What A Way To Start The New Year!

Before a live audience of hundreds of thousands,and an estimated 52 million TV viewers watching on three different national networks, the international cast of UP WITH PEOPLE began the new year of 2011 by opening the 122nd annual Tournament of Roses Parade in Sacramento, CA on New Year's Day.

The cast planned and choreographed the opening three minutes of the Rose Parade performed in front of the grandstand. That included a song featuring the theme of this year's Tournament of Roses festivities: "Building Dreams, Friendships & Memories."

Hopefully we can soon post some video of the UWP performance, but here's what the cast did three years ago (2008) when UWP was also a part of the the Rose Parade in a similar role to help open the annual event....

From a local perspective, 2011 is an appropriate year for UWP to once again lead the parade. It was exactly 45 years ago this month (January, 1966) that the original cast of Up With People (then known as Sing-Out '66) came to Music City and, under the promotion and sponsorship of the city's afternoon newspaper, THE NASHVILLE BANNER, took our community by storm.

Indeed it was a very stormy and snowy week in Nashville when Sing-Out came to town. But tens of thousands of local citizens came out to their shows regardless, resulting in over 600 young people and their parents coming to the first practice held at then Belmont College at the end of the month on January 26 to organize a local group to be named Sing-Out South.

As SOS members begin to organize a 45th Reunion this year to be held on the weekend of March 25-27, this blog will take a look back all this month on the extraordinary period of January, 1966 in Nashville. We will do it through the pages and photographs of THE NASHVILLE BANNER printed at that time which gave the Nashville tour unprecedented coverage.

If you have memories of that special time, seeing Sing-Out for the first time here, or being a part of the original cast that came to Nashville, please feel free to share your memories here or send them to my by e-mail, pat.nolan@dvl.com

POSTSCRIPT: January 4, 2010....Now, as promised, courtesy of YouTube, Facebook, HGTV and Vickie Henthorn Law of the Up With People Alumni Association, here's some video from the beginning of the 2011 Rose Parade featuring the current cast of Up With People.....



Happy New Year, everyone!