Another beautiful winter Saturday morning in West Sonoma County and it’s time for a collection of hot blues, country gospel, early rock, early century pop, and swinging country on Deeper Roots… everything from Eddie Cantor’s 1922 song about a trapeze and Blind Willie McTell covering Jimmie Rodgers around mid-century, to a track from 2014 from a new band out of New Orleans called Hurray For The Riff Raff…another reason our tag line reads “A Century of America’s Music”. Join Dave Stroud on a brisk Saturday morning from the KOWS studios in downtown Occidental, California.
Lots of early sounds mixed with the new this weekend. Stay tuned for music from the medicine shows, lost provinces, gospel tents, swamps, bandstands, and digital playgrounds. We’ve got Sam Samudio, Shorty Godwin, The Seldom Scene, Shel Silverstein, and Tom Russell in our bi-weekly show broadcast live from the KOWS studios in downtown Occidental, a hamlet tucked into the redwoods along the Bohemian Highway in west Sonoma County. The drought is being beat down and, while we would welcome more rain, we’re hoping that it’s dispersed so that our neighbors can manage without threat of flooding. So we’ll flood you all with a fine collection of performances from the last century of America’s music.
Our show this week will focus on the fire and brimstone of the gospel guitar, including the slide guitar of Blind Willie Johnson, the evangelists like Sister O. M. Terrell, the rhythmic sounds of the Two Gospel Keys, and we’ll also devote a large block of time to the sounds of that splinter genre ‘sacred steel’. While a number of bluesmen like Blind Willie McTell or Gary Davis would use the guitar for an occasional reminder of their faith or to play guest in tent revivals, many of the performers we’ll hear in our show this coming Friday on KWTF will show the best example of the use of guitar as an integral part of the church service itself. Join Dave Stroud for another evening of Deeper Roots.
We’ve got a special Monday episode of Deeper Roots. The show originally broadcast live from the KOWS studios in Occidental, California, opens with some Light Crust Doughboys, fires up some modern country gospel from the Watson Twins and Johnny Cash, then goes for the jugular with a collection of Baptist-flavored gospel from Moses Mason, Mother McCollum, and Madam Edna…and that just scratches the sacred surface. The show also features the secular: jump blues from Jesse Price, jazz from Lincoln Center and Willie “The Lion” Smith. Had enough? You won’t. Be sure to check it out.
Here’s your morning coffee and tea! Join Dave Stroud for a helping of ukulele, blues, gospel, and outlaw meta-modern country sounds. If you haven’t had a chance to find us on a West County Saturday morning, your chance is every second and fourth Saturday morning at 9 PST on TuneIn radio http://tunein.com/radio/KOWS-LP-1073-…. This eclectic blend of music from the past century is also played out on Sundays at 10 PM This week’s show will feature a Langston Hughes reading, some Maria Muldaur, some early century pop from The Boswell Sisters, some cold hard country facts from Sturgill Simpson and Porter Wagoner, and blues from Dave Alvin and Big Bill Broonzy.
Paramount Records was born in 1917 and in the mere fifteen years of their existence they would introduce some of the greatest names in the blues. Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, Skip James, and Papa Charlie Jackson are but a few. In 2013, Jack White’s Third Man Records teamed up with Revenant Records to release the first of what would become one of the most ambitious attempts at documenting the story of a record company born from a furniture company that was driven to create product for the record cabinets they sold. Based on the book “The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records”, part two of the omnibus will be released later this year (or in early 2015).
This week on Deeper Roots, we share some of the story…and a lot of the music which was not necessarily limited to the blues but also some incredible gospel, mountain, and jazz recordings. When listening through what Dean Blackwell of Revenant Records calls the “gauze of static”, you’ll hear the music of the last century come alive. Tune in Friday night at 9 o’clock for a rare listen.
It’s another two hours celebrating the best of the last century of America’s music on Deeper Roots. In this week’s episode, Dave Stroud will be exploring the secular side of Thomas Dorsey, as Dorsey performed early century blues as Georgia Tom, and then more about Dorsey’s sacred side as the Reverend Thomas Dorsey in the mid-to-late century. As the Great Depression brought chaos to the lives of many, including the performers of the day, Dorsey finalized a lifelong transition from the secular to the sacred, although there is clear evidence that personal misfortune had its hand in the move. The evening’s playlist includes excerpts from Dorsey interviews, music by contemporaries and those who were influenced by his music, as well as pieces performed by Dorsey as Georgia Tom, featuring Tampa Red on guitar. Johnny Cash, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Kansas City Kitty, Clara Ward, and Sweet Honey in The Rock are among the acts who we’ll hear in a show called “Deeper Thomas Dorsey”.
Join Dave Stroud once more as he digs into those dusty digital gospel bins for a selection of songs that celebrate the celestial sounds of a number of the greatest sacred hymns and gospel tunes from the past century of America’s music. “Wade In The Water”, “I’m On My Way To Canaan Land”, “I’ll Fly Away”, and many other classic gospel standards will be covered by some of the great gospel performers as well as those from the secular stable. We’ll hear from Bill Monroe, Blind Willie Johnson, Taj Mahal, Mahalia Jackson, and the Reverend Pearly Brown in a special Deeper Roots show called “Great Gospel Tracks”. Tune in for a show that explores the roots of sounds that explore those sounds of both Europeanized black church music as well as those that have their basis in the holiness-Pentecostal (or sanctified) movement.
Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music goes deeper…back 87 years to the summer of 1927 when Ralph Peer, a producer for the Victor Talking Machine Company visited the town of Bristol, Tennessee scouting for talent. He brought with him the equipment necessary to capture those first-take performances which would come to be known as The Bristol Sessions. From late July through early August artists such as The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and the Stoneman Family made recordings in a makeshift studio inside downtown Bristol’s Taylor-Christian Hat Company. Johnny Cash once said that “These recordings…are the single most important event in the history of country music.”
Join Dave Stroud as Deeper Roots goes beyond the more notable names from these recordings and, with a certain leaning to the country sounds, he will also reveal the gospel and folk tradition that came out of these and the later Johnson City Sessions. We’ll hear from The Johnson Brothers, The Stamps Quartet, Alfred Karnes, Uncle Eck Dunford, and a host of others.
We’re going to revisit the theme of gospel music in this episode of Deeper Roots, specifically those sounds of the many different groups that set the stage for a time known as The Golden Age of Gospel. The first half of our show will focus on those performers, performances, and sacred pieces that influenced post-war black America and we’ll follow with a modest selection from the Golden Age that, interestingly enough, seems to parallel that of the Golden Age of Country Music…those two decades covering 1945 to 1965.
We’ll wade into the Baptist and Pentacostal waters that would influence the secular sounds of popular R&B, soul, and rock ‘n roll by shaking the sacred out of the rafters and into the American airwaves of the later years…and make no mistake, the influence of the gospel groups that followed from the 19th century and into the 20th cannot be understated. We’ll hear from the Jubilee Quartets of course, including the Selah Jubilee Singers, the Golden Gates, the Dixie Jubilee Singers…and we’ll also hear some fine contemporary pieces from the Blind Boys of Alabama. You won’t want to miss out.
