during the performances. According to news reports, on opening night they even gave a 20-minute standing O at the conclusion of the evening as the cast performed several encores.

That weekend SOS attracted people to the shows from as far away as Arkansas as a bus load of cast members from Sing-Out Little Rock came over for the weekend. Even Nashville Mayor Beverly Briley changed his plans and left an out-of-town mayor's conference early in order to be on stage to introduce the cast.

Equally remarkable was the coverage of our premiere weekend by THE NASHVILLE BANNER. SOS literally dominated the March 25th edition of the paper as seen above and in the lead story on the front page below. The reporter, Jacque Stubbel, was literally the Sing-Out South beat reporter in those days.

Inside the paper there were numerous pictures, including a full-page spread of photos, and a separate full color shot of the entire cast on stage. The paper also ran in that same edition, a complete listing, by the schools they attended, of all 190 SOS cast members. There was even a photo of the stage crew (seen below) taking a break after a lot of hard work.

By the way, a good bit of money was raised at each show as the audience brought lots of Sing-Out and Moral Rearmament related materials. I know, I was among those selling these items. As they left, the audience also filled donation buckets as cast members stood by the exits with small blue buckets appropriately marked SOS.

On March 25, 2006, a number of members of that original Sing-Out South cast and others (above) who performed with SOS between 1966 and 1971 came together at Belmont University to celebrate our 40th anniversary. Believe it or not, next year marks our 45th anniversary, a time when a number of us said we needed to get together again.

So who is ready to help organize our third SOS Reunion (the first was in 1989)? We only have about 12 months to get our act together! And that's not a whole lot of time to find our lost cast members and organize our activities.

If you are interested in being involved, leave your thoughts and ideas below as well as your contact information or just e-mail it to me (pat.nolan@dvl.com).

SOS Does Public TV

If you watch Public TV, you know the month of March is one of those times when PBS stations are doing their on-air fundraising. For some reason (maybe because we passed fundraising buckets at all our free shows) it reminds me of the late fall of 1968 when SOS did a thirty-minute special on what was then Nashville's public TV station, WDCN-TV Channel 2.

The WDCN-TV studios were located at 15th and Compton Avenues just behind what was then Belmont College. The facilities had once been WSM-TV's broadcast facility, and later when Channel2 moved to the Fairgrounds area (and became WNPT, Channel8) the Compton Avenue site became, and still is, the location of Nashville's 9-1-1 Emergency Communications Center.

If you look closely (click the photo above to enlarge it), you can see the script for the show on the telepromoter. In our SOS Archives, I have a number of really great color photos of this SOS TV taping. We can thank Alan Mayor for that. And thank goodness he took these shots. Since this was done in the days before DVRs or TiVos, a video or audio copy of the show itself has apparently not survived and so is probably gone forever I'm afraid. We have only these photos to remember our SOS Nashville Public Television "favorite."

Here are some more photos from that taping for everyone to enjoy:

The SOS Band, including on guitar (from the left) Kenny Keaton, Terry Hendrickson and Jerry Austin (I think). That's Scott Mayberry on the trumpet with Patty Mayer and Barbara Richardson in the cast next to them. Sorry, I can't identify the guy playing the sax.

Rick Jolly on the drums

My brain cells are going quick. I can't identify the singer at the microphone and I have no idea from looking at the movement of the cast what song we are singing in the photo above. If you know, or you have memories of this TV taping, please feel free to share them with us by clicking on the comments link below, or sending me an e-mail or contacting me on Facebook.

The Greatest SOS Publicity Shot Ever

I think this is the best publicity photo we ever produced in Sing-Out South.

This particular picture appeared on the front page of a community paper in Hendersonville, THE STAR NEWS (I think), in the fall of 1967 before a show we did at a local school. I have some follow-up photos from the newspaper's coverage I will share in the future.

I wish I had the original of this blended photograph. I know the photo of the cast was taken during one of our premiere shows at Hillsboro High School March 25-26, 1966. Who took the shot? Most likkely either Gil Fuqua or a BANNER photographer, although I don't know for sure. I suspect it was Gil took it.

Who blended the cast photo with a star burst of the Declaration of Independence is also unknown to me, but I think the shot captures the youthful enthusiam and patriotism that was Sing-Out South. From the choreography the cast members are doing, it appears we are performing "WE VOLUNTEER", one of several "signature songs" we were lucky enough to have in our show over the years.

More on that in a later post.

If you have any information about the photo (especially if you have an original copy), please leave the information in the comments section below or e-mail me (pat.nolan@dvl.com).

In closing, I'd like to thank Bob and Harriet Hall (Pudge) Cates. In the midst of preparing to move to Costa Rica soon, they gave me a box full of Sing-Out/UWP memorabilia. While I have been away and unable to explore everything in detail, there already appear to be several treasures in the box that I will be sharing here on the blog in the weeks to come.

Happy Birthday, Linda!

I am writing this posting a couple of hours early because I just couldn't wait.

Friday, March 5 is Linda Blackmore Cates' birthday. And I wanted to take time on this blog to recognize her great talents, and wish her (and her husband Bill Cates, seen above) all the best on Linda's special day.

I have always considered Linda an honorary member of Sing-Out South just because of who she married. Bill was SOS's first musical director and he played an important role in writing songs and molding both Sing-Out South and Up With People into the wonderful and meaningful performing groups they were back in the 1960s.

Another reason I consider Linda an honorary Sing-Out South member was because as the lead female soloist in the original Sing-Out '66
cast, her performances in singing songs such as "Joan of Arc" (seen above) and "Somewhere Just Beyond Tomorrow," no doubt inspired many of us who saw those shows or heard her recordings on the Up With People albums to join the SOS cast.

I know that was true for me when I first saw Sing-Out '66, first at the old Fairgrounds Coliseum here in Nashville in January '66, a month later when she and the cast returned to perform at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville. She did it again for me when first I first heard her sing "New York City" on stage at David's Island during the first World Sing-Out Festival in August, 1967.

All those memories came flooding back into my mind many years later when we had our first Sing-Out South reunion on December 29, 1989 at the Maxwell House Hotel. Bill and Linda attended and one of the highlights of the evening (along with just seeing everyone again) was when Linda got up (at everyone's request) and sang to the group. What a voice!

As talented and musically accomplished as both Bill and Linda are, they are even nicer and sweeter people to know personally and to have as friends. In fact, given how I idolized both of them during the early days of Sing-Out, to get to know them both I consider one of the great good fortunes of my life, and one I would not have even imagined back when Sing-Out started in the mid-1960s.

So Happy Birthday, Linda and many, many more to come!