One Last Time On Wedgewood For The Tennessee State Fair

After 104 years on its historic grounds along Wedgewood Avenue in South Nashville, the Tennessee State Fair has begun the final week of its annual fall run. There will likely be no reprieve this time. This is the last year, at least at this location.

Sing-Out South was very proud to be a part of the Fair both in 1966 and 1967. The first year (as seen above), we performed at the top of the hill, just outside the Raceway on a flat bed truck sponsored by WENO Radio. The Fair was in recovery mode that fall having just suffered the tremendous loss to fire of the historic Women's Buildings seen below.

After performing literally on the ruins of the old Women's Building in our 1966 State Fair appearance, in 1967 we moved inside the old Nashville Raceway and performed in front of the grandstand.

While we could accomodate larger audiences there, we needed our full sound system to be heard. Everyone was seated quite a distance away as we performed in the infield of the Raceway (as opposed to having the crowd standing right on top of us us when we were on the WENO flat bed truck in 1966).

To our advantage, the infield did not sway the way the truck did when we performed our choreography for songs like "Don't Stand Still" as seen below in this photography and cut line from THE NASHVILLE BANNER

I remember some hot afternoons when we peformed at the Fair, especially our Raceway grandstand performances with the sun being right in our eyes some days.

In 1966, we did both a late afternoon and then an evening performance, which gave us a chance to watch another show performed right down the way called GOOD NEWS (which was sponsored by the Belmont Heights Baptist Church), and which some folks in Sing-Out South also participated in and even wrote some of their songs.

Of course, between shows, we also had a lot of fun visiting the Midway to ride the rides and get something to eat, even though, if you look carefully at the photo below, we were not exactly eating healthy in those days (good thing we got a lot of exercise doing the SOS show!).

My favorite story about Sing-Out South at the State Fair (and I have told it before on this blog)came in 1966 after we had eaten and enjoyed ourselves on the Midway one afternoon, then returned for our evening show.

We were supposed to wait until after the fireworks were over, but for some reason they seemed late that night (maybe because we needed to get home to do our homework for school). At rate, we went on before the fireworks and started our show (as we always did) with our national anthem, THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. As luck would have it, just as we sang "and the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air," up came the fireworks!

It thrilled the audience who gave us a great ovation, thinking we had coordinated what happened, instead of realizing (as we all did on stage), that it was just dumb (but wonderful)luck!

It looks like, after just over a century, the Tennessee State Fair has run out of luck for continuing on its annual September run at its historic Wedgewood Avenue location in South Nashville.

If there is a Tennessee State Fair in the future, it will be located somewhere else in Davidson County on a site yet to be determined. It will also very likely be operated by some group other than the local government (and there appear to be some interested folks). The administration of Mayor Karl Dean has decided the Fair has lost too much money in recent years and has outlived its usefulness. A study has decided the current Fairgrounds ought be redeveloped as a city park and perhaps for other uses yet to be determined or announced.

And so, still treasuring the many fond memories of attending and performing at the Fair, I will close this blog post with a song that we used to performed to close our SOS shows.

And its title seems kind of fitting as well about the future of the Fair.
It's "Which Way, America?'....

Free music - Which Way America?