Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music goes deeper…back 87 years to the summer of 1927 when Ralph Peer, a producer for the Victor Talking Machine Company visited the town of Bristol, Tennessee scouting for talent. He brought with him the equipment necessary to capture those first-take performances which would come to be known as The Bristol Sessions. From late July through early August artists such as The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and the Stoneman Family made recordings in a makeshift studio inside downtown Bristol’s Taylor-Christian Hat Company. Johnny Cash once said that “These recordings…are the single most important event in the history of country music.”
Join Dave Stroud as Deeper Roots goes beyond the more notable names from these recordings and, with a certain leaning to the country sounds, he will also reveal the gospel and folk tradition that came out of these and the later Johnson City Sessions. We’ll hear from The Johnson Brothers, The Stamps Quartet, Alfred Karnes, Uncle Eck Dunford, and a host of others.
Join Dave Stroud tomorrow night for some Fourth of July Americana from the last century of America’s music. He’s been digging into those dusty digital archives for songs celebrating America. It’s the Fourth of July and all of the fireworks, flags, bunting, barbecues, and patriotic celebrations can be traced back as well to a century of America’s music. We’ve got broadway and silver screen classics, country music new and old, songs with tongue-in-cheek flag-waving wit, and a number of ballads that celebrate the good in all of us…we’ll also reflect on a little bit of the bad. Our playlist Friday night includes The Piper’s Gap Ramblers, Dave Alvin, James Brown, Morton Gould doing Sousa, Randy Newman, and many more in an eclectic blend of patriotic pandering and tongue-in-cheek rambling.
No.
1
Artist
Title
Album
Buy
2
Woody Guthrie
This Land Is Your Land (Alternate Version)
Woody At 100: The Woody Guthrie Centennial Collection
3
Bill Chitwood & His Georgia Mountaineers
Fourth Of July At The Country Fair (1927)
Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard: Hard Time, Good Time, And End Time Music, 1923-1936
4
Pipers Gap Ramblers
Yankee Doodle
Serenade The Mountains: Early Old Time Music On Record, [Disc 1]
Join Dave Stroud for the music of Louis Armstrong, from the early King Oliver days to popular tunes of the late century. Probably the most important musician to come out of the 20th century, he took the blues and established it as jazz’s harmonic foundation, well beyond the ‘fashionable’ jazz of the day. He introduced a style of singing called ‘scat’ that was to be mimicked by others including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Bing Crosby. He created masterworks based on Tin Pan Alley songs that went beyond his original New Orleans influences, showing that jazz could expand musically and commercially. And there is little doubt that he introduced the form we know as ‘swing’ today.
With the rise of be-bop and modern jazz, some of the newcomers (Dizzy Gillespie being the most vocal) pushed Louis aside with a new sound in jazz and words that were youthful miscalculations at the least if not disrespectful altogether. But it was time that would prove Louis’ music and his stature in the history of the American musical art form that remains abiding and durable. Those newcomers would recant and recognize the true mark of genius.
We’ll feature two hours exploring the career of Louis Armstrong in both music and in his own words.
Deeper Roots digs into the early sounds of rock in another episode that explores the songwriters…this time focusing on the talents of the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, During the first decade of a rock ‘n roll, they brought the R&B music they loved to the pop mainstream, producing a catalog of enduring, influential, and spirited musical pieces. The two grew up on the East Coast, Leiber in Baltimore and Stoller in Queens, but met in Los Angeles in 1950 where they began a sixty year collaboration, Leiber serving as the sharp-witted lyricist, while the classically trained but jazz-and R&B-loving Stoller wrote the music. Join Dave Stroud in a show first broadcast on KWTF in 2014 as he’ll share the duo’s songwriting talents featuring the music of LaVern Baker, Big Mama Thornton, Bull Moose Jackson, Brian Setzer, and many, many others.
Let’s go deeper into the past century, celebrating an icon of American music from the 19th century. Stephen Foster composed almost two hundred songs, a half dozen ranking with the world’s greatest ballads; at least 25 of them have become American folk songs. He achieved a truly American expression in his music. Although born and bred in Pittsburgh, he was not influenced by the European music that enslaved composers who lived on the more cosmopolitan seaboard cities of the day. His influences were instead the touchstones of the heart…home and the comfort of friends. His lyrics were a reflection of the time but never cruel in the context of the time, keeping his focus on relationships and the good in everyone.
Our show will feature music of the McGarrigle Sisters, Bill Frisell, Sam Cooke, The Light Crust Doughboys, and an extended selection of Stephen Foster classics performed by The Sons of The Pioneers.
Deeper Roots explores a minor genre in this episode; coming from early 19th century minstrel shows and adapted with bawdy humor, double entendre, and biting sarcasm. A little bit blues, a little bit country, and always in your face, they call it “hokum”. The English dictionary defines the term as ‘nonsense’ or ‘trite, sentimental, and unrealistic’ but as a musical genre, it goes well beyond those simple definitions. As noted in Wikipedia, “Although the sexual content of hokum is generally playful by modern standards, early recordings were marginalized for both sexual “suggestiveness” and “trashy” appeal, but still flourished in niche markets outside the mainstream. Our show will take a journey through early to mid-century examples featuring numerous pieces by Tampa Red, Papa Charlie Jackson, Memphis Minnie, and Georgia Tom as well as some later fifties R&B examples that drew from the hokum well including The Dominoes, Julia Lee, and Bullmoose Jackson. Join Dave Stroud for a fun mix of musical nonsense that is anything but trite or sentimental.
Bluegrass music owes more than a debt to Bill Monroe. It owes a name, a legacy, and a following to a man whose songwriting and musical prowess went well beyond the genre that bears his brand. Inspired by the early mountain music that his uncle, Pendleton Vandiver, would introduce him to, Bill developed a keen eye for talent and expected only the best from his band (although his lack of business acumen would trip him up time and again). That keen eye paired with an ear for stellar musicianship would show in the performers he ‘discovered’ and who rank among the greatest of the genre: Mac Wiseman, Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt, Peter Rowan, Kenny Baker, Del McCoury, and many others. Please join us for sets that explore Bill Monroe’s legacy. The sets include
The traditional music of Uncle Pen
The talent of Monroe’s sidemen
The early classic sound of “The Monroe Brothers”
Classic covers of Bill Monroe’s music done by late century artists
Two sets of some of the greatest of Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys
We’re going to revisit the theme of gospel music in this episode of Deeper Roots, specifically those sounds of the many different groups that set the stage for a time known as The Golden Age of Gospel. The first half of our show will focus on those performers, performances, and sacred pieces that influenced post-war black America and we’ll follow with a modest selection from the Golden Age that, interestingly enough, seems to parallel that of the Golden Age of Country Music…those two decades covering 1945 to 1965.
We’ll wade into the Baptist and Pentacostal waters that would influence the secular sounds of popular R&B, soul, and rock ‘n roll by shaking the sacred out of the rafters and into the American airwaves of the later years…and make no mistake, the influence of the gospel groups that followed from the 19th century and into the 20th cannot be understated. We’ll hear from the Jubilee Quartets of course, including the Selah Jubilee Singers, the Golden Gates, the Dixie Jubilee Singers…and we’ll also hear some fine contemporary pieces from the Blind Boys of Alabama. You won’t want to miss out.
The Golden Age of Country. That’s our theme. Join Dave Stroud, host of Deeper Roots, as he takes you through the sound of popular Country music of the 1950s and early 1960s, a time often referred to as “Classic Country”. It was one of the bridges to popular country today, hardly recognizable now from the sounds that were to one day compete with a new form of popular music known as rock ‘n roll. But this classic country sound was itself a sound that was hard to connect to the 1920s hillbilly and Appalachian sounds from which it had evolved. Its sound was an amalgam of 1940s country swing, middle-of-the road pop music, and elements of almost every form of American music. It was a more familiar , safe, and palatable place on the radio dial for those middle American values of the time. We’ll hear the classic sounds of Lefty Frizzell, “Little” Jimmy Dickens, Hank Snow, Kitty Wells, and many others in this episode of Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music
Blues is the sound we share with you in this episode of Deeper Roots and we’ve got two solid hours of sounds from the Mississippi Delta, Chicago, and the clubs, juke joints, and barrooms found at points in between. Based on a fine blog post by the great American roots music author Peter Guralnick that you can find here, we follow what we found to the letter and note. You’ll hear the sounds of Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Otis Spann, and Robert Nighthawk in a playlist the Guralnick handed to his son as a reverent introduction to the music that’s inspired his writing and passion for American roots music.
