Category Archives: Jazz

Black Pearls

November 18, 2014 Dave

Our theme in this week’s episode of Deeper Roots: Black Pearls, a story of the Blues Queens of the Twenties. We’ll hear the music that, throughout the 1920s, could be heard in the tents, theaters, dance halls and cabarets, and on “race” records where Black American women captivated large audiences with their singing of the blues, many paying the toll for their right to be heard, transforming a folk tradition into a popular art.

Based on research from the book of the same name by Daphne Duval Harrison, we’ll hear Trixie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Ida Cox, Victoria Spivey, Sippie Wallace, and of course, Bessie Smith as they perform music that tell their story: gutsy, yet tender, exploited, but not resentful, independent, yet vulnerable. They introduced a new model of the black woman for the times and their work profoundly affected the American popular music art form.

Pre-Depression Music

November 18, 2014 Dave

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

Deeper Roots on KWTF, Urban Jazz

Harlem In The 30s

November 18, 2014 Dave

In this episode of Deeper Roots Dave Stroud digs into the sounds of Harlem in the 1930s. From the Lafayette Theater to the Savoy Ballroom to the Cotton Club… experience the music of the Harlem Renaissance where jazz clubs gave many a place to let loose and celebrate in the face of the Depression’s impact in the streets outside. We’ll hear the energetic sounds of Chick Webb, Ethel Waters, Buster Bailey and a host of others.

This show will also be posted on Mixcloud.

A Century of America's Music