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.
