We’ll be bringing another eclectic blend of music from the past for an evening set kicks off with sounds of New Orleans beginning with a medley from the Bayou Maharajah, James Booker and closing with Irma Thomas. In addition to our usual run of bluegrass, jazz, and blues…we’ll prepare some piping hot biscuits from the country shack with Alan Lomax, Flatt & Scruggs, Pappy O’Daniel and the Hillbilly Boys, and Kacey Musgraves. There will also be a rare piece of early blues piano work from Ollie Shepard and the early century jazz band sounds of Enric Madriguera, Jimmie Lunceford, and Fletcher Henderson. Two full hours of Deeper Roots on weekday evening…carrying us over the midweek hump so that it’s all downhill from there…
All posts by Dave
Night Time – KOWS Oct 28, 2015
No more alternating Saturday mornings for Deeper Roots. We’re a weekly publication now…every Wednesday evening at 7 Pacific!. We’re going to settle into our new KOWS time-slot tonight with music that celebrates our new day of the week and we’ll also roam east, south, west and north in our pursuit of the best from the last 100 years of American music. Join us right after Robert Feuer’s Blues Up the River for some ‘down river’ sounds including Johnny Horton, Tom Rush, Riley Puckett, and some John Lee Hooker. Because the night time is the right time.
Songs of the Dust Bowl
Our story is one that we’ve covered before, previously focusing on the Great Depression and the music of Woody Guthrie. This episode pulls in the theme of that tragic chapter of a drought that uprooted nearly 60 percent of the population from the affected region of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. With the soil lacking a firm root due to poor farm practices, the plains winds would pick up the loose topsoil and create the dust clouds that ravaged farm and city alike. The music we’ll hear tonight brings us the stories, including those of Woody and Arlo Guthrie, Bob Gibson, Lane Hardin, Vernon Dahlart, and The Morrison Two Brothers String Band.
In The Gloaming – KOWS Oct 24, 2015
Our Saturday morning show opens with some caffeine-driven music…literally… songs about the magic bean, that morning beverage that starts the day for some of us. We’ve got swamp pop from Randy & The Rockets, some jumpin’ jive from Cab Calloway, twilight reflections from Jonatha Brooke and The Sons of The Pioneers, and some Chet Atkins, David Lindley, and Eilen Jewell. KOWS community radio studios will be moving before the end of the year to a very central West County location that will bring us in closer contact with our listeners…and our Deeper Roots. And some exciting news! Deeper Roots moves to weekly broadcasts on KOWS.
Free Form – October 2015
Free form with just a dose of playlist themes…R&B and sugar from Chuck Willis, some sweeter country from Bob Wills, more of the same with a moonlight-based theme from Tommy Duncan, Dale Evans, and Elton Britt. We’ve also got a mix of early century jazz from Satchmo and blues from Tampa Red, Charley Patton, and Blind Blake. Tune into community radio locally on KWTF 88.1 on the FM dial or catch us streaming on TuneIn, RadioBox, or from our web site at kwtf.net/listen.
No Parking Here – KOWS October 10, 2015
Saturday mornings are root-bound…in the very best sense of the phrase. Tune into KOWS for an eclectic blend of gospel from Jimmy Murphy and The Loyal Five, early century pop from Cliff Edwards and Emmett Miler, R&B from Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland and Dr. John, country from Red Foley and Jimmy Littlejohn, and more of the sounds that matters from the past century of American music.
Wild Men and Wild Women
It’s theme time once again and we’re going to find ourselves among the wild and crazy men as well as the wild, woolly women. Round town girls celebrate, burning that candle, and Keely Smith will jump, jive, and wail with Louis Prima. Red Ingle and His Natural Seven will join the Sons of the Pioneers in spreading the word about ‘cigareets, whuskey, and wild, wild women”. Mae West, Julia Lee, Ernie Ford, and Jerry Lee Lewis will keep the party going and Deeper Roots will keep the lights on ’till 11pm sharp (that’s Pacific Time, of course). Join Dave Stroud for another two hours of a century of America’s music on KWTF, 88.1 FM, community radio for Bodega Bay.
Pickin’ Time – KOWS Oct 5, 2015
Dave Stroud will be sitting in tonight for Mark Hogan once again at 6pm Pacific. He’s got another episode of Deeper Roots Radio: A Century of America’s Music. In this episode, he’ll be following along Mark’s theme of old time and bluegrass, old and new. The playlist this evening will include bluegrass from James King, Mac Wiseman, David Grisman and Bill Monroe. He’ll also be sharing new tracks from Susie Blue and the Lonesome Fellas, Kinky Friedman, The Dustbowl Revival (fresh from Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this past weekend), and a couple of tracks fromLowell Levinger From The Youngbloods’s new album “Get Together – Youngblood Classics”. Tune in for some Eddy Arnold tribute pieces, music about the married life, and a couple of fine recordings of the great guitar pioneer Riley Puckett.
Deeper Hoagy Carmichael
Our show explores the music of the great Hoagy Carmichael, the American songwriter who would pair up with some of the great lyricists of the early century to produce a body of work that, while it generally is written about another time in the south, endures for it’s soft-spoken charm, inventiveness, and sophistication. He worked his way through law school by performing in his own three-piece band but a couple of his early songs, “Riverboat Shuffle” and “Stardust” made it clear that songwriting was the inevitable vocation for this would-be lawyer. Although the Great Depression almost put him back with the bar, it was the song “Stardust” that would convince him that he could make a go of it. And he did. He was a font of music, teaming with Johnny Mercer and numerous other great lyricists to pen songs that maintain a fresh face to this day…and Deeper Roots will have the vintage sounds of Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and The Mills Brothers alongside the contemporary interpretations of Carmichael’s standards including Linda Ronstadt, Norah Jones, and Junior Brown. Join Dave Stroud as he queues up the timeless work of Hoagy Carmichael.
Combing the Archives
Some of the most revealing music I listen to hints at what’s in store for humankind by expressing its own historical presence through dialect and direct purpose. It is done in the artistry of music, something that the children’s author Hans Christian Andersen opined that “where words fail, music speaks”. Music is an essential component of our humanity and is an art like no other in that it is the most direct of all art forms. So I find that what’s old to some may be new to me.
Finding music from the early 20th century is an exercise. Sometimes it is found buried in the wells of collector’s catalogs that are priced beyond anyone’s reach or in carefully curated and targeted anthologies. It can also be found on public domain sites curated by educational entities including the Library of Congress. Rest assured, it is no small effort to sit down early on a Sunday morning and browse these sites, including www.archive.org and Juneberry for items that, while sometimes poor in quality, reveal from behind that ‘gauze of static’ as faces long-since passed. But my Sunday mornings are rarely lacking reward whether that be a King Oliver jazz recording, rough blues from Blind Lemon Jefferson, or even an early century pop from an Annette Hanshaw.
When I think that I’ve heard it all, something new grabs my ear and imagination and drives me to later fulfill my curiosity by reading more about the artist, songwriter, or song. And that is what my show is about: sharing what I discover with the listener. My show is Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music and airs on KOWS.fm on even Saturday mornings from 9-11 and on even Sunday and Monday nights from 10-midnight. For more information about my shows I’d encourage you to visit my web site at www.deeperrootsradio.com. The site also features links to my Facebook page as well as archives of over a hundred past shows.
Looking ahead, and speaking of musical archives, there are a handful of record labels that are indispensable to those who equally cherish the ephemera, no matter the luster, of American (as well as world) music. Join me on Deeper Roots over the coming months as I highlight these labels, not least of which are Document Records, The Dust-to-Digital label, The Numero Group, Tompkins Square, veterans Arhoolie and Yazoo, Old Hat, and Bear Family.