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.
Deeper Roots explores the influences, the music, and those who themselves were influenced by the yodeling brakeman. His music was influenced deeply by the blues of Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Willie Jackson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. And the performers he influenced read more like the comprehensive list of jazz, blues, country, and pop greats….to this day. It is sure to entertain with the music of Rodgers, Bob Dylan, Lefty Frizzell, and Merle Haggard.
Deeper Roots presents “Murder Ballads”. Join Dave Stroud for an exploration of the fateful legends of Naomi Wise, Pretty Polly, Hattie Carroll, and Tom Dulah…and others. Many of these ‘true crime’ ballads recall an historic event that grew in myth and legend as its thread was passed and adapted from ear to ear…eventually resolving itself in the story of the perpetrator’s fate.
This episode will be posted to Mixcloud in the near future.
