Category Archives: Featured Music

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, Mountain Music

Deeper Doc Watson

November 18, 2014 Dave

Deeper Roots revisits the music of Doc Watson. We’ll listen to the sounds of The Delmore Brothers, The Carter Family, and Jimmie Rodgers, all major influences on Doc’s music and we’ll also hear from his contemporaries including Chet Atkins, Earl Scruggs, and Ricky Skaggs.

For the most part though, it’s going to be about Doc’s music and family. We’ll hear Doc in his own words, in duets with his son Merle, and from a recent box set of home recordings called “Milestones”, assembled as a scrapbook of his career by his daughter Nancy and Roy Andrade, Doc’s manager and confidant as well as member of the bluegrass and old time country music studies faculty at East Tennessee State University. Join Dave Stroud for some very special music in this edition of Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music.

Deeper Roots on KWTF, Gospel

Deeper Gospel Roots

November 18, 2014 Dave

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.

Country Blues, Deeper Roots on KWTF, Mountain Music

Murder Ballads

November 18, 2014 Dave

Deeper Roots presents “Murder Ballads”. Join Dave Stroud for an exploration of the fateful legends of Naomi Wise, Pretty Polly, Hattie Carroll, and Tom Dulah…and others. Many of these ‘true crime’ ballads recall an historic event that grew in myth and legend as its thread was passed and adapted from ear to ear…eventually resolving itself in the story of the perpetrator’s fate.

This episode will be posted to Mixcloud in the near future.

Deeper Roots on KWTF, Free Form

Bob Dylan Special

November 18, 2014 Dave

We wished Bob Dylan a happy 72nd birthday in 2013 by spending our two hour set celebrating his work by sharing songs he’s written, performed by both his contemporaries and Dylan himself. We’ll also hear some anecdotes relayed by Bob from a couple of different sources.

Since he arrived on the music scene in 1961 up until his latest release “Tempest”, Bob Dylan has proven that he is a Renaissance Man, a musical entrepreneur, an actor, a radio personality, a sage spokesman for roots music, and a philosophical icon. To ignore Dylan’s body of work in the context of roots music is to ignore a over a half century of the inspiration, influences, and relationships he’s had with the many genres (and often the legends) of folk, jazz, blues, country, bluegrass, and gospel.

Join Dave Stroud as he shares a set of all songs written by Dylan including performances from Warren Zevon, Flatt and Scruggs, The White Stripes, and Eric Clapton.

This episode will be posted to Mixcloud in the near future.

Deeper Roots on KWTF, Theme Time

Dreams Of Home

November 18, 2014 Dave

Every Friday night at 9 on KWTF, we visit another slice of roots music, curated with backstories about the performances, the performers, and the arch of story-telling. Dave Stroud brings us a selection of roots inspired themes of home as muse and metaphor in artists’ performances from the past century of America’s music. The theme of home is covered by almost 90 years of recordings, starting with the Carter Family and Da Costa Woltz’s Southern Broadcasters from the Gennett archives of the late twenties into music of the late 2000’s featuring John Prine, Bruce Springsteen, and Steve Earle. We’ll also hear from Robert Johnson, George Edgin’s Corn Dodgers and gospel from the likes of Dorothy Love Coates and Frank Sinatra…Frank Sinatra???! Join us.

Country, Deeper Roots on KWTF, Fifties Country

Fifties Country

November 18, 2014 Dave

In a show we broadcast in May of 2013, we explore classic Country music with performers ranging from Hank Williams and Johnny Cash to Hank Snow and Webb Pierce. With the format of the genre becoming watered down into a more mainstream format by the late 1970s, the sound of Country music of the fifties and sixties (considered by many to be the ‘Golden Age of Country Music’) has found its own niche and listening audience. The move to digital, it turns out, has made the genre more accessible, beyond the familiar rural audiences who shunned the pop mainstream that found them alienated from their music. Join Dave Stroud as he shares two hours of Classic Country on Deeper Roots: A Century of America’s Music.

This episode will be posted to Mixcloud in the near future.

Deeper Roots on KWTF, Theme Time

Down The Road

November 18, 2014 Dave

Roots music so often plays on the theme of ‘going home’ and uses metaphor to illustrate the journey. In past episodes of Deeper Roots, A Century of America’s Music, we’ve explored the music of the railroad and waterways as themes in American roots music. This episode has us focusing on the muse of routes, roads, and highways. We’ll hear from Mose Allison, Chuck Berry, Lowell Fulson, and Hank Williams in a set that follows road trips, functions at the junctions, highway signs, rocky roads, dusty roads, big roads, gospel highways, and bi-ways of the heart. Don’t miss it! And don’t forget that you can hear past episodes by subscribing to our podcasts here: http://deeperroots.podomatic.com/

This episode will be posted to Mixcloud in the near future.

African American Gospel, Deeper Roots on KOWS, Deeper Roots on KWTF, Gospel

Deeper Sister Rosetta Tharpe

November 18, 2014 Dave

Deeper Sister Tharpe — Deeper Sister Rosetta Tharpe

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.

Blues, Deeper Roots on KOWS, Deeper Roots on KWTF

Deeper Wolf

November 18, 2014 Dave

He had become a fixture of the Delta juke joints and small clubs of the South so that when Sam Phillips first recorded him for the Chess Brothers, the change from local legend to urban blues star was a very short journey. He was a giant of a performer in both the figurative sense as well as in real life.

We’ll hear Wolf’s reflections in his own voice as well as the songs that, over the years, were honed into American roots classics. Smokestack Lightnin’, Three Hundred Pounds of Joy, Little Red Rooster, and other pieces of Howlin’ Wolf are a part of this week’s show…performed by both Wolf as well as other artists. Join Dave Stroud for an enlightening journey into the sounds of Howlin Wolf…with its twists of evil, penitence, and fiery passion.

A Century of America's Music