On Deeper Roots …”The 99 Percent Blues”, featuring music reflecting on the Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, and the recent financial crisis…songs and stories of the working class. We take a trip back to the twenties and share with you the sounds of Vernon Delhart, Joe Stone, Harry McClintock, and others…and we’ll share the more contemporary songs of Ry Cooder, Randy Newman, and Uncle Tupelo.
All posts by Dave
Saturday Night Fish Fry
Take a trip with Deeper Roots as we visit a Saturday Night Fish Fry featuring Eddie Williams and His Brown Buddies, Cab Calloway’s “Everybody Eats When They Come To My House”, Duke Ellington’s tribute to the “Saturday Night Function”, and songs of house rent parties, Saturday evenings, and Fats Waller will tell us about “Functionizing”. It has always been about blowing off steam after a long week…and swinging, rocking, and having a ball.
Hillbilly Boogie
Deeper Roots looks at one of the many precursors to rockabilly and rock ‘n roll. Hillbilly boogie is a term used to describe an early pop music fad that blended early 20th century boogie woogie piano style, popular black music of the time, and western swing. Now many will say that it started with Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith but we’ll hear the swing and boogie woogie sounds that predated Smith. And the word was “boogie”. Boogie Woogie Baby, New Broom Boogie, Birthday Cake Boogie, Cherokee Boogie…well, you get the idea. We’ve got all of those and more with performances from Tex Williams, Hank Penny, Johnny Bond, Rose Maddox, and many more. Join Dave Stroud for another journey through a century of America’s music here on listener-supported community radio for Bodega Bay!
Mississippi Delta Blues
Blues from the Mississippi Delta highlights this episode of Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music. The sounds are as deep and wide as the river and area of the south that gave it its name. The traditional music of all of the sounds that passed through, from the Civil War, to the music from the hills, the barrooms, brothels, and front porches are blended into a raw and sinuous sound that moved north with its performers, landing in the urban stages of the north. Chicago, New York, St. Louis, and Detroit…all born in the Mississippi Delta. We’ll start with Charley Patton, Garfield Akins, and Robert Johnson and work our way forward to Johnny Shines, Robert Lockwood Jr., and Honeyboy Edwards.
Early Rockin’
It’s all about the roots of rockin’ and rollin’….including those songs that lyrically broached the subject as early as the 1920s. We follow the thread into the 1930s and 40s where a wellspring of American music, both traditional as well as experimental, inspired the sounds that would fuse into the sound that we know of as rock ‘n roll. Tonight at 9, Deeper Roots take a trip down a very wide path in an episode called “Early Rocking”…venturing into early blues, country swing, jazz, and R&B. We’ll hear from Blind Blake, Jack McVea, Stick McGhee, Hardrock Gunter, Les Paul, and others that may raise an eyebrow or two. Muddy Waters once stated that “The blues had a baby and they called it rock ‘n roll…” but there is so much more to it than just the blues…and we’ll find out what.
Kansas City Jazz
This episode of Deeper Roots features performances from Count Basie, Bennie Moten, Andy Kirk & His Twelve Clouds of Joy, Kansas City Kitty, and a host of others. Kansas City is considered (along with New Orleans, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York) one of the more popular “cradles of jazz”. Most of the jazz musicians associated with the new jazz style in the early days came from elsewhere but got caught up in the friendly musical competitions among performers that could keep a single song being performed in variations for an entire night. And the music of the Kansas City big bands were often composed and arranged collectively in a manner known as “head arrangements”.
The Devil Ain’t Lazy
“The Devil Ain’t Lazy” is a song by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys and it is also the title of this week’s Deeper Roots show. In our weekly ramble through the last century of America’s music this Friday night at 9, we explore how that malevolent spirit known as the devil has been a foil and muse in song. We start it off with the Almanac Singers and the Irving Berlin piece from pre-war, “Get Thee Behind Me Satan”, move into a 1928 musical sermon called “Warming By the Devil’s Fire”, and find ourselves in country bible land with the Louvins, Hank Williams, and Marty Stuart. In between we’ve got lots of jazz, gospel, blues, and some modern revelations about our culture’s call and response with Lucifer himself.
The Mighty Mississippi
This episode of Deeper Roots explores music celebrating the “Father of The Waters”, “The Big Muddy”…”The Mighty Mississippi”. Between its head, Lake Itasca in Minnesota, to the point where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi is responsible for the watershed of 31 states, although its banks only border on 10 of them. Over the centuries, it’s been an inspiration in traditional song and story. Join us as we are entertained by the likes of J. J. Cale, The Mississippi Sheiks, Bessie Smith, Dr. John, and a host of others in a show about a natural wonder that is part of our national identity.
Duos and Duets
Two heads are better than one…indeed. Deeper Roots features music performed in pairs in an episode called “Duos and Duets”. The music will feature our usual assemblage of genres blended for a Friday night. They’ll include the heavenly country sibling harmonies of The Louvins, The Delmores, and the Whitsteins, special duets featuring Johnny Cash, John Prine, Blind Willie Johnson, and Otis Redding, as well as a full helping of pop, jazz, and rock.
Hound Dogs and Bear Cats
Nearly fifty years ago one song entered three different charts: Country, R&B, and Pop at the same time, unprecedented for the time. It was a year where the airwaves were filled with Dean Martin, Perry Como, Marty Robbins, The Platters, and the first hints of what was to be the infusion of R&B into popular music. Deeper Roots will take a peek at the year 1956 with an exploration of Elvis’ release of Hound Dog.
Dale Geist, singer-songwriter and passionate student of rock history, joins Dave Stroud in a special two-hour show that explores the impact of songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, blues and rhythm rockers Rufus Thomas, Big Mama Thornton, and Roy Brown, as well as the music of The Coasters, The Robins, Big Joe Turner, and The Drifters.