Here’s what’s happening this week in the Chattanooga area.
Scopes Trial music
In a postscript to the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Trial, the senior curator of music at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville explores the trial’s musical history in the museum’s Stories blog. As Ryan Dooley explains, the July 1925 legal proceedings in Dayton, Tennessee, were the first time in radio history that a trial had been broadcast live. “The entertainment community was quick to cash in on the popularity of the polarizing trial, releasing Scopes and monkey-themed recordings on major record labels,” Dooley writes. Among the first was Vernon Dalhart, who was still enjoying commercial success from his 1924 recording of “The Wreck of the Old 97” / “The Prisoner’s Song,” which became country music’s first million-selling record. In 1925, Dalhart released “The John T. Scopes Trial (The Old Religion’s Better After All)” and “Bryan’s Last Fight,” both written by his guitarist, Carson Robison under the pseudonym Carlos B. McAfee. “Like most of Robison’s material,” Dooley writes, “the lyrics played to conservative audiences, elevating William Jennings Bryan’s prosecution of teaching evolutionary theory to the level of a holy crusade.” Read more at tnmuseum.org.
CALENDAR
(READ MORE: Get caught up: Things to do this weekend)