West County is the place to be in summer. The inland heat is pulling in the right amount of tempered cool from the coast…and Deeper Roots sounds will ride the wave on a Saturday morning. Join us for music from Arlo Guthrie, Chubby Newsome, Jimmie Revard, Mahalia Jackson, and more. The sounds we’ll hear come from country, country swing, classic gospel, mountain tradition, and just a little bit of the blues so please join us as we fill the airwaves with classic roots music on a Saturday morning, live from the KOWS studios in Occidental.
Category Archives: Featured Music
Songs About Telephones
It’s ‘theme time’ in this episode as we find a muse that songwriters have been looking to since it’s appearance in the 19th century: the telephone. Join us for operators, dial tones, party lines, busy signals, and hang-ups…just a few of the topics in a show featuring gospel from the Selah Jubilee Singers and Sister Wynona Carr, sixties soul from The Marvelettes and The Orlons, tradition from Bill Monroe and Wade Mainer, and more.
Ruler Of My Heart – KOWS July 27, 2015
Saturday morning in West County…our first week of summer with Deeper Roots and we’ve got an early set of New Orleans swamp classics followed by shreds of rockabilly and sounds from The Killer. There’s also gospel with The Staple Singers, high octane early century pop from The Boswell Sisters and Johnny Hamp and the Orchestra. We’ll sum the day up with folk, pop, and R&B…and everything in between.
Ladies of Country Music
The story of women in country music begins in the early century with The Carters and the lesser known names of Roba Stanley, Louisiana Lou, and Patsy Montana. If the music was not about heaven and sinners, then it was about being a single girl or a cowboy’s sweetheart. But there was a sea change in post-war country music with the strength of Kitty Wells’ and the assertive independent sounds of Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, and Dolly Parton. To quote an online source, “the story of gender in post-war country music is largely the story of how women, in song and on stage, came to represent themselves in full.”
Old Devil Time
We are sitting in for Mark Hogan’s Bluegrass and Old Time Hour this week while Mark is far afield, attending the 40th Anniversary Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival in Grass Valley. Our show will explore the multi-generational sounds of not only bluegrass with Dillard and Clark and The Hackberry Ramblers, but we’ll also cross the genres (as we are wont to do) with Cowboy Copas, Clara Ward, Otis Spann, and Doris Day. There’s a couple of different threads that run through our show today, one being that of the ‘devil’ and the other being ‘new mornings’. Tune in at a special time and see what’s in store on a summer afternoon in West County.
Grapes on the Vine
Raising the roof once more on KOWS in West Sonoma County on a bright Saturday morning. And we make it count with an opening salvo of some country swing from Bob Wills, W. Lee O’Daniel, The Light Crust Doughboys, and Willie Nelson. Not to be outdone, we’ve got bluegrass from The Rice Brothers and our own David Thom, gospel from the Hummingbirds, and a special set celebrating the “Poet of the Blues” Percy Mayfield. We’ll also feature blues from Texas and, if we find the time, early century pop from Frank Crumit and Cliff Edwards. Tune in Saturday morning at 9 on KOWS for a dose of roots sounds from the past century of America’s music with Dave Stroud.
Folk & Blues Fusion
We blend sounds of the South with those of the Appalachians, sharing the sounds of performers who were known in different locales, passing lyrics and music, making them pliable as they went from town to town. Recordings were made in hotel rooms, front porches, and music stores by record company representatives who traveled from city to city with primitive recording equipment. By the time the recordings were ‘offloaded’ back at the studios, details of the performers and the differences between black and white were blurred. We’ll hear from the great Riley Puckett, Mississippi John Hurt, The Blue Sky Boys, and Pink Anderson in this week’s episode.
Fair and Warmer – KOWS May 23, 2015
The show kicks off with some mid-century country fiddlin’ courtesy of Curly Fox but makes a quick left turn with a set about liars, tattlers, and some straight-forward testifying from Sister Rosetta Tharpe. We’ll also be entertained with some classic roots from the Dallas String Band, Lead Belly, E. C. Ball, and a tribute set to Sam Cooke.
Texas Bluesmen
When one thinks of the early influences of the blues, they’re taken down to the Mississippi Delta or maybe into East Georgia, where the Piedmont blues style was born. But Texas is not always a player in the discussion primarily because most do not necessarily know the origins of its native sons even though they may know their names. Let’s try Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker, and Lightnin’ Hopkins to start with and we’ll go on from there. In Friday night’s Deeper Roots show we visit the streets of Deep Ellum, Houston, and Galveston, where many of the performers would ply their trade in the Lone Star State. Although we won’t cover Blind Lemon, we’ll have plenty of music to keep us tapping out toes including Texas Alexander, Pee Wee Crayton, Freddie King, and Stevie Ray Vaughan…and all of the greats who made their name in between.
Free Form – May 2015
Every so often we like to spend time wandering about the last century of jazz, blues, gospel and country, sharing music that’s not lost, only tucked away. In this week’s episode we’ll do just that and share our first ‘free form’ show of the year with you all. We’ll have blues about clothes being ripped off by Lightnin’ Hopkins and the Chicago Black Swans, a gumbo of Louisiana sounds from the likes of Doug Kershaw, beer toasting Tex Mex from Doug Sahm, and pining bluegrass from Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and Ralph Stanley. Tune in for another two hours of the very best of the last century of America’s music with Dave Stroud in a show produced exclusively for KWTF community radio.