Enduring and prolific…country and pop songwriter Cindy Walker’s name is not as familiar to many but her music certainly is. She wrote early western-flavored pop and country swing pieces for performers like Bing Crosby and Bob Wills, composing hits for Hank Snow, Gene Autry, Al Dexter, Eddy Arnold, and others…almost owning the country charts in the 1940s. Her music endured well into the sixties and seventies, covered by Roy Orbison, Ray Charles, and dozens more. Her custom was to rise early and write songs, typing her lyrics on a pink-trimmed manual Royal typewriter while her mother, Oree Walker, would work out the melodies to her daughter’s words. They would station themselves in Nashville five months out of the year to help market the music, returning home to Mexia, Texas where Cindy would live out her life. Join us on a special run of Americana: the songs of Cindy Walker.
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Deeper Roots Ragtime
Our theme this evening is ragtime and it’s impact on the past century of America’s music. Join Dave Stroud for a themed collection of early and mid-century ragtime beginning with Cliff Edwards and running all the way through to some modern sounds out of Hamilton County, Tennessee. We’ll explore the Tiger Rag, the Maple Leaf Rag, the Black Mountain Rag, and then settle in for some of the sounds of Deep Elem. Music embellished with the stories of the performers, the theme, the songs, and the time…something you can’t get but on community radio.
Waltzes, Polkas, and Two-Steps
It’s all about the traditional and popular dance music celebrated in the song of the past century. The show opens with the recognition of folk dance’s lineage, those ancestral elements that inhabit a very large part of our need to communicate and celebrate as a society. Most of the early rhythms we’ll hear to start the show are a blend of ancestral folk but we’ll also share the sound of popular dance. Tune in for country, pop, and folk sounds including cajun sounds from Michael Doucet, old-timey guitar and fiddle sounds of Darby and Tarlton, Tejano polka from Flaco Jimenez, and plenty more waltzes, polkas, and two steps.
Country Swing Pioneers
Join Dave Stroud for two hours of the very best of country swing music on Deeper Roots Radio: A Century of America’s Music. The west had been long-settled when a new sound exploded out of the dance halls and barn-dance venues of the Midwest that was to become popular for it’s upbeat blend of jazz, hillbilly, and down-home blues. The arrangements blended strings, guitar, fiddle and bass, with the rhythmic sounds of urban jazz to reveal something catchy and danceable…and marketable. Before the beat was modernized into the mass market country blandness that paralleled mainstream pop, there were the pioneers including Milton Brown, Bob Wills, Adolph Hofner, Spade Cooley, Light Crust Doughboys, and a host of others.
Higher Power Country Gospel
We visit the classic sounds of country and bluegrass with thematic overtones of gospel. The love of country music often had its roots in a performer’s childhood memories of community church and the sound that would evolve from country and bluegrass provided a tone that grew from those memories…with a tenor that could easily echo the word’. The greatest of them elevated their popularity with their flock by invoking the name of that higher power of God and church in the community of bluegrass: The Stanley Brothers, Mac Wiseman, Ricky Skaggs, Doyle Lawson, and even country groups like the The Louvin Brothers and The Whitstein Brothers made gospel a core of their repertoire.
Back Country Blues
Our show features the sounds of the acoustic country blues. We’ll hear from early century greats like Jim Jackson, Luke Jordan, Geeshie Wiley, and Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers. There will also be a little help from some contemporaries who were their influence by this music. Get ready for some deeper sounds from Daddy Stovepipe, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Frank Stokes to round things out on a chilly evening in the North Bay on Sonoma County community radio.
Pop Music of the 1920s
We’ll revisit the third decade of the 20th century where the social and cultural watershed events following the first World War were more than one could have anticipated. The Jazz Age; Prohibition; Radio and the Victrola meant entertainment could be had in the front room, replacing the family and neighborhood parlor entertainment. While the Great Depression loomed on the horizon, the music that found the middle was hopeful and full of man-meets-girl songs were all the rage…even if signs of hard times to come were easily spotted. Listen in for a chronological selection that includes the sounds of Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Annette Hanshaw, Ethel Waters, and the peerless pop icons Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor.
Guitar Theme
Once considered in its earliest forms a noble instrument, the history of the guitar can be traced back over forty centuries (yes, that’s 4000 years). While we won’t got back quite so far in our exploration, we will explore the popular form of this instrument in song this week. We’re not going after the genius as much as we go after the topic with songs whose theme is that of the guitar. It seems that there has always been a personal connection between the instrument and the player, sometimes as a confidant and others as a foil. Our show will feature yodeling guitars, lonely guitars, Bo’s guitar, long-legged pickers, amigos, and a number of performances about ‘one’s first guitar’. Join Dave Stroud for plenty in a guitar themed journey.
Uprooting Your Roots
I just finished an excellent book by an excellent writer. I’d like to say this happens more than twice a year but I’m very picky about my writers and more picky about how they can turn a phrase. The book I read was “Devil Sent The Rain” by Tom Piazza, a frequent contributor to the cherished Oxford American magazine. The title is based on the poorly recorded, almost unintelligible, song performed by Charley Patton. The book is a collection of essays, liner notes, and articles that Piazza has assembled to tell stories of American culture that are both personal and powerful. He takes us from Hurricane Katrina to Jimmy Martin, then from Charley Patton to Charlie Chan, then into the worlds of Norman Mailer and Bob Dylan; and oh yes, a little bit of further reflection on the writings of Gustav Flaubert. His excerpt from “True Adventures With the King of Bluegrass” is poignant and worth the price of the book.
One short passage intrigued me because it is extremely relatable in terms of what my own show, Deeper Roots, is all about. Tom Piazza grew up on the East Coast and, for lack of a better term, was an aficionado (if not a connoisseur) of jazz music. His sun rose and set on the be-bop and modern jazz music he was exposed to in the clubs of New York City. While eventually settling in New Orleans (experiencing Hurricane Katrina firsthand), his first real escape into middle America was to settle for a time in Iowa, attending and graduating from the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
Before he left, a friend (and clearly a friend to be remembered) put together a collection of vintage recordings on cassette that Tom would listen to on his drive west. The recordings were of Jimmie Rodgers, Charley Patton, Blind Boy Fuller, Clarence Ashley, and countless others, a collection of some of the most important influences and reflections of the many different cultures that are like so many microclimates spread across the American landscape.
It evidently changed his view of culture and music. While attending the Workshop he would go onto describe this music’s importance to him. “I listened to those tapes the whole three years I was in Iowa. It was like having a giant ham in the refrigerator. You’d just go in and cut yourself another slice”. Could not have said it any better.
Deeper Cole Porter
American composer Cole Porter wrote words and music for over thirty stage and film musicals. His works were typically a model of sophistication, humor, and charm that would change popular musical theater. Deeper Roots takes a look at this songwriter whose music influenced generations of the American patchwork of styles including country, rock, pop, and R&B. We’ll hear from the torch vocals of Betty Carter, playful LA country from Michael Nesmith, the cool evening jazz of Julie London, rocking R&B from Roy Brown, and the contemporary country sounds of the Texoma All-Stars. And more, of course.