“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.
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.
Deeper Roots’ Covers! We’re going to hear a selection of songs from the past 100 years guided by covers…some better than others, some of the great originals, and sometimes even greater covers. We’ll also dedicate a set to the great Charlie Poole, featuring covers by Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, and Loudon Wainwright III. We’ll also hear from David Lindley, Chuck Berry, Steve Miller, and Lonnie Johnson…just to name a few. Join Dave Stroud for a walk through the last century of America’s music on a show broadcast on KWTF 88.1 FM, member-supported community radio for Sonoma County.
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.
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.
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
