Category Archives: Blues

A Dime Looks Like a Wagon Wheel

Deeper Roots on KOWS
Deeper Roots on KOWS

“A Dime Looks Like a Wagon Wheel”….a phrase that was used to indicate how fortunate you felt when just a little seemed so big when you had so little to start with. Old timey music, some sweet R&B from Sam Cooke, country styles from Johnny Cash and Hank Thompson, folk and blues from Dave Van Ronk, Woody Guthrie, and Peter Rowan….and newer sounds from The Far West, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Howell Devine. Two hours of Deeper Roots looks like that same wagon wheel…it goes by fast and we’ll have the very best of American roots music from the past century Saturday morning at 9am on KOWS.

No.
1Artist Title Album Buy
2Hardrock Gunter Boogie Woogie On A Saturday Night Boogie Man Boogie Amazon
3Rosanne Cash Big River Right or Wrong Amazon
4Johnny Cash Big River Get Rhythm [Sun] Amazon
5Bill Monroe Big River Bluegrass 1959-1969 [Disc 1] Amazon
6The Nashville Bluegrass Band The Johnson Boys American Beauty Amazon
7Don Reno/Red Smiley A Dime Looks Loke a Wagon Wheel Together Again Amazon
8Steep Canyon Rangers Good Old Country Baptizing Mr. Taylor's New Home Amazon
9Bobby Hicks & Del McCoury We're Steppin' Out Tonight Bluegrass Number 1's: A Collection of Chart-Topping Songs Amazon
10Willie Nelson Texas on a Saturday Night Revolutions of Time: The Journey 1975-1993 Disc 2 Amazon
11Red Foley Tennessee Saturday Night Hillbilly Fever [Disc 2] Amazon
12Ella Mae Morse Tennessee Saturday Night The Morse Code [Disc 2] Amazon
13Frank Sinatra Saturday Night (Is The Loneliest Night In The Week) Swing And Dance With Frank Sinatra Amazon
14Sam Cooke Another Saturday Night Portrait Of A Legend 1951-1964 Amazon
15Junior Brown Long Walk Back to San Antone Long Walk Back Amazon
16The Green River Boys feat. Glen Campbell Poor Boy Looking for a Home James Burton – The Early Years 1957-1969 Amazon
17Hank Thompson & His Brazos Valley Boys New Green Light, The Vintage Collections Amazon
18Roy Rogers I Can't Go on This Way 1942-1947 (Warped 4561) Amazon
19The Far West Maricopa City Lights The Far West Amazon
20Bo Diddley I'm Looking For A Woman His Best: The Chess 50th Anniversary Collection Amazon
21Markus James Diddley Bow and Buckets Head For The Hills Amazon
22Howell Devine Devil Got My Woman Delta Grooves Amazon
23Skip James Devil Got My Woman Ghost World Amazon
24Rory Block Devil Got My Man Gone Woman Blues: The Country Blues Collection Amazon
25Bonnie Raitt Danger Heartbreak Dead Ahead Bonnie Raitt Amazon
26Peter Rowan Dust Bowl Children Dust Bowl Children Amazon
27Woody Guthrie Blowing Down That Old Dusty Road (Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad) Dust Bowl Ballads [Rounder] Amazon
28Ramblin' Jack Elliott Hard Travellin' Dust Bowl Blues Essential American Folk Amazon
29The Reverend Gary Davis You Got to Move At Newport Amazon
30Markus James Goin' Down South Head For The Hills Amazon
31Louis Jordan No Sale Jivin' With Jordan Amazon
32Benny Goodman He Ain't Got Rhythm Sing, Sing, Sing Amazon
33Johnny Hamp Orchestra Ooh! Hoo! Yoo-Hoo! Johnny Hamp at Archive Amazon

Deeper Roots on KOWS – April 11, 2015

Aimee Semple McPherson
Aimee Semple McPherson

Second Saturday on KOWS…that means a vintage blend of Deeper Roots. Our show opens with some contemporary bluegrass and gets right down to business with some country gospel and blues with an opening admonition from Sister Aimee Semple McPherson punctuated with songs of drinking and old time religion. From there we move on to the jazz sounds of Fats Waller and a run of mid-to-late century country featuring Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, and the sass of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. It’s another beautiful spring morning in the small West Sonoma County hamlet of Occidental…nestled in the woods along the Bohemian Highway and celebrated from the studios of KOWS Community Radio.

Songs About Jail

Songs About Jail
Songs About Jail

It’s theme time once again on Deeper Roots. We’ve got songs that explore the topic of jails, prisons, work farms, and the incarcerated. There we find the overnighters, the vagabonds, the jealous lovers, the desperate thieves, and the stories of ladies and gentlemen on both sides of the bars. There will be old-timey cowboy classics from Vernon Dalhart and Carl T. Sprague, modern covers by David Johansen and The Byrds,  blues from Lightnin’ Hopkins and Blind Boy Fuller, and a whole lot more. Join us for the stories of the songs and performers this week on Deeper Roots.

Deeper Roots on KOWS – March 28, 2015

Deeper Roots on KOWS
Deeper Roots on KOWS

It’s our regular (well, even Saturday mornings) show featuring an early country and bluegrass set featuring new sounds from Steve Earle and Robert Earl Keen, Jr. alongside the classic sounds of Buck Owens, Leon Chappell and The Louvins. We’ve got gospel and blues as well as a rare set of sounds from the second omnibus of “The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records”, classic late twenties country and blues. Stay tuned for your morning dose of brew d’Roots and American Roots Breakfast Tea on a spring Saturday morning in West Sonoma County.

Forties Rhythm

Forties Rhythm
Forties Rhythm

Just ahead of World War II, a sound began to bubble up through the floorboards. There was the new, brash, swinging sound of big bands, country swing had surfaced, and jazz was alive and well as an evident inspiration to both. But there was a raw, bluesy, expressive, jump sound coming from the barrooms and halls of the urban expanses of Chicago, Kansas City, New York City, and beyond; something that would become known as R&B and would later be the bedrock of rock and roll. Deeper Roots explores the sounds of Big Joe Turner, Wynonie Harris, Buddy Johnson and a host of others, including the ladies: Effie Smith, Nellie Lutcher, Julia Lee, and Viola Wells. This episode has them all and more…

Bob Dylan and Tradition

Bob Dylan and Tradition
Bob Dylan and Tradition

While Bob Dylan’s greatest early influence was likely Woody Guthrie he spent his career exhibiting both love and thievery of the Americana music canon. Love, in the sense that he would pay tribute and admire the story-telling, and theft, in that he would copy old lines for his own purposes or reassemble them into a larger story. His not-so-obvious album release titled “Love and Theft” hints at his own sardonic wit in the matter.

Pablo Picasso has been quoted thusly: “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” It’s a concept that goes back much further. The works of T.S. Eliot discuss the concept of how artistic theft leads to the creation of new ideas in art and many of the early playwrights, Shakespeare included, would steal in part or in whole. The argument that Dylan’s intentions are somewhat more nefarious in the era of copyrights and royalties is likely misguided because it assumes that no artist would have previously been paid for their ‘pilfered’ works.

In this episode of Deeper Roots, first broadcast on KWTF Sonoma County March 20, 2015, we’ll spend two hours mining through some of those influences with music from Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, Doc Watson, Frank Crumit, Mississippi John Hurt, and the bard himself in an episode titled “Bob Dylan and Tradition”. In keeping with our theme, parts of today’s show are loosely based, or maybe paraphrased, from a wonderful study of Dylan’s career in the context of American tradition including minstrelsy, gospel, folk, country, pop, and blues…all of those things that Dylan has imparted in sometimes not-so-subtle ways in his music. The book, Bob Dylan in America: the book by Sean Wilentz, contributing editor to the New Republic and Professor of History at Princeton. The book was published by Doubleday in 2010.

Songs About Work

Songs About Work
Songs About Work

We return once more to a theme. In this episode of Deeper Roots, we visit the ‘salt mines’ where we toil for our daily bread or made to work off our sins. The old addage, attributed to Thomas Edison: “There is no substitute for hard work.” left out the other side of the coin…that of paydays on Friday and working for the weekend…which, of course, we’ll cover in great detail in a show whose theme is ‘work’. Tune in for roots music from Doc Watson and Flatt & Scruggs, both wicked and lovely R&B from Marva Whitney and Fats Domino, and rebellious rocking from Eddie Cochran and Bo Diddley.

Deeper Gary Davis

Reverend Blind Gary Davis
Reverend Blind Gary Davis

He was from the Piedmont school of blues guitar but would find a wider audience and following through the work of Taj Mahal, Dave Van Ronk,Bob Dylan, Jorma Kaukonen, Dave Bromberg, and Ry Cooder. The majority of those named actually studied guitar with Davis but his own tutelage was under the legendary Willie Walker. He moved to New York in 1944, preaching and singing on the streets of Harlem, resuming his recording career in the 1960s when his appearances at Newport and other folk festivals brought a seemingly brief fame…but by all indications today, an enduring legacy. If you don’t have his classic album, Harlem Street Singer, produced by Rudy Van Gelder, in your collection…you might want to reconsider. We’ll explore a wide selection of pieces by Davis, by those who influenced him, and the many who were influenced by his music. We’ll also share excerpts of interviews and classic Gary Davis stories by others. It’s a very special two hours on Deeper Roots Radio: A Century of America’s Music with your host Dave Stroud.

Deeper Roots on KOWS – February 28, 2015

Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards
Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards

We have yet another free form fest of roots music emanating from the bright sun of a Saturday along the Bohemian Highway, live from the KOWS studios in downtown Occidental, California. We both start and wrap up the show with Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards, sharing country, blues, and new Americana in between. We’ll hear from Flaco Jimenez pair up with Dwight Yoakum, the essence of Randy Newman’s portrait of the South, western swing with Willie and Spade, and new music that fits our roots sensibilities from Steve Earle, Robert Earl Keen, Jr., and Jorma Kaukonen. Tune in for two hours of classic roots music.

Deeper Roots Goes To Mardi Gras

Deeper Roots Goes To Mardi Gras
Deeper Roots Goes To Mardi Gras

Fat Tuesday or, translated to French, Mardi Gras, comes but once a year and signals the penitential season of Lent. It also provides us with an outlet for the many things that we do as part of our celebration. One of them involves the backdrop of music. We’ll visit the sounds introduced by the Second Line of “Sugar Boy” Crawford, Fats Domino, and Stop, Inc. We’ll follow with The Meters, Bo Dollis and The Wild Magnolias, Louis Armstrong, and many others in a show that separates our locales by almost 2000 miles. Join Dave Stroud for the big beat coming from the French Quarter, Bourbon Street, and the Mississippi waterfront in our newest episode, another produced exclusively for KWTF, 88.1 FM, member-supported community radio for Bodega Bay, Sonoma County, California.