Matthew Bond was flipping through cheap records at a church yard sale when an album caught his eye.
A choir, wearing red robes and singing in a bank lobby, with the conductor standing behind a desk full of deposit slips. It was “A Program of Christmas Music,” by the First American National Bank Christmas Choir in Nashville.
Something so folksy, odd and charming. He had to have it. For $1 it was an easy get. For the past 20 years, it’s been the album that Bond and his wife listen to as they decorate the Christmas tree.
But a question has persisted: Why? Why would a bank release a Christmas album? Why would people care? So he sent an email to the crack team at Curious Nashville.
Clues from banking history
The answer goes back to the days when Nashville was known as the “Wall Street of the South.” Back in the first half of the 1900s, and before bank deregulation, the city was a banking hub. Nashville had the three big banks, Commerce Union, Third National, and First American National.
They were involved in the establishment of the consolidated Metro government and business-friendly initiatives that grew downtown into a place with heavy foot traffic and where a lot of people did their business and shopping.
Christmas included.
In 1956, recognizing the unique musical talent of Nashville and it’s employees, First American National Bank started an all-employee Christmas choir. And the week before Christmas, tellers, loan officers, security guards and other staffers would leave their posts and sing in the lobby at the corner of 4th and Union.
Passers-by doing Christmas shopping or bank transactions would sit and watch. They even set out the program ahead of time so that workers could plan their lunch around it. Quickly, it became a holiday tradition.
Growing popularity
By 1967, the choir was so popular that it make the jump to television. Channel 5 tried to make the set look like those on “White Christmas” and the broadcast became a tradition too.
All of this even spawned a competitor, as Third National started their own Christmas choir.
“When you saw the choir, that’s how you knew it was Christmas,” said Jim Norton, a camera operator on those TV specials.
It was a time when “the Wall street of the South” and “Music City” merged into a tradition.
Eventually, the city changed. The banking industry deregulated and cities like Charlotte became the banking centers of the south. Shopping malls opened, pulling residents away from the city. The big three banks went through mergers, and by sometime in the 1980s it appears the Christmas bank choirs of Nashville faded away.
But because the First American choir pressed that program of Christmas music onto vinyl, and Matthew Bond saw the charm and had a buck in his pocket at the church yard sale, the tradition lives on in his living room every Christmas.
And now we know it too.
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