(Down in Tennessee) One of the great spectacles of the mid-1920's was the Scopes \"Monkey Trial\" in Dayton, Tennessee, so it naturally had to be memorialized by a dance record, and who better to do it than Shilkret! It involved the teaching of evolution which was prohibited by law and a teacher, Scopes, deliberately challenged it by getting himself arrested. Two of the greatest names in politics and law from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, were the attorneys. Bryan was the attorney for the school board, which ultimately won, but his victory was Pyrrhic as Darrow so utterly destroyed him by ridicule of his beliefs that he never recovered and died five days after the trial in July 26, 1925. The 1960 movie, Inherit the Wind, starring Frederic March, Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly is probably the best account of the trial ever made.
