“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.
Enjoy another slice of heaven from a century of America’s music . Deeper Roots features “That Gospel Sound” exploring the music of singing groups like the Fisk Jubilee Singers who joined a mounting number of performers who celebrated not only religion but tradition and heritage in their performances. We’ll also hear from the Dixie Jubilee Singers, Thomas Dorsey, Josh White, and some country gospel from Roy Acuff, The Carter Family, and others.
Post-slavery singing groups like the Fisk Jubilee Singers trained their voices to sing the cultured songs of European composers, but it was always “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “Ezekial Saw the Wheel” and the rest of the slave songs segment of the program that brought audiences to their feet. Our show will feature Fisk Jubilee Singers as well as Arizona Dranes, Thomas Dorsey, and the Dixie Jubilee Singers.
We visit a mix of genres that celebrate the sacred and the sanctified in an episode entitled “Deeper Gospel Roots”. The mix includes early influential pieces from Arizona Dranes and the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers and explores the southern Baptist influence on gospel music with the inevitable undercurrent of themes that are also found in the country sounds of performers such as Molly O’Day and Cumberland Mountain Folks and The Louvins…as well as the sanctified blues of Charley Patton and the Reverend Blind Gary Davis.
We’ll also take some time to sample some rare urban influences including the electric guitar disciples from the Boddie Recording Company of Cleveland, Ohio and the sounds of late century ‘sacred steel’. Don’t miss out…join Dave Stroud as he guides us through the performances from the last century of America’s music.
This episode will be posted to Mixcloud in the near future.
In this installment of Deeper Roots, a special edition dedicated to the music of Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Born Rosetta Nubin in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, she began her career at age four performing with her evangelical mother in shows that were part sermon, part gospel concert, and energetic events that got the audience moving. She influenced a great number of performers who would go on to take her secular message into a realm that, for all intents and purposes, she had created: rock and roll. Her electrifying guitar work complimented her voice and she left us with a legacy of recordings that has no peer. Join Dave Stroud Friday night at 9PM as he explores her influences, those she influenced, and music from Sister Tharpe herself.
This episode will be posted to Mixcloud in the near future.
