Happy Birthday!

An early Sing-Out South practice at Belmont College (now University), Winter 1966

It was one year ago today....June 29, 2009 that the Spirit of Sing-Out South was born.

Since our first posting that day, we've added 62 others to this blog (more than one a week) outlining the interesting history and times of our singing group from the 1960s.

I urge you to take a moment to look back through the posts. It will bring back a lot of good times and great memories. The postings are listed on the left hand side of this blog by month.

We've covered a lot of events and topics, but we've still got a lot more to do (especially thanks to the contributions of Harriet & Bob Cates who have given me a new treasure trove of photos, newspaper clippings and other documents from their time with Sing-Out South and Up With People).

I am not sure exactly how you celebrate a birthday for a blog, except maybe to post our theme song as sung by the original national cast of Up With People with the Colwell Brothers.

It is, of course, UP WITH PEOPLE!

Free music - Up with People

Sing Out South performing the song Up With People during a TV show taping at Nashville's public television station WDCN-TV, Channel 2 in the late fall of 1968.

As we begin our second year for the Spirit of Sing-Out South,if you have thoughts and memories to share, please feel free to leave them by clicking on the comments link below. Please also contact me (pat.nolan@dvl.com) if you have memorabilia you'd like to share.

Woodbury!

During the summer months of the late 1960s, Sing-Out South traveled all over Middle Tennessee. That includes two years in a row (June 28, 1967 and June 29, 1968)coming to the town of Woodbury to perform to large crowds in front of the Cannon County Courthouse which is seen above.

Woodbury today includes some 1.7 square miles with a population of about 2,500 people according to the 2000 Census (perhaps it will be larger after the Census this year).

The town is located a bit south of Nashville and due east of Murfreesboro. There was no I-24 back when SOS traveled there, so we likely came down U.S. Highway 70s. What I can't remember is whether we traveled by bus or did a car caravan. But I do remember the Woodbury shows.

In someways it would appear the town looks much the same today as it did over four decades ago. Not only does the Historic Courthouse look the same so does much of the surrounding square....

Each time we came to Woodbury we did two shows, one in the late afternoon, then after a dinner break, we peformed again beginning at dusk. In an earlier post on this blog site (August 9, 2009),I told the story of how in 1967, I took a tumble on stage while performing YOU CAN'T LIVE CROOKED AND THINK STRAIGHT, because some cast members forgot to catch me when I was supposed to fall backwards during the song.

Another story that also occurred during one of the Woodbury shows comes from drummer Rick Jolly who was supposed to throw up his drum sticks at one point. He did, but they wound up flying backwards and broke out a window in the courthouse! Whoops!

During those days, the stage crew, led by Henry Swider and Gene Nolan taped all our shows. A recording from one of the 1968 Woodbury shows survives. While I have not been able to find a way to post any of it here on the blog, I have found a way to post a recording done by the national UP WITH PEOPLE (from the the album FRONTIERS OF TOMMORROW)singing the song we always began the second half of our shows in those days. It's entitled SING OUT and its always been one of my favorites.....

Free music - Sing Out

Here's the full run of the show we did at Woodbury on June 29, 1968

The Star Spangled Banner......Full Chorus
Sing-Out South................Robert Sharp & Chorus
Design for Dedication.........Trio & Chorus
(Robert Sharp, Pat Nolan, Mark Griffith)
Don't Stand Still.............Full Chorus
I Want To Be Strong...........Full Chorus
Gee I'm Looking Foward To
The Future....................Paula Thompson, Edna Vilars & Chorus
Keep Young At Heart...........Hazel Robinson & Chorus
Ft. Riley.....................Pat Nolan & Chorus
New York City.................Hazel Robinson & Chorus
Volunteers of Tennessee.......Trio & Chorus
What Color Is God's Skin......Robert Sharp & Chorus
Edna' Poem....................Edna Vilars
Up With People................Full Chorus

INTERMISSION

Sing Out......................Trio & Chorus
A New Tomorrow................Trio & Chorus
There is Something Going......Paula Thompson, Robert Sharp & Chorus
Paul Revere...................Trio & Chorus
The World Is Your Hometown....Leanna Whitehead & Chorus
We Volunteer..................Trio & Chorus
Speak Outs....................June Salazar, Kim Sato, Robert Sharp
Which Way, America?...........Hazel Robison & Chorus

REPRISES

While I don't have a recording or a run of the show listing from our 1967 Woodbury performances, from what I can remember we had almost completely redone the show, dropping some songs, but adding lots of new material to go with our constant standards such as WHAT COLOR IS GOD'S SKIN?, WE VOLUNTEER, VOLUNTEERS OF TENNESSE, SING-OUT SOUTH, WHICH WAY, AMERICA?, DESIGN FOR DEDICATION, DON'T STAND STILL, and, of course UP WITH PEOPLE.

If you have any memories or stories to tell from our shows in Woodbury, or anything else about your time with SOS or Up With People, please post it below. And thanks for readind this and visiting the blog!

Swim Club!

If you are anywhere around the Nashville area these days, you know what an inviting sight this pool is. Temperatures are close to 100 degrees during the day here along with high humidity levels in a very early-summer heat wave.

In the summer time, Sing-Out South always did lots of outdoor shows. In the photo above, here we are preparing for a performance in Kingston Springs. I think this was around the 4th of July in 1968. Fortunately, most of our outdoor shows were done at twilight or under the lights to hold down the heat a bit. We performed at several local swim clubs That included the Nashville Swim Club off Nolensville Road were we gave shows on both June 12, 1967 and June 7, 1968.

SOS cast members sing during one of our shows "under the lights."

Here's the rundown for our performance at the Nashville Swim Club for our June, 1967 show:

The Star Spangled Banner
Showboat Go-Boat
Sing Out Express
Sing Out South
Design for Dedication
Don't Stand Still The Free Ones by the Southlands
Go West Young Man by Glen Hollow Trio
I Want To Be Strong
Make The Rafters Ring
What Color Is God's Skin?
Volunteers of Tennessee
Paul Revere
Up With People
Pace Ad

-10 minute intermission

A New Tommorrow
Mr. Washington
You Can't Live Crooked
Glen Hollow Trio
We Volunteer
Speak Outs:

Mike Padgett
Rachel Steele
Robert Sharp

Freedom Isn't Free
A Soldier's Letter
Which Way America?
**REPRISES**

In addition to the Nashville Swim Club, we also performed at the Hickory Bend Swim Club on August 4, 1967. I also recall doing a show at what I thought was called the Donelson Swim Club, where we had to cut the performance short before our stage and sound crew and our guitar players were about to be electrocuted because of a quickly approaching thunderstorm. Of course working around water and electricity was always a challenge. But fortunately, we never had an accident.

By the way, to bring back some old memories from those days, here's the national cast of Up With People from their album UP WITH PEOPLE performing "Don't Stand Still--Showboat/Go Boat" (after you listen to brief commercial at the beginning)

Free music - Show Boat / Go Boat

Swim clubs like the ones where we performed have always been a part of Nashville. But they were even more popular back in the 1960s. The City of Nashville closed its public pools because it did not want to integrate them. Here's a look back at that story as it relates to Centennial Park and one of the city's larger pools there. This clip is from WNPT-TV's series "Memories of Nashville" (and yes, that's me helping to tell the story).....

So I guess it occurs to me again, that when we sang "What Color Is God's Skin?" back in the day, it had much more meaning than perhaps we even realized at that time. Any memories you have of Nashville in those days please feel free to share them below, as well as any memories of any of our SOS outdoor performances.

Uniforms!

From the beginning, Up With People always had some very colorful costumes for its chorus and casts.

So did Sing-Out South.

However, surprisingly, when I got into an e-mail discussion about this the other day with Wanda Ricks Horrell, she said she didn't remember the original SOS cast having costumes.

But the photo below tells the story.

This photograph was taken at the show the original Sing-Out South cast performed at Estes Park in June, 1966 (when we won the overall talent contest over all the other local casts).

Some other black and white shots taken earlier at other SOS performances reveal we wore the same costumes (a-line jumpers similar to the national casts in various colors of yellow, red and blue for the women; navy blue coats and dark trousers for the men with blue and white striped ties).

SOS cast at premiere shows at Hillsboro High School, March, 1966

Even after SOS re-formed itself after the ACTION NOW! Estes Park Conference, we more or less kept the original styles of our costumes. See THE NASHVILLE BANNER newspaper photo below which was taken during the taping of our Memorial Day TV Special at the WSIX-TV, Channel 8 studios on Murfreesboro Road in May, 1967....

You will notice about the only change is with the men's costumes who went from navy to tan-colored blazers, although the trio had light-blue colored sport coats.

However, only a few months later, at least by the spring of 1968, the women's costumes were changed as you can see below. The new dresses were no longer a-line jumpers with a white blouse underneath. Instead, the costumes appear to be one piece uniforms with a cowl-type treatment around the neck. The color pattern was also different and more varied with different shades of blue, green, red and yellow...

Does anyone remember when we changed to the uniforms above? And does anyone know why we changed the women's costumes back again?

Just a few months later, the costumes went back to a-line jumpers with a white blouse underneath as you can see from photos of shows below, done over several of the next few years from the summer of 1968, on into 1969 and through the early '70s.

An outdoor show, possibly at Camp Boxwell or in Edwin Warner Park, during the summer or spring of '68.

Our 30-minute public TV, WDCN-TV, Channel 2 special taped in the fall of 1968. Note the addition of new women's colors such as pink.

On the steps of the War Memorial Auditorium. This was after I left the cast, so it was in the fall of 1969 or later into 1970 or '71before SOS discontinued.

So here are some questions to ponder(if you have any information, e-mail it to me or leave your thoughts and memories below).

1. Who made these costumes, especially for the women? Your Moms? Our Sing-Out mothers? Large sewing bees?

2. Where did the patterns come from? The How to Create Your Own Sing-Out Book? Somewhere or someone else? Who choose the colors and the fabrics so they would match?

3. How did all this get done in particular for the premiere shows since we did them in late March, 1966, less than 2 months after we started practices in late January?

4. Where did the guys get their ties, blazers and pants? Off the rack? Some particular store?

5. And what and why was the change made in the women's costumes in the spring of 1968? And then why and how were things changed things back, seemingly within just a few months later that year?

Inquiring minds want to know!

ACTION NOW

In June 1966, forty-four summers ago, 1600 young people from 250universities, colleges and high schools converged on the Conference Center in the Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park, CO.
They came together for a month-long conference sponsored by Moral Re-Armament.

Already the MRA sponsored Sing-Out '66 show had grown in less than a year from one cast of 130 members to 42 national, state and local troupes with 5,000 young people participating across America. And there was at least one sing-out cast on every continent in the world. With even more growth on the way!

Leaving Nashville from the steps of the War Memorial Auditorium downtown on June 3, 1966, there were over 120 members of Nashville's Sing-Out South heading west. With a escort of Metro motorcycle police officers known as "Newman's Raiders", the cast members joined the ACTION NOW conference led by our Hickory Valley trio of Eddie Lunn, Cabot Wade and Ted Overman. The cost of approximately $300 per person (plus transportation) was raised by cast members doing fund raisers such as selling doughnuts along with donations and scholarships from civic clubs and local businesses.

This was such an array of energy and musical skills that when the SOS cast made its first performance at Estes Park, it was named the winner of the talent contest held as a part of the opening session Reported THE NASHVILLE BANNER (June 17, 1966): "The enthusiam from the peppy Southeners spread like wildfire and brought an already happy audience to its feet, clapping and singing."

According to one of the brochures for the conference "beginning in July task forces will be launched throughout America and across the world. They will tour our national parks, summer resorts and military bases. They will respond to mounting invitations from leaders of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe to aid them in the Moral Re-Armament of their nations."

And it was not just to form three new national casts, now called "Up With People." There were also task forces formed of young men and women to work for PACE Magazine, including writing, photography, design and documentary film for an expanding international publication; Mackinac College in Upper Michigan, which was planned to open that September; and the Bear Creek Ranch training center in the foothills of the California Sierra Nevada.

And always there were the SOS members in the leadership. Quotes from stories in THE NASHVILLE BANNER included Jim Troutner: "The world is saturated with negativism and you can't change this with more negative thinking...We must update our attitudes." Harbin Williams: "This conference has given me vision...this is perhaps man's last chance to make and build a world that works." Added Wanda Ricks: "The spirit here is fantastic..This is the closest thing I have seen that could unite the world." And Marlene Echols: "The ideas of MRA are fascinating, challenging and a welcome addition to a tired world."

This is how the Conference Center in the Rocky Mountain National Park appears today. What happened at Estes Park 44 years ago, undertaken "for a demonstration of a nation on the move," is now but a memory to most. But for many of those who experienced the ACTION NOW conference, no doubt it left memories for a lifetime.

If you attended the ACTION NOW conference, please feel free to leave your comments and memories below. Thank you.