This episode has us belly up to the bar, exploring music that’s all about bad habits and those elements that are not very good for health and harmony…and the performers make that very clear. We’ll hear “It Ain’t Far To the Bar”, “Caffeine and Nicotine”, “Wacky Dust”, and a host of other songs that tell the story of misbehavior, anti-sobriety, barrooms, and dens of iniquity. We’ll hear happy, we’ll hear sad, and we’ll hear all those emotions in between…all from performers like Merle Haggard, Victoria Spivey, Johnny Tyler & His Riders of the Rio Grande…and so many others.
The story and tradition of the music of the Appalachians can be traced back to Scottish and English ancestral roots. The book “Tennessee Strings” by Charles Wolfe does a good job of finding the path from traditional ballads such as Barbara Allen and those of Lorena during the Civil War into the present day. It also traces a clear path from the early 20th century performers like Fiddlin’ John Carson to the sounds of Uncle Dave Macon and the early years of the Grand Ole Opry.
In this episode of Deeper Roots, we acknowledge the contributions of Tennessee to the country Americana art form, that drew both from sources in the white rural music of East and Middle Tennessee as well as from the church music of the singing congregations and the blues and jazz emanating from urban Memphis. With the commercialization of this musical fusion through radio and recordings, Tennessee soon became a national center for country music.
Featured performers include G. B. Grayson, Al Hopkins and His Buckle Busters, Uncle Dave Macon, and a couple of sets that feature the songs about Tennessee. We’ll hear about Nashville before it became the center of commercialism that it is today, the 1927 Bristol Sessions, and the Grand Ole Opry when it only resembled a dance hall social with WSM radio microphones held in an insurance building’s gathering hall. We’ll also hear a number of pieces celebrating the state of Tennessee.
How about we go for that “high lonesome sound”? We’ve got two hours of bluegrass, a truly American sound which evolved from many streams over the past 100 years. Dave Stroud spins the music of Jimmy Martin, The Monroe Brothers, Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs, and many others in a “Bluegrass Special”. Deeper Roots celebrates more than just that ‘high lonesome sound’ with this episode. We also celebrates a one year anniversary on KWTF.
We venture a bit deeper…into the well of Pre-Depression music. The Jazz Age had settled in and the broad and diverse sounds of jazz out of the big cities, popular tunes from Broadway, blues from the south, and folk music of the mountains, had begun to reach areas of the country that had no clubs or venues, only a couple of new technologies: radio and Victrola phonographs. These new machines would become household staples and create an industry almost overnight revealing themselves as a mainstream means of cultural dissemination. This was, of course, before some of the lesser-known artists, once sought out by recording studios, would be dropped as the Great Depression would find their funding dry up almost overnight.
We’ll hear the sounds of Al Jolson alongside those of Louis Armstrong, Tampa Red, Mississippi John Hurt, and Barbecue Bob as Dave Stroud hosts a new episode, “Pre-Depression Music”, on Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s music.
“I had heard all the symphonies there were and all the chamber music and the best jazz and I said ‘this is the greatest music’”… Alan Lomax
Deeper Roots revisits the music of Doc Watson. We’ll listen to the sounds of The Delmore Brothers, The Carter Family, and Jimmie Rodgers, all major influences on Doc’s music and we’ll also hear from his contemporaries including Chet Atkins, Earl Scruggs, and Ricky Skaggs.
For the most part though, it’s going to be about Doc’s music and family. We’ll hear Doc in his own words, in duets with his son Merle, and from a recent box set of home recordings called “Milestones”, assembled as a scrapbook of his career by his daughter Nancy and Roy Andrade, Doc’s manager and confidant as well as member of the bluegrass and old time country music studies faculty at East Tennessee State University. Join Dave Stroud for some very special music in this edition of Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music.
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.
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.
Deeper Roots explores the theme of ‘gambling’ in this episode, first broadcast in March, 2013. Songs of blackjack, cards, dice, gambling and gamblers, including some that have evolved over the centuries, and we’ll hear the inevitable stories of winner’s luck and hard times for the loser. Our performers in this episode include The Burnette Brothers, the Harlem Hamfats, Frankie Laine, and Big Joe Turner…Tune in!
This episode will be posted to Mixcloud in the near future.
We explore the music of The Carter Family. Arguably the most influential group in country music history, the craft of songwriting and vocals was elevated to a precipice that nobody had recorded before. Their catalog of music is a tribute to A. P. Carter and his quest for topics that went beyond the (then contemporary) experience of instrumental mountain music. And Mother Maybelle Carter, known for her innovative guitar work at a time when the instrument was not in the foreground, was the glue that inspired so many performers and songwriters to follow.
Take a two hour tour of the legacy of The Carter Family’s contributions to country, as well as mainstream, American music. In addition to their own recordings, we’ll hear covers by a host of musicians that followed in their tracks including Lucinda Williams, The Stanley Brothers, John Prine, and (of course) Johnny Cash. Join Dave Stroud for this week’s episode.
This show will be posted via Mixcloud at some future date.
