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.