The music of Smyrna

1925 was the last year Smyrna had a street fair before the Great Depression stopped this lovely tradition. In the last many years Smyrna has enjoyed Depot Days, but this puts Depot Days to shame.

Smyrna businesses had on their own organized the Smyrna Fair Association. The first of their fairs was held on August 20 1914 and was a smashing success. These fairs were organized yearly and was a great draw to the town of Smyrna. The fairs were run before Smyrna had its first fire engine in 1916 or its first paved road in 1929. The last of these fairs happened in 1925 as the great depression placed a pale over the whole nation.

Now these were not small happenings. For example the 1924 fair had individual people in charge of different departments of the fair. Section included...

Live Stock
Poultry
Agriculture
Horticulture
Home economics
Art
Young Ladies Dept.
Childrens Dept.
Floriculture
Dog Show

They had horse shows, concerts, car shows, best lady rider and best old soldier contests...plus fun giveaways such as 2 gallons of icecream for the largest family attending , free hair cut for the man with the longest hair and $10 for the best ash log. I will admit the ash log one confuses me. This and much more information can be found in the book "Smyrna, the Church, the town" by Hover.

In his book they had a street picture of the 1925 fair, the last held. Under it there were comments by three people and one caught my interest.

George Hughey; Charley Bradford's eating place entertained guests all day with music, "I wish I was a single again" on a scratchy Victrola

I read this and decided I wanted to listen to the music of Smyrna in 1925.

In that same year, 1925, Edison Labs released on a cylinder the song "I wish I was a single girl again" by Vernon Dalhart to some success in sales. The song has been released by many people and like most songs of the period there were many varieties as this page will show. As close as I can tell this is the very song played at Bradford's eating place in Smyrna in 1925....this youtube video is played on an Edison Amberola 50 cylinder phonograph. While not a victrola, the sound should be the same.



I hope you enjoyed this small slice of Smyrna history.