Picture this. In the year 2025, the music died.
No tunes that you can hear all over the neighborhood.
No musical band from out of town, playing the soul and the Motown hits.
No chairs set up in the ballfield.
No food vendors. No funnel cakes in our backyard.
No dancing around the stage. No shimmies to be shaken.
There will be no Rhythm In Riverview music festival this year.
So many people have been asking if there was going to be a Rhythm In Riverview because they hadn't heard anything. We also have not been able to confirm anything with the Rhythm In Riverview event sponsor. Calls have not been returned. Not a peep.
But we did confirm through Kingsport Parks and Recreation that the Douglass Ballfield has not been reserved for anything on the first Monday, July 14th. Nothing at all. Empty field.
A week later, Kids Central is reserved for the ballfield on Monday, July 21st and those activities are over on that day by 4 PM. After 4 PM... again, nothing.
So....
For the first time in at least 18 years, there will be no celebration of Riverview's musical heritage which pre-dates most of us who grew up in Kingsport's African-American community.
As the children and grandchildren of Kingsport's Black community, we were all raised on the culture of music along Lincoln Street (now M. L. King Boulevard). From Washington, D.C. southwest, the "Chitlin' Circuit had several routes along the Lee Highway. U.S. Highway 11 was a major route down south from the Northeast and it went through many white cities. At many venues, auditoriums, clubs and juke joints, African-Americans singers and show bands stopped off in the Black communities from Roanoke down to Bristol-Kingsport to Greeneville, Morristown, down to Knoxville and on to Chattanooga, Birmingham and Nashville, then hooking back up to the main Chitlin' Circuit at Atlanta. It meant that our people paid for, and got to see and dance with their favorite performers in person, if just for a few hours.
In Kingsport, the main venue was the Masonic Hall on Lincoln Street at Carver Street (now demolished). For years in the Masonic Hall, and also at the nearby Hut and the Elks, musical groups made stops to entertain, staying a couple of hours depending on the crowd, then moving on down the line to the next stop.
The fact that Riverview's most famous world-wide musicians and entertainers, Brownie and "Stick" McGhee were raised right in the heart of our community, gave the people of Riverview a vested stake in the development of music culture both in Kingsport and around the world. They were a symbol of pride, proclaiming that WE in Riverview had a small hand in the music business. Stick McGhee giving an impromptu concert in Mr. Jack Pierce's backyard back in the day, is itself, a testimonial to the influence of "The Riverview Sound" in the development of Black music culture.
Rhythm In Riverview has always been a continuation of that culture, cemented into place long before any of us were born, just a hum in our daddys' memories. The humming has now stopped.
This year, the beloved Douglass ballfield will be silent. Kingsport's and Riverview's contributions to African-American culture stops. The beloved Douglass ballfield will be quiet. There will be no music. The musical notes will be gone. The dancing, the fun with our fellow Kingsporters (even the ones who stopped by for the music, and the others who didn't know for years that anybody ever lived in Riverview), the food, the festive atmosphere will give way to the constant, distant, forever drone of Eastman and those constant locomotive whistles.
No Rhythm In Riverview for 2025. It's the day the music died.