Generations of youth over the last century grew up with the images of cowpokes, rustlers, bad guys, and ranching through dime novels, radio, television and, of course, the music. In this episode of Deeper Roots, we focus on the legacy of the ‘cowboy crooners’ and country balladeers who sang about life on the trail alongside the grub wagon on the lone prairie where the imagination could take you anywhere it pleased…and often did. We’ll hear the earliest ‘cowboy songs’ by Vernon Dalhart and Carl Sprague; and we’ll also find ourselves being serenaded (quite gently) by Tex Ritter and Gene Autry who reached out for the generic, mass appeal. The music was full of tradition as well and we’ll hear some contemporary reflections from David Wilkie And Cowboy Celtic, Jim Lauderdale, and (of course) Waylon, Willie, Merle, and Johnny.
We’ve got ‘songs of the sauce’, so to speak. Our show will feature a century of America’s music with stories of moonshine, rye whiskey, bubbles in the beer, bartenders, and hangovers going as far back as 1928. But we’ve also got a Bob Wills tribute piece from a new Asleep at the Wheel release, indie rockabilly from new Austinians Tammy Lynn & Myles High, R&B truckers The Harlem Hamfats, and local favorite David Luning. Join Dave Stroud for another two hours of a century of America’s Music on KWTF, member-supported community radio for Bodega Bay and all of Sonoma County.
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.
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
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!
This week’s Deeper Roots show revisits country swing. Join Dave Stroud tonight at 9 for the sounds of Tex Williams, The Sons of the West, Spade Cooley, Hank Penney, and a host of others whose sounds attracted huge crowds to the dance halls and clubs in Texas, Oklahoma, and California during the thirties and forties. With its basis in jazz and ‘gypsy jazz’, its sound is an upbeat amalgamation of rural, cowboy, polka, folk, blues, and Dixieland jazz, all played by the hot string bands who gave it a distinctive sound with amplified steel guitars, stand-up bass, fiddle, as well as an occasional accordion or brass accompaniment. It’s still alive today…you just need to look.
Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music shares the music from a selection of the great 20th century country guitar masters…those Nashville Cats in our latest episode.
The electric guitar has been around in some form since the late 1920’s. In fact, an early group named The Vagabonds experimented with guitar amplification on the Grand Ole Opry in the early days of the show. But the first real amplified guitars were steel guitars. In 1936, Gibson introduced their ES-150 electric guitars and while most southeastern country musicians rejected them, Western swing bands coming out of the Southwest were quick to adopt and the sound became a standard. The sounds of the steel guitar went well beyond swing since the lap and pedal steel guitars both became associated with the development of the country and Western swing genres.
In tonight’s show, we’ve got a mix of session men and solid guitar impresarios to share with you. We’ll hear from The Delmore Brothers, Bob Wills and Leon McAuliffe, Merle Travis, Buddy Emmons, and the great Hank Garland…”setting the woods on fire” as the saying goes.
In a show we broadcast in May of 2013, we explore classic Country music with performers ranging from Hank Williams and Johnny Cash to Hank Snow and Webb Pierce. With the format of the genre becoming watered down into a more mainstream format by the late 1970s, the sound of Country music of the fifties and sixties (considered by many to be the ‘Golden Age of Country Music’) has found its own niche and listening audience. The move to digital, it turns out, has made the genre more accessible, beyond the familiar rural audiences who shunned the pop mainstream that found them alienated from their music. Join Dave Stroud as he shares two hours of Classic Country on Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music.
This episode will be posted to Mixcloud in the near future.
