Up with People

Topic: Religious Folk Music Revival
Peter Howard took over Moral Re-Armament in 1961 after its founder, Frank Buchman, died. He originally was a rugby player, then a journalist in England. After Howard became involved with the movement in 1941, [1] he wrote books and plays that dramatized how individuals changed themselves to create a better society.

One of the first actions of the 53-year-old man was upgrading the quality of the group’s London theater with professional actors and technicians. [2]. In 1963, he hired an experienced stage and film director to mount its productions. [3] Henry Cass was 61-years old. [4]

More important, Howard recognized generations were missing from the ranks of the group’s leaders. David Belden noted there had been no strong "recruitment of young graduates or other able young people in the 1940’s or 50’s." [5] In addition those leaders who did exist were more likely to be English than American.

Howard planned a six-week conference for college students on The Modernizing of America at Mackinac Island in the summer of 1964. [6] To prepare, he recruited attendees on a lecture tour of college campuses. [7]

MRA erected a large entertainment tent where the Colwell Brothers and Herb Allen performed. [8] The Colwells had been singing Hollywood-style cowboy music [9] in Asia for years with a guitar, mandolin, and string bass. In every country, they had to write new lyrics, often in local languages, to appeal to their audiences. [10] The three men, who were still in their twenties, changed to electric instruments [11] in the style of The Beatles, and found a drummer among the participants. [12]

The conference schedule was modeled on that of college with lectures on moral purity and workshops on film making and other public relations techniques. [13] Keeping with Buchman’s view that athletes were the opinion makers on campus, there were calisthenics and sports competitions. [14] What was missing were the intense, small-group sessions that Buchman realized were key to changing individuals.

Following the success of the conference, MRA teams fanned out to promote the next year’s conference, Tomorrow’s America, and a book by Howard. [15] Rusty Wailes, a former Olympics oarsman, [16] and the Colwell Brothers appeared at Clemson University [17] and Sacred Heart University in March. [18]

Howard died in February of 1965, and Blanton Belk took over. [19] In April he called a planning meeting in Tucson where the Colwells suggested staging weekly happenings with attendees. Paul Colwell recalled that by the time they appeared in July, the suggestion had spawned a full-blown musical revue. [20] The proposed happenings first were called Sing-Ins, an allusion to sit-ins. [21] Then, they reversed it and coopted a term associated with Pete Seeger and the commercial folk-music revival, Sing Out ’65.

The response of the audience was so great, Belk wanted to turn it into a touring road show. Cass and a choreographer were brought from London to professionalize the presentation. [22] The cast first appeared in New England, then in Washington where MRA invited a select group of congressmen and diplomats to see their performance. [23] The 52-year-old Clement Zablocki obligingly entered several of their newspaper reviews into the Congressional Record. [24] From there Sing Out went to the Hollywood Bowl. [25].

A revised version, Sing Out ’66, was created the next year. This time the 63-year-old William Bray [26] commented on them in the Congressional Record, where he said they were "a refreshing contrast to the dreary, depressing parade of beatniks and self-appointed ‘rebels’ who receive attention out of all proportion to their importance as representatives of our young people." [27]

Later the cast went to Estes Park, Colorado, where students from 250 colleges were taught how to create their own shows. [28] MRA also filmed the program that appeared on NBC, [29] and made a point of appearing gratis on military bases. [30]

In their publicity, MRA emphasized the spontaneous nature of the show, claiming it had arisen from the ideas of the students themselves. [31] In fact, everything that could by planned and managed had been. Apart from the costs of mounting large conferences and touring shows, there were legal liabilities and insurance requirements to consider.

What couldn’t be anticipated was the success of the group. In 1967, Belk left MRA and the next year incorporated Up with People as a separate entity. He claimed Dwight Eisenhower had recommended he shed the musty associations of MRA. [32] Donald Janson suggested the motives were more pragmatic: colleges were loathe to let MRA on campuses, but were more open to secular organizations. [33]

Up with People did not perform "Kumbaya," but material written especially for the group. By 1976, when I was collecting songs sung in summer camps, [34] "Up with People," [35] "What Color Is God’s Skin?," [36] and "I Want To Be Strong" [37] were in the repertoire.

Eventually Up with People collapsed under the weight of its own expenses and political affiliations, [38] but not before it had pioneered a new form of religious music that borrowed more from the New Christy Minstrels [39] than from Peter, Paul, and Mary.

End Notes
1. Pamela Georgina Jenner. "Propaganda Theatre: a Critical and Cultural Examination of the Work of Moral Re-armament at the Westminster Theatre, London." PhD dissertation. Anglia Ruskin University, June 2016. 76.

2. Jenner. 129.
3. Jenner. 59.

4. Cass directed the Old Vic theater in London between 1934 and 1935. [40] After that he directed horror and comedy films. [41]

5. David C. Belden. "The Origins and Development of the Oxford Group (Moral Re-Armament)." D. Phil Thesis. Saint Edmund Hall, Oxford University, January 1976. 325. Belden was raised in MRA where his father managed the group’s theater in London. [42]

6. Daniel Sack. Moral Re-Armament: The Reinventions of an American Religious Movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 169.

7. Frank McGee. A Song for the World. Santa Barbara, California: Many Roads Publishing, 2007. 122.

8. McGee. 124. Steve, Paul and Ralph Colwell’s parents were Episcopalians from Detroit who lost money and status in the Depression. Their father, also Paul Cowell, worked for Stokely-Van Camp, which moved him from location to location. The boys began performing while they were in San Marino, California, and continued when the moved to to Indianapolis. The elder Paul left the company to return to San Marino where he formed his own distributorship. [43] The boys became involved with MRA after they saw a film; their parents then became involved in the organization. [44]

9. They wore costumes purchased from Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors. [45] Nudie Cohn designed the elaborate clothing worn by country singers like Hank Williams and Porter Wagoner. [46] The Colwells wore simple shirts with piping on the pockets, western ties, and cowboy hats.

10. McGee. 54, 56, 57.
11. McGee. 123.
12. McGee. 124–125. The drummer was Bob Quesnel.
13. Sack. 171–172.
14. Sack. 172.

15. McGee. 124. The book was Design for Dedication. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964.

16. Wailes was on the United States rowing team that won the gold in 1956 and 1960. After the games, he moved to Mackinac Island to work for MRA. [47]

17. Dick Miley. "Wailes Calls Youth To Moral Revolution." The [Clemson University] Tiger. 19 March 1965. 6. The Colwells wrote a song for Clemson.

18. Rosemarie Gorman. "Champ Blasts ‘New Morality’; Presses Moral Rearmament." The [Sacred Heart University, Bridgeport, Connecticut] Obelisk. 11 March 1965. 3.

19. Belk’s father was a Presbyterian minister in Virginia whose support for Buchman split the church in 1937. [48] The younger Belk was born in 1925, and joined the MRA staff in 1950. [49]

20. McGee. 126.
21. Belden. 174.
22. McGee. 127.
23. Sack. 175.

24. Congressional Record. 1 September 1965. Appendix A4962–A4963. Zablocki was a Democrat from Milwaukee who supported the war in Vietnam and helped write the War Powers Act. [50] He also was organist and choir director. [51]

25. Sack. 175.

26. William Gilmer Bray was a Republican who served from 1951 until 1975, when he lost during the first election after Nixon’s resignation. [52] He was on the Armed Services committee. [53]

27. William C. Bray. Congressional Record. 5 May 1966. Appendix A2447–A2448.
28. Sack. 181.
29. The televised film was mentioned in the post for 16 February 2020.
30. Sack. 180.

31. Mary Levy Peachin. "1960s Era Led to Founding of Up With People." Inside Tucson Business website.

32. "Preface." Up with People website. Belden said they were "sloughing off the popular image of M.R.A. as a puritanical, old-fashioned group with closed minds. [54]

33. Donald Janson. "Moral Re-Armament Cuts U.S. Operations." The New York Times website. 10 August 1970.

34. Camp Songs, Folk Songs. 546.

35. Paul Colwell and Ralph Colwell. "Up with People!" The Up with People Song Book. Los Angeles: Pace Publications, 1969. They wrote it while they were driving from Arizona to the ferry landing for Mackinac Island in 1965. [55]

36. Thomas Wilkes and David Stevenson. "What Color Is God’s Skin?" Up with People Song Book. They wrote it at the 1964 conference. [56]

37. Glenn Close and Kathe Green. "I Want to Be Strong." Up with People Song Book. This is the same Close as the actress. Her parents moved to the MRA center in Caux, Switzerland, in 1954. Her father went to the Belgian Congo as a physician. [57]

38. Belden. 387–389.

39. The New Christy Minstrels were mentioned in the post for 10 November 2019.

40. Robert Leach. An Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance: Volume Two. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2019. No pages in online version.

41. Wikipedia. "Henry Cass."
42. David Belden. "The Forum on MRA, 1990-93." His website. 4 February 2013.
43. W. Paul Colwell obituary. Geneaology Buff website. 16 May 2019.
44. McGee. On Depression, 193; on San Marino, 17 and 21; on Jotham Valley, 23–25.
45. McGee. 27, 47.

46. Wikipedia. Nudie Cohn. The Jewish tailor was born Nuta Kotlyarenko in the Ukrainian part of the Russian Empire. His first customer was Tex Williams, with whom the brothers worked when they first lived in California. [58]

47. "Richard Donald ‘Rusty’ Wailes." The [Everett, Washington] Herald. 10 November 2002.

48. Robert Benedetto. "John Blanton Belk (3 July 1893–28 May 1972)." Dictionary of Virginia Biography website. 198l.

49. "John Blanton Belk." Prabook website.
50. Wikipedia. "Clement J. Zablocki."
51. "Zablocki, Clement John, (1912 - 1983)." United States Congress website.
52. Wikipedia. "William G. Bray.
53. "William Gilmer Bray." C-Span website.
54. Belden. 388.
55. McGee. 2.
56. McGee. 124.
57. Wikipedia. "Glenn Close."
58. McGee. 13.