emmet swimming

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Where did the band name come from?

In the late 1950s in a small town in Mississippi, a young black boy was shot and thrown into a nearby river for the crime of whistling at a white woman. The boy's name was Emmet Till and he would become only one name on a long list of martyrs of the civil rights movement.

Todd Watts formed the band in 1991 as an outlet for his budding songwriting skills. He named the group after a song he'd written about Emmett Till, a black Mississippi teenager who in the late 1950s was murdered and thrown in a nearby river for the crime of whistling at a white woman, and whose name would take its place on a long list of martyrs of the civil rights movement. The group's origins in the quiet, suburban college town of Fairfax helped instill a deeply- ingrained streak of independence early on. "There was basically no scene in our home town, so we decided to try to develop one," Watts recalls. In 1993, emmet swimming made its first foray into self-directed record-making with the album Dark When The Snow Falls, released on the band's own Screaming Goddess label. In keeping with their humble, homegrown origins, the band members take the jump to major-label status in stride, viewing their new status as an opportunity to build on what they've already achieved, rather than an instant ticket to the big-time.

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