Business and Industry incorporated music into many events and programs to promote Florence.

Factory Day in Florence, June 29, 1900, included a special train which made the rounds of factories.  The parade, led by a band, made the round of factories to Court Street, to the Normal College, down Market Street to Tennessee St. to Ashcraft Mill, via L & N Special.  Ladies were especially invited and their carriages were cared for while they were on the train.  The parade included mayors, judges, county and city officials, rail road officials, visiting newspapermen, Merchants Association floats, citizens in surreys, citizens in Phaetons and buggies.

The Florence Theato is planning a program that includes moving pictures of all the different industries of Florence.  The furnace, the fertilizer factory, the cotton mills, and stove foundry, will all be shown on the screen, with products from the raw state transformed into the finished goods.  This will be a revelation to many of our people, who probably have never visited these plants.

Businesses incorporated music into promotional events such as one in 1914 when Uncle ‘Bunt’ Stephens, Henry Ford’s own personal fiddler entertained by playing in the Campbell Motor Company’s sales rooms in Florence.

A partnership between music and industry was between the Gardiner-Warring Mills and the movie/singing sensation, Gene Autry who appeared at the Princess Theatre in 1939.  The Gardiner-Warring mills manufacture and distribute the nationally known ‘Gene Autry Sweatshirts’, which are worn by boys and girls all over the country.  The 80 or more boys attending Camp Westmoreland, Tennessee Valley Council Boy Scouts Camp at Shoal Creek, Lauderdale County, this week were paid a surprise visit Wednesday afternoon by Gene Autry who was accompanied by Louis Rosenbaum and Jewett Flagg.  Mr. Autry sang several numbers for the boys at the old spring at the camp, playing his own accompaniment on the guitar, followed by Mr. Flagg presenting each of the boys with a Gene Autry sweatshirt.