Something different this week. We’ll be reflecting on the Spring Issue of a magazine that cuts through the heart of what we love doing here on both Blue Moon Americana as well as Deeper Roots. There are a handful of publications that make the cut but No Depression magazine is truly special and the Spring 2021 issue is something to revel in. The writing, the artists, and the arc of ‘The Great American Songbook’, from Stephen Foster to Louis Armstrong is given thoughtful and insightful treatment. Our show this week puts a soundtrack with a century of America’s music explored: Dock Boggs’ Pretty Polly, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, The Blue Sky Boys’ cover of Knoxville Girl, and some incredible Latin vocals from one Omara Portuondo. The magazine is worth the read and the music is worth a listen. Tune in on a Saturday among the Sonoma County skies for the best of community radio.
Category Archives: Jazz
The Year 1939
While the clouds of war and fascism were spreading in earnest across Europe, here at home the movies Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Gone With The Wind premiered and Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath was first published. Lou Gehrig bid farewell, A pound of hamburger cost 14 cents and the average price of a new car was $700. And the music was both dance crazy and uplifting, with the music of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway and film dominating. This week’s show will feature the music of 1939 with performances from Crosby, Garland, The Ink Spots, Cab Calloway and Billie Holiday. We’ll also be featuring the jazz and big band sounds of Jimmie Lunceford, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, and a handful of others. Deeper Roots sounds from over eight decades past on community radio for Sonoma County coming to you each Friday morning and evening.
Begin the Beguine
This past January was as much a month to remember as it was to forget. We’ll keep the serenity we need by softening the blow with music while also celebrating the good with swing, country, rhythm and gospel in another eclectic free form show on Sonoma County community radio. Cold weather and rain arrives so we’ll share the soul sounds of William Bell and Johnnie Taylor, some folk rock from Linda Ronstadt, swing vocals from The Mills Brothers and The Four Vagabonds, and gospel with Lou Rawls and the Pilgrim Travelers. We’ll visit Shenandoah, The Red River Valley, and Forty Miles of Bad Road in our Friday morning show, recorded this week in the Deeper Roots Den. I hope you’ll join us.
New Orleans R&B
We just can’t get enough of this sound, a blend of sounds that cannot be pushed away with the urban renewal of auto-tune and electronic pasteurization. It’s long history of inspiration whose roots are driven by centuries of influence, from Congo Square to Rampart Street, and beyond. Our show today returns to the humid southern climes at the mouth of the Mississippi for some of the very best of rhythm, from Cosimo Matassa’s studios to the clubs that pepper the Crescent City on Bourbon Street. Popular rhythm and blues today from Nawlins inclues some Fats, Professor Longhair, Huey “Piano” Smith, Paul Gayen, Frankie Ford, and a couple dozen others giving us that signature percussive backbeat embellished by pounding piano. It’s a Friday evening celebration here on Sonoma County Community radio.
Songs About Singing
Sing it loud! It’s a whole new year and our country can take heart without letting our guard down. We’ll celebrate a fresh new start knowing that hard work lies ahead with a two hour show featuring the theme of ‘singing’. Join Dave Stroud once more for a mixed bag; an eclectic blend of sounds from the past century featuring the likes of Ukulele Ike, Wingy Manone, The Cats & The Fiddle, John Sebastian, Cat Power, and a couple of dozen more, all belting out songs about the very act of singing. We’ll take you down Memory Lane with old fashioned songs, simple songs of gospel and freedom, swinging low, singing high, and those joyful sing-alongs we’ve shared over the past century. That’s right. It’s theme time on this week’s Deeper Roots show and we’d love to have you. Join in the festivities.
Big Band Blowout!
Swing with us here on Deeper Roots on a Friday morning, one week ahead of the Christmas festivities. The big band sound is that apple pie sound that grew out of the traveling musicians and dance hall bands of the 1920s. From the radio to ballrooms across the land, as the jazz orchestras grew in size, the arrangements had to be formalized to avoid mass confusion. The arranger became the focal point of the band. Improvisation during solos was written into the arrangements but their location and duration were controlled and the vocal stylings grew around the easy flowing style of the evolving jazz that would become known as ‘Swing’. Tune in for two hours of exploration of a century of America’s music.
Tiki Torch Exotica
This week’s Deeper Roots takes an historical journey into a sidelight of America’s music: Exotica. The music was a phenomenon mostly attributed to a popularity born of World War II; servicemen returning from the South Seas, Hawaii, and other Asian locales had been exposed to the music and culture. Post-war found two composers who nurtured this sudden boom of south sea influences: Les Baxter and Martin Denny, both releasing groundbreaking popular performances that were an instant success. Even though these two composers were among a small cast of characters, like any popular American music that showed legs on the charts, their sound led to copy-cats and variations on the theme that were too eclectic to pigeonhole and today’s show will tap into a few of those nooks and crannies. It’s all in good fun with wild and sensual sounds from the lounge of mid-century performers like Arthur Lyman, Yma Sumac, Peggy Lee, and 80 Drums Around the World. We’ll also dig into some novel easy listening sounds from the deeper, dustier archives, retooled for a new generation by the Numero Group on their anthology called Technicolor Paradise, release in 2018. Join the rest of the castaways on our two hour tour this week on Sonoma County Community Radio.
Mama’s Getting Hot
Free Form Friday is considered the calm before two upcoming events, both suspenseful in nature. Halloween and Election Day. Halloween because we’ll be sharing some of the haunted reminders as well as social distancing, whereas Election Day will send the right message and send the ghouls, rats, and seditionists scurrying back to their nests. This morning’s music is the bright reminder that good still can come of our situation, taking a time out for music that keeps us centered. We’ll make the leap from Mama Cass to Geraint Watkins, Ella to Laura Nyro, John Prine to The Beach Boys…all in perfect form. Join Dave Stroud for another celebration of a hundred years of America’s music on KOWS radio, a bastion of free speech and no bull, streaming to your ears on www.freespeechnobull.com. And donate to support community radio.
Murder Most Foul
Our show this week is brought to you by a song, a narrative like no other Bob Dylan has ever produced. Murder Most Foul was released earlier this year as the first single from his latest album Rough and Rowdy Ways. It is a 16 minute narration of cultural reflection that speaks to the passing of time in the context of what has been lost and what still might be lost yet still celebrating our gains. The Kennedy assassination is one of those times that we reflect on, remembering the day that it happened with as much clarity as time permits. What Dylan does is use pastel images of ‘what was then’ with who we are now as he speaks to cultural touchstones in his (and our) life. And he warns us, once again, that the times are indeed changin’ and that we should likely hear this song as a storm warning. Tune into for a listen. Two hours of Deeper Roots this week. You can also find out more about the Dylan song at https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/murder-most-foul-and-the-haunting-of-america.
Broken Hearts For Sale
It’s theme time once more. We’ve got songs about the broken hearts, tears, and childhood souvenirs…but mostly broken hearts. Lost love, faded love, and remembering old love letters from the book of broken hearts featuring country, soul, and rhythm, all from the past century. Join in for some classic country from Don Williams and Billy Walker, brassy vocals from Peggy Lee and Billie Holiday, late movie Elvis, and a couple of rockabilly legends named Sonny Burgess and Warren Smith. And don’t miss out on Mary Wells, Jimmy Ruffin, Tom Petty, and The Louvin Brothers this week. It’s all there…a common theme in songwriting for being relatable, illustrative, and purposeful in its singular stories of love and loss. Tune into KRJF 92.3 FM, Sonoma County Community Radio with your host Dave Stroud this Friday evening at 9 Pacific.