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!